Overall tone

Keeping an overall tonal color to a painting is determined before the painting is started warm orange tone helped greatly to unify the entire painting.
Doing small paintings like this 5x7" piece also offers good practice in getting images, compositions and colors down quickly without investing lots of time. Do them, learn a few things and move on to another.

Duplicating Shapes

In general it is not a good idea to duplicate shapes throughout a painting but in this case it seems to work well. The triangle shapes of not only the mountain but all the fields help build a strong composition and gives the painting an almost abstract quality.

The painting was done in Flat Rock, N.C not far from our summer studio.

Last Light

It was just about sunset and the light was fading fast. Sound familiar? Well, it always seems to be the case about painting outside. The light is always changing. In this case I had to deal with a warm light coming through the glass of this greenhouse from one side and a lot of reflected light directly from the sky overhead. Working fast forced me to analyze the colors and values quickly.
I never would have gotten these rich colors had I worked from a photograph. There really is nothing like painting on location to see colors. The painting may not turn out as good as the studio paintings but for learning about color, it can't be beat.

Creating texture

In this painting I tried to create a lot of texture that represented the old fort here in St. Augustine. One way I did this was described in a DVD I did which partially dealt with the subject of creating texture easily and effectively.
To read a bit more about this you can go to this link and look at the bottom of the page for a program called "South Haven Lighthouse"

Beware of Post Office

This 8x16" painting was done on Masonite and purchased and sent to Canada. Masonite is pretty tough and I packaged it with several other pieces of heavy cardboard sandwiched between the painting. When it arrived in Canada, the painting had been broken in half. Fortunately the person who bought it let me replace the painting with another one. Insurance in my opinion for such a small painting is almost worthless since there are hoops to jump through to collect. My advice is pack things about double what you think they need. Sometimes the post office can be awfully rough.

Big eyes

This small portrait of a German Shepard was done on a 5x7" piece of Masonite. I had a thin wash of burnt sienna on the background as a base and this let all those warm colors of the dog come through the sketchy painting nicely. I pushed the cool colors of blue into the fury areas of the back coat so they wouldn't fight with the warmer colors in the foreground.
The cool colors under the dog made for a good balance putting all the focus on the animals face. I always make the eyes a bit larger in animals than they actually are. It gives them a much friendlier look.

A palette for outdoors

I've been using a glass palette when I paint outside and my acrylics often dry very quickly in the sun. Here's a tip thanks to Jay Babina who sent me an email. She writes:

I was painting acrylic outside and was going through the usual spraying the pallet routine etc yet once the sun popped out, my mixtures were literally drying in minutes.

I investigated the stay wet pallets and tupperware pans etc too.

What I tried that worked out great is corrugated cardboard. I use a regular piece of glass as you do and just placed a wet piece of regular light brown corrugated cardboard on top of it. I wet both sides pretty good letting water run into the corrugations. It works great. It holds the moisture, doesn't designate or fall apart and best of all, it's free. A piece will last for hours or more with an occasional spray if needed - but nothing like glass where thin mixtures can dry in less than a minute on a sunny day. It actually traps water on the underside if on glass. When you're done, just throw it away. I know your pallet is fairly vertical in which case you may have to experiment with some tape etc.

Give it a try and see what you think.

East Point

Here is an example of an 11x14" painting that was done using only three colors. Alazarin Crimson, Indian Yellow, and Ultramarine Blue and of course white. This painting was done as a demonstration before a class and finished in about an hour not counting the time I took to sketch it out on the board.
The idea here was to create a mood expressing the rather warm but somber mood as this town of East Point, (near Appalachicola, Florida) is both charming and economically depressed.
By using only three colors the harmony within the painting remains stronger than had I introduced other tube colors such as green.

Poetry

Find something poetic in something that is ordinary. That is the job of the artist. Zero in on what you are interested in and what draws you to the subject to begin with. What are your feelings about what you are looking at? For me it's often something as simple as dappled sunlight falling across a wall. I try and keep my focus on that one thing which drew me to the subject and keep everything else subservient to that one thing.

Getting proportions easier

This is a small 8x10"portrait of Sarah I did from a photograph. I was using my computer monitor to view the photo, zooming in to get the detail but I was really having trouble getting it right. Then I printed out a picture of her face the exact size as I was painting it. I placed it next to the painting and it was much easier to get the proportions correct.
In other words, having the photo the same size as my painting kept me from having to interpret and recalculate in my head the proportions and sizes on my painting. I could visually reproduce it much easier.

