American River Parkway, Part 2

So!  Here we go with the second phase of my current painting, American River Parkway.  This is being painted in acrylics on a 10x30" canvas.

At this point I like the composition and as I indicated in my prior post, the original photo is of oak trees but my brain took over and made these little dots of color in lieu of gray-green whisps of the tiny leaves that the oaks have.  I like the idea of the unrealistic shapes of color and values of the trees but right now there are too may small, circular shapes that are the same size.  Also the sky is too pink and/or kind of purplish.

Okay so did some more work on this painting and here it is now.

Oh, much better I think.  Changing the sky changed the whole complexion of the work, then I went back in and deleted some shapes in the trees, added bigger clumps and made some differences in the horizon line.  I haven't signed it because I'm not sure I'm done.

Would love comments.  Does that orange blob at the top, right of the big green shape bother anyone?  In the meantime, onto another canvas.

An American River Parkway View

So  I  began anew yesterday with this scene on The American River Parkway.  The photo was taken capturing the rainbow that had appeared, however my painting is focusing on the trees and the colors within myself since the original scene is oak trees and very gray green, not the blue greens that I have used.  I didn't even bother to include the rainbow-- too whimsical I think.  The blue under the trees is not water, it's the beginnings of the cast shadows of the trees.  There's a too much red in the blue sky so I will be going back and changing that though I do want to leave a thin pinkish line at the horizon.

An artist friend has invited me to enter a show that he's put together for the Sacramento Fine Arts Center entitled PAINTING WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE.  It will be work depicting Artwork of the American River Parkway and its Wild Things, so I am busy creating.  I can enter up to 3 pieces to be juried into the exhibition which will be shown at the Sac Fine Arts Center, then transferred to the Effie Yeaw Nature Center for showing.

Busy, busy, busy and my muse is sooo happy, happy, happy which leads me to breathing deep, rich, full breaths of delicious air.

Stillness

So...been working on family issues lately and not really able to work BUT today have tucked myself behind a closed door in my happy place.  My music is playing and comfortably, in my $39.99 Ikea chair, am in my muse state just believing in the beautiful and the real, feeling the love that I receive from the process of art and hoping that I am able to share that emotion.

I have finished "Stillness," and signed it:

It's hanging in the kitchen so that I can take it in each morning to perhaps touch it up here and there as I see fit.  It's got a nice sheen in the last layers since I used a special glazing medium that really enhanced the pigment an kind of sealed the paint to the canvas.  I notice there's a lot of yellow in the upper half, left side however I think the paint caught the flash of the camera there and it is not so light, however that is something I will be resolving today.

So onto a new canvas which already has about 22 layers of paint onto which I just added another creating a neutral background, next step is sketching and then the magical creating brain takes over.  That's when I breathe, 1-2-3, breathe, 1-2-3, breathe...lol.

Here she is after adding a couple of brushstrokes this morning.