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This is how it finally turned out after several stops and starts. Added the ranch guy unloading his truck, as well as the cat. I added the sign as well. I changed the color of the truck and made it more of a "work" truck bu removing the white wall tires. Moving on now to finish "Breakfast at the famous Kiwi Cafe" as well as a small exterior of the same Chester, NS Canada eatery. Stop back for a look see this week.
There is a fine line in stretching a bit - a risk of a painting your self into something really "hokey" and poorly painted. But if I don't stretch, I will never wake up and do it better - so here comes a truck, always planned for that space where it is now parked. Not sure of the color but I'm close i think. The absolutely best "truck and car" painter I know is Tim Horn. Check out his blog. So I will look at his versions and see what I can learn.
Here it is after 2.5 hrs in 2 sessions - and still not done. I really do want to get faster somehow? That's a common problem with a lot of plein-air painters I have met at workshops and through blogs. It is a must to get the most out of workshops, as well as live with my ADD I guess. To finish it in the next setting I need to complete the sky and wires, add the neat "folk sign" for the strawberry stand to the lower left area, and finally clean up the red highlights on the stand itself. The solution to fast and good is really do a painting a day for about 6 months. Someday?
Getting a fast one hour start on roughing in the shapes for "The Strawberry Stand" - from the photo on the left of the painting. Hope to finish it tomorrow. My goal is to get faster at starting and finishing in one 2:30 hr period, as I will have to do in the upcoming Monhegan workshop. Two per day! Working up to it. These stands are all over ad-country in southern CA and near my home. The red is just a great color and fun to use in any painting.
I have had some questions on the Camarillo Cathedral painting that you can look at below. I guess I read too many art reviews - and the best of all art mags, "Plein Air", where writers are always looking for all kinds of motivation and symbols in better paintings than mine? I like that. So I try to sneak a few in to most of what I do actually. For example: In my 8x10 painting of this place - again, please look below - there is a touch of "sun glow" in the towering clouds in the upper left of the canvas. That lofty cloud, and the attention-drawing color, is meant to represent the bell tower of the actual church - only this clowd representation is reaching up high to the heavens, extending in a way the "reach" of the place and the people who come here. The telephone poles at lower left reflect the hard working-class "neighborhood", as well as "getting the good-word out", and the small buildings again on the lower left of the canvas represent the modest community and priests that surround the place. I depict the East side of the structure, not the front that faces N. I chose it because it faces the rising sun every day, representing eternity, and God's daily creations and challanges - new with every sunrise. And - I painted it on Good Friday. WOW. All that into one painting plan. It's too much information but now you know.
The Westlake Inn is adding this "tasting room" and coffee house to their property in southern CA. I have been doing a series of paintings of the place under construction. Here is the latest that combines the growing vineyard in front of the place, as well as the building - both coming together - or "growing" as well. "Growing Together" and the other paintings of this place before, during and after should be ready for display here in time for the Grande Opening in late July.
I have been "attacked" by the "brain" at Google that has done something awful to my ability to post so I have had to "invent" ways to get around their systems. Seems my "browser is no longer supported by Google". I have no clue at all what that means but it is really upsetting. It takes forever to post anything now and I have no clue if my make-shift methods of posting photos or comments with work - but I'll try. I have been away from painting for too long. Lots of life-stuff got my serious attention and when that happens it's impossible for me to paint at all. So I am back at it now with this painting I started on-location on Good Friday - 2012. It's a start - or should I say re-start. This camarillo church built early in the 1900's is a treasure and beautiful from so many directions. I may do more based on the photos I took.
