Yellow Flowers

I am busy getting ready for my next workshop, this one with Carol Marine. Carol has been posting her daily paintings on her blog since 2006. She is truly one of the very best contemporary artists, and I feel so fortunate to be attending one of her workshops. Marina and I leave Thursday morning for Greenville, New York where the workshop is to be held at an old inn the home of Hudson River Valley Art Workshops.

Train tressel near the Marina in Pembroke

I wanted to return to this site and make another attempt at painting this charming view. Tuesday evening presented a clear beautiful evening with the sun raking over the scene. I kept in mind the technique of painting large colour shapes with the piece being design driven and tried to avoid "knoodleing" (Marina's and my nickname for too much unecessary and confusing detail).

Witherspoon's Pond

I started this painting of a beautiful pond while I was at the workshop in Goderich. The morning had been spent doing some amazing exercises, which although I enjoyed immensly, kind of scrambled my brain. I worked very slowly trying to integrate what I had learned in the morning into my painting. I was't able to finish the piece during the workshop but because I had various pencil sketches and the colour block in done I finished it this afternoon.

Farm Buildings

The photo of this painting turned out a bit on the rosy side, I will retake it in the morning and attempt to repost. I was working today on trying to maintain simplicity and retain the original colour shapes from the block in. This is the rear view of the farmhouse and out buildings on the abandoned farm near us on Forest Lea Road. This is now the retake of the photo, much closer to the actual colour.

Driftwood Revisited

After spending time with Ian Roberts at his workshop in Goderich, focusing on colour shapes and design, I felt that I would like to try repainting the scene from the boat launch at Driftwood Park. Yesterday I spent some time on a value study of the sketch using my previous sketch and a photograph as a preliminary step off point. Today's painting is very simple in terms of colour and values with very little detail but I am happy with the new direction that I have taken.

Pink Flower

One of the lessons taught at the plein aire workshop was to simplify shapes into colour masses and not to get lost in the detail. This small sketch is an attempt to do that. It is always hard to not keep adding and adding small details which are easily visible to the human eye, but which tend to complicate the design.