Trees at the Top of the Hill, oil, 8 x 10

Just got home from a fantastic weekend of plein air painting in Bryson City, NC with three other artists.  Although cold in the morning, we had great weather and gorgeous fall colors to work with.  Here's one of my paintings from the weekend.  I have three others that I hope to touch up in the studio.  Hopefully I won't kill them in the process and will post later.

Sunlight Peeking Through, oil, 11 x 14

I had jury duty this week and needed to cancel all of my classes for the week in case I was selected as a juror.  Since I wasn't chosen, I'm using my available days this week to get outside to paint in this beautiful fall weather. Today's painting was done at a horse farm in the Suwanee, GA area.  I plan to go back tomorrow.

Two demos from this week's classes.

Autumn Reflections, pastel, 9 x 12

Autumn Ablaze, pastel, 14 x 11

Trying to get caught up and post all of my demos for the week before heading off tomorrow for a plein air paintout at Smith-Gilbert Gardens in Kennesaw tomorrow and Friday.  So here are two of my demo paintings from my Monday and Wednesday classes.  On Monday we studied reflections in water, and on Wednesday I challenged us all to pull one tree out of a mass of busy tree foliage using color vibrancy and soft/hard edges.  Of course I couldn't resist using autumn scenes for both!

Little Old Barn, oil, 8 x 10

This morning I had the pleasure of painting in the beautiful little town of Adairsville, GA.  Lots of farms, barns, streams, pastures, and lots of other scenery I love to paint.  I'm fortunate to have a good friend, Jan Levin, also an artist, who lives there and invited me and another artist friend, Jill McGannon, up to her house last night so we could catch the early morning light and get several hours of painting in before Jill and I had to head home for our kids' "bus stop" time.  Little Old Barn is one of my paintings from this morning.

Oct. 12 demo - Edges

Autumn Splendor, pastel, 11 x 14

In my Wednesday class today we focused on edges.  I wanted to create some drama in a painting by exagerating the difference between the soft and hard edges.  Although I'm not normally a finger blender, I did some softening "smudges" here and there to increase this effect.  In my demo shown here, I strayed quite a bit from my reference photo, forcing myself to focus on what would make a good painting rather than copying my photo.

Oct. 5 demo

Amicalola View, pastel, 11 x 14

I did a version of this scene in two of my classes this week.  This was the demo from my Wednesday class.  For this painting, my goal was to highlight the drama of the vibrant blue of the mountains peaking through the trees and grassy foliage in the foreground.  This was done on a prepared panel with an alcohol underpainting.

Creating distance with color temperature.

A Sliver of Silver Lake, pastel, 9 x 12

This was my demo from this week's Monday class in which we focused on creating distance in the landscape using color temperature.  The large foreground area provided lots of opportunity to experiment with colors as well as subtle shapes to move the viewer's eye back into the distance.

Same scene, different weather conditions.

Autumn Color on a Cloudy Day, pastel, 11 x 14

Autumn Color in Sunlight, pastel, 11 x 14

In my Wed. and Thurs. classes we've been studying the effects of direct sunlight vs. cloudy conditions on the same scene. (See Sept. 15 post.) Our subject matter of a landscape with vivid autumn colors made a great study for this, allowing us to notice many differences between the two besides just brighter highlights, including differences in contrast, value range, and color temperature/saturation.  Autumn Color in Sunlight was shown in my Sept. 15 post; however, I've made some adjustments to it.  Autumn Color on a Cloudy Day was my demo from this past week.  After finishing the cloudy day version, I went back and forth between the two making minor tweaks to both. Although we usually hope for sunny conditions when painting outdoors or taking reference photos, cloudy conditions can often be dramatic and moody.  I think I actually like my cloudy day version better!