I went camping at Tyler State Park after a fun couple of days in Tyler with friends. It was about 40° and probably less by the lake, but the sunrise woke me up, shining on my tent screen. I jumped to it, grabbed my gear, coat and threw on my cowboy boots to catch the light. The far bank was lit up in an orange hue while the foreground trees were still mostly in shadow from the tall pines behind me. The camera failed to really catch the glow, so I flung that paint fast to get down the actual blues and orange colors that vibrate dramatically. After finishing the sketch, I used that to repaint it on a larger 12×16″ canvas. Sweet memory I’m blessed to have!
Category: Studio Works
When there’s not time to paint, I take reference photos and work from the studio
Studio Work: Fall Colors on the Lower Swift River
This is a piece I’ve been working on for a while. I visited my brother and his family for about two and half months in Marblehead, and was lucky enough to find a break in the rains in later October to travel to the southeast White Mountains. The Lower Swift River flows near Conway, NH and at peak fall color has crowds lined up along the highway to go down to the river. Spectacular. I found a park where I could head down and explore the area. Up river about a quarter mile, where to people quit and turn around, I found a bend in the river perfect for a sketch to get careful notes of the area. I took those notes and a photo to paint this 18×24″ view. I wanted to get a good contrast between the light boulders and dark waters to invite the viewer into the scene. The main tree was actually some bare birches, so I look the liberty to “enhance” it with a vibrant maple also seen along the river. The sky was actually much more brilliant hues of blue, but it needed to be muted to showcase the main tree. After about a week, I couldn’t see anything else I could do, so I called it done.
Loved the journey! Onto the next.
Next Generation Disc Golfer

While Dad and I were playing disc golf with friends, one of them brought his brother’s family with two kids. Both the wife and husband were pretty good disc golfers and their kids watched intently, the oldest eager to give it a try. As they watched the Dad, the sunlight caught their blond hair and I saw a painting I really wanted to try. Covertly, I snapped a pic with the iPhone. Later at home I painted the two kids omitting the Dad in the background. Might have made for a neat story to have him back there, but I thought the disc in the toddler’s hand told the story sufficiently.
Hopefully, the young couple will enjoy their painting as much as I enjoyed painting it!
Studio: “Into Reality” Mt. LeConte, NC
My cousin Andy and his wife backpack to a lodge in Mt. Le Conte n the Appalachian Mountains. It has a special meaning to them as their getaway hike and he took a snapshot of his wife walking into view of the mountains. This painting will be a good “happy unbirthday” surprise. He’s been wanting this painting for some time and I finally felt ready to paint it.
I’ve been learning about Impressionism and manipulating color, value, edge… all the aspect the affect the mood of the scene. When backpacking through the woods its been called the “long green tunnel”. After a few miles, it’s meditative as you listen your rhythmic footsteps, the sounds of the forest, your breathe and you fall into introspection of life. Then, BAM, bright light hits you and an overwhelming view of the mountains appears. It’s a sudden jolt internally to go from introspection to such awareness of life outside of you. Humbling. Everything thought about for miles snaps into proportion, so teeny-tiny in comparison. Appreciation. It’s no question that this life is a gift, and being a part of it, however infinitely small, is incredibly comforting. These are the words and feelings behind the painting that guided my decisions. Hope they like it!
Studio Painting: “Countryside Bluebonnets”
This will be a quick post, but wanted to share the most recent work done in the studio. If it looks slightly familiar, it’s because it is from a couple of past plein air studies and a bit of inspiration from a Clyde Aspevig painting all smacked together. Nice when that works out! I added some thick paint in areas of the foreground bluebonnets and let the detail fade away as it went to the background. Hopefully this will feel inviting, like stepping into the scene. I had an email from someone asking to buy artwork in the range this would sell at. Crossing my fingers!
I’m at a paintout near Ennis, TX with the Outdoor Painter Society, texting this in my tent. Hope to meet some great artists tomorrow!
Studio Sketch: “Springtime Showers”
I believe this is ready to scale up! I’m thinking it might be a good one for oils, but now that I’ve found glazing medium for acrylics, I’m leaning towards that. It’s blends perfectly. I’ll post up the big one soon.
Commission from Photo: Wedding Venue in Colorado
Studio Study: Impasto and expressive brushwork
There is a whole line of storms for the next few days, so I’m settling in and making a daily schedule for studio studies. I have time in the studio with consistent light to explore a subject, unlike plein air where the light changes giving about a two hour window. After repeating the same technique for months in my painting process, it’s time for a something new. Something like using my left hand to brush my teeth, sort of “new”. Awkward. Usually, acrylic paint goes on thin and even using thick paint, it shrinks, so today I decided to layer thick paint. Rick Delaney mentioned he uses this technique to get the impasto look of oils in his acrylic paintings, and he’s the one to ask about this. His work is filled with color and expressive brushwork where you can see in the finished work exactly where his brush began pasting on the color and where it ended. It’s a new dimension to the “near music”, as Barry Raybold (Virtual Art Academy) calls it. That’s what you see when a painting pulls you in so close, all you see is individual, abstract brushwork that doesn’t make sense until you step back and the eye sees the whole scene again.
The mood to this scene is cloudy, windy and expressive. It’s hard to say “cold” in Weimar this year, since Texas abbreviated the seasons spring and winter like it does “ya’ll” and I’m now in shorts and a t-shirt enjoying a “spr’inter”. After sketching out my thoughts for the scene of a cedar along a fence line, using charcoal (easiest for me), I reworked it in brush-markers to get the values right. Since this is a gray scene, I mixed up some old Cobalt blue and Cad Red Light Hue to a big pile of warm gray. For a yellow to mix muted greens, I used yellow ochre, adjusting the value with Titanium white. I got out the biggest, fattest bristle brush in my arsenal and my palette knife and went to town. No fear was my mantra. Finding my gray mix wasn’t quite dark enough, I got some thalo blue (powerful pigment) to mix with the cad red. Perfect. I can now see the branches layered on, the whites of clouds punching out of the surface and a richer sense of atmosphere I haven’t been able to achieve before. Art is conveying an impression or what I feel about a scene, and somehow in this more expressive, abstract method, the feeling is more clear than with a scene rendered more like a photograph. Great lesson! This would work great with all the run down barns here with that sun-dried, withered texture.
Studio Work: Last Light
There might be a few small changes as I set it aside for a while in order to look at it again later with fresh eyes.
Studio Painting: Lazy Days
I highly recommend John Poon’s Landscapes DVD. He has great organizational skills and presents how to use a busy scene, clarify the focus and work through a four step process. He also works in acrylics, but it’s equally good for oils as well.