One Year/100 Paintings

March 16, 2018

#17 - One Year/100 Paintings - Tomatillos - 6 x 4 Acrylic on canvas board. This was another one of the vegetables that we've never eaten that I picked up at the grocery store to use as a painting subject. I took a photo of the tomatillos to use for my painting before cooking them up in a side dish of Tomatillo Rice. Both Brenda and I felt the dish to be a little overbearing, but not horrible to eat. I found the rice was better cooked up the next morning with scrambled eggs and melted cheese.

One Year/100 Paintings

March 13, 2018

#16 - One Year/100 Paintings - Red Beets, still life - Acrylic on 6 x 4 canvas board. Seeking new ideas for paintings, I picked up fresh vegetables that looked interesting with the intention of finding a new recipe to use them after painting them. We made oven roasted red beets as a side dish for one of our meals, they still tasted pretty much like any other time I've had red beets.

This was painted in the early am, before work, in just over an hour. The short time limit is to force myself to work quickly, and simplify the strokes as much as possible while still being able to recognize the subject matter. Perhaps I should push the limits further and paint in a totally abstract or impressionistic fashion, without worrying about capturing a likeness to the subject.

One Year/100 Paintings

March 7, 2018

#15 - One Year/100 Paintings - Last week I was on vacation and was able to get out one chilly day to paint at Lake Marburg. I first hiked around the lake, but was unable to find a suitable subject, but then on my way back to my car, I found this view. I had packed a thermos full of coffee, my lightweight pochade box made from a metal document holder and a tripod seat.

**Pochade box**

Made from metal document holder

I tried to work quickly and not get caught up too much in the details, my painting style is still emerging. Finding the tube colors difficult to mix without being too vivid, I'm going to watch videos by other plein air artists to see what colors they are using on their palettes. It was getting toward noon and my appetite was building, not to mention the chill in the air, so I finished quickly to have a leisurely lunch at The Famous in downtown Hanover.

One Year/100 Paintings

March 5, 2018

#14 - One Year/100 Paintings - Camera Still Life - 4 x 4 acrylic on canvas board. Another camera still life that is similar in style to the previous one. This is a 620 roll film camera from my collection of over 150 cameras.

One Year/100 Paintings

February 25, 2018

#13 - One Year/100 Paintings - Virtual Plein Air - Random Mapcrunch View - 4 x 6 acrylic on canvas board. I feel like a painting style may be emerging with these last few paintings aside from the camera still life. Trying to simplify the scenes and add simple strokes and spots of color. My paint colors still look very saturated, I will try to mute them down a bit more in future paintings.

One Year/100 Paintings

February 23, 2018

#12 - One Year 100 Paintings - Ansco Camera Still life - acrylic on 5 x 7 canvas board. This camera is one from my collection of over 150 cameras. I've been collecting them for over 25 years. This one looks great on the shelf with it's massive flash unit but the shutter doesn't work.