Just finished Day 3. It's the biggest one yet, at 12" x 20" or so.
Took me a couple of hours. I'm not happy with the depth - it should feel much deeper. I need to work on that. The background isn't cool enough and the foreground isn't warm enough. A little stuck in that muddy middle. My favorite part is the powerlines.
I had Naples yellow, ivory black, cadmium red deep, titanium white, cobalt blue (hue) and sap green on my palette. Total painting time about an hour. The houses look a little flat to me, but I didn't have a real tiny brush to make them quite right... that and my sense of perspective is a bit out of whack. Quite happy with the dark sand, though. I also like the rough wood grain and nail holes showing through the paint.
I painted in the cocoa orchard this afternoon and did my best to capture a decent image with the very limited Zorn palette of yellow ochre, titanium white, ivory black and cadmium red deep.
It came out looking like a faded old magazine illustration or something. Very weird.
I dunno.
I think I'm adding blue tomorrow. This palette would be great for skin tones and figure painting, though. I just think it looks too flat for plein air, especially in the bright and cheerful tropics.
A couple of days ago I taught two of the children how to mix color, at least in part, as they were interested in trying to paint landscapes along with me.
Yesterday afternoon the three of us drove up the mountainside to try and get to a nice spot with a good view down towards the ocean so we could do a little plein air painting. Unfortunately, our vehicle got hopelessly stuck in the mud. Our insurance company has free roadside assistance... but after being on the phone with them a few times, it turns out that doesn't apply to the rocky country road on which we live.
Fortunately, one of my neighbors has a little 4WD jeep and graciously took me back up the road to my stuck vehicle and pulled me out with a rope.
Not a very good prequel to my month of painting, but I thank God for my caring neighbor.
It has been too long since I spent time doing any art. We moved overseas and I've been terribly busy with my garden writing, plus getting established on our tropical homestead in Central America.
About a half-mile from our house is an old dam left by the Colonists. I originally intended to paint a picture of the dam but instead ended up liking the view from on top of it, so I painted up through the bamboo and off towards the little farmhouse above.
I worked on this little painting two days in a row and filmed both. I need to speed up my work and get a more natural flow, but it's not bad considering it's been a year since my last plein air effort.
I will post a picture of the final painting soon - it's since been touched up and signed.