Limited Palette

I use whatever colors I feel like at the time. I don't limit myself just for the sake of having a limited palette. However, most of the time I only use the primary colors to create a painting...

Cerulean blue and ultramarine blue and , - Indian yellow and cadmium yellow light, - Alizarin crimson and Napthol red (or cad red). This gives me both a warm and cool color for each primary color.

It's surprising how many variations including greens I can get from these few colors. I occasionally use black to gray my colors a bit. This also gives me one set of primary colors that are transparent and the other opaque. I start by using the transparent colors and then work into the opaque colors.

Mixing greens

During the summer months everything is so green. It often makes painting landscapes difficult because of the lack of variations with the color. When needing more variations with greens, it's often tempting to buy more green tube colors and use them get different hues. Most of the time adding more greens to the palette doesn't work very well. I find it best to keep my palette simple and mix most of my greens with blues and yellows often adding a touch of red to the mix. Adding more colors to the palette will more often than not simply make the painting less harmonious.
I usually start with a wash of of burnt sienna on the board, let it dry and then work my greens over that. It lets some warmth come through and dampens the harshness of the greens. Remember that all the greens in a scene like this will reflect and influence just about everything else like the rocks. A touch of green in all these other elements will give the painting unity.

Three things I do consistently when creating a painting.
1. I work from dark to light.
2. I work from transparent colors to opaque colors.
3. I work from thin to thick.

Simple steps but it almost always gives me a better chance at achieving a good painting.

A target audience

One very important way to maintain a presence on the internet is to target an audience. I have found that lighthouse paintings have provided me with a niche that can easily be googled as opposed to paintings I do in the mountains which have no real keyword. Hence, no one can really find my mountain paintings as the keyword is simply too broad. Most people that find my lighthouse paintings and prints do so because they are Googling a particular lighthouse such as Sullivan Island lighthouse so it's important to use the word "Sullivan Island" as much as possible in your description to help Google rank it.

Outsourcing

The outsourcing of American doesn't belong solely to the manufacturers of this country. It effects artists as well. Just go into most homes you'll find lithographs printed in China or Taiwan, or an "original" painting done from production line painters from these country's and that're pretty darn good at what they do. Certainly good enough for the average home buyer to consider especially when the cost is a few dollars compared to what good full time artists here in America need to charge in order to survive.
What artists are to do to compete is a big question.

Art Olympics

What makes art centers think art is a competitive sport...that we should be interested in winning and taking home ribbons. Art is about being creative not about being competitive. Competition has its focus on "I'm better than you" and that sort of thinking destroys the art spirit and puts a business suit on the act of creativity.

Creating and performing a painting

When speaking about the arts, we tend to combine musician, dancer, and painter into that same general catagory of "the arts" but in many ways the painters path is different. A musician has a road map of written notes to play. How those notes are performed can make the musician great but it is not the same as being a painter. The painter in addition to "playing the notes" on canvas but must also be the composer on every work he or she creates. In the same way, the painter in addition to being the dancer must also be the coreographer for each new canvas.

This painting was done a long time ago from a photo I took in the Bowery- New York City.
I have often wondered where that man may be now.

Why do you like that painting?

When people are asked, "Why do you like that painting?" I often hear the response, "Well, every time I look at it I see something different." (I'm talking about landscapes in general) The fact is most people don't really look at paintings. The mere statement tells me they didn't see the painting in the first place. It's a catch phrase they have heard before and simply repeat it. Most lack the ability and interest to see. There are many reasons people like paintings but it's not because they see new things each time. Some of those reasons are that it brings them to a place they associate with and love but the primary answer to the question is that beauty is enduring. Beauty lasts. It doesn't go away after one viewing.

Inspiritation

People ask me where I get my inspiration. What inspiriation? I just go to work everyday. That's what it takes.

Saving money on paint

If your concerned about the cost of paints here's a way to save some money. I wanted to use smaller tubes out in the field but all I had was a large tube and an almost empty small tube so I tried this and it works great. (You must have the soft plastic tubes and not the soft metal type tubes.) These plastic tubes will easily re-expand. Just hold the large and small paint tube tightly together and start squeezing the paint from one to the other. You might think paint will squirt out the sides but if done carefully it's not a problem. Try it!