Twilight Game

This is for Dec 2010 Virtual Paintout, County Clare, Ireland. It's oil on 6x8 canvas board.

This is my post holiday post vacation attempt at the challenge. I had picked out a few scenes and chose this one to paint before my family took off for two week vacation. Now we just came back, I'm pulling a late night finish this one. What struck me with this scene was the interesting Z shape greens, and the close up shot of this pitching scene. (ref photo) Painting all these greens turned out to be a bit challenging, as there are many variations of green here. The basic green is viridian, mixed in with cadmium yellow, ultramarine violet, violet grey etc. I made the sky more orange to give it more a twilight feel.

White Gate

This is for Rookie Painter, December 2010. It's oil on 6x8" canvas board.

This month's challenge is a big red house. (ref photo) I just couldn't get myself to paint the big red house since it seemed a bit too blockish to me. I decided I was going to do a crop, and this corner of the picture had more shapes and contrasting elements.

The color I used included cadmium red, cadmium orange, cadmium yellow, lemon yellow, yellow orchre, vermillion, alizarin, ultramarine violet, ultramarine blue, sap green, viridian, radiant violet, sepia, and white.

The Wave is Cold!

This is for Calypso Moon Artist November 2010 challenge. It's oil on 10x12 canvas board.

This is the first time I'm doing a challenge for this website. The challenge was to capture a moment in time. When saw the challenge, I thought I had to do it, since I had this picture for a couple of years and I always wanted to paint it.

This was taken on Martha's Vineyard, MA a couple of years ago. The kids were playing at the beach, and the north Atlantic water was not exactly the warmest. A wave came in, and the boys were screaming cold and running out of the water.

To paint this, I first used an acrylic ground of a greenish mix yellow orchre and ultramarine blue for the ocean and wave, and yellow orchre for the boys. Then for oil paint I used cerulean, carribean blue, radiant turquiose, terre verde, yellow orchre, radiant violet, and ultramarine blue. For the kids I used lots of naples yellow, yellow orchre, cadmium orange and red, madder, ultramarine violet, ultramarine blue, terre verde, some lemon yellow. Finally I used a fan brush to put in the foreground crashing waves and flying water.

Orange Pudding

This is for Nov 2010 Rookie Painter challenge. It's oil on 6x8 canvas panel.

This month's challenge is an orange colored pudding. (ref photo) To be honest, I've had chocolate pudding before, I've had orange jello before, but I've never had orange pudding. So I'm not sure what it tastes like. From the look of the picture, it looks as if this may taste very sweet, almost like an orange marmalade.

I thought about doing this painting using landscape orientation, but then the bowl would be too small. So I kept the vertical feel of his painting, and made the spoon go out of canvas. I started by putting an acrylic ground of purplish black. The oil palette I used included cadmium yellow pale, cadmium orange, cadmium red, alizarin, burnt sienna, ultramarine violet, ultramarine blue, Payne's Grey and white.

Sugarloaf Mountain - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

This is for Virtual Paintout November 2010 challenge, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It's oil on 10x12 canvas board.

This is the Sugarloaf Mountain (Pão de Açúcar) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. What attracted me to this scene was the unique shape of the Sugarloaf Mountain, the ocean, the mountains that go farther and farther back in the ocean, the bright sky and people along the path by the ocean.

However, what I was debating was the composition, as it could be too heavy on the right hand side with the mountains. So I made the foreground path more diagonal so to lead the eyes from the right to the left. (This type of arrangement can be seen in some of my prior paintings, like the challenges for Hawaii and Norway.) I put in the wispy clouds also trying to balance out the heavy right hand side. To add in a little more interest, I added in some pure color for the man's backpack and his cap. It also seems like he might be carrying a water bottle in the reference picture, so I added that in as well. (ref photo)

For underpainting, I used a thinned out ultramarine violet oil painting, did a monochromatic value study, since I thought many color in this painting had purple in it, like the sky, mountain and the ocean. The palette included cobalt blue, ultramarine violet, ceruleum, raw and burnt umber, ultramarine blue, madder, sap green, cadmium yellow, Portland grey, white and a tiny touch of vermilion.

Window

This is for Rookie Painter, Oct 2010 challenge, the Window. It's oil on 8x10 canvas board.

I changed some elements from the original picture (ref photo). I made the picture landscape instead of portrait since I wanted the focus to be more on the window. In order to make the window appear less symmetrical, I opened one side of the window and created a sense of breeze coming in by making the left curtain sway. I also made the window frame darker so that it won't stand out as much. In the original photo, there were so many folds on the blanket that it looked almost like someone could be inside the blanket. So I gave a slightly more explicit hint of a person there.

The canvas was prepared by a black acrylic ground. The palette is relatively limited in this painting: yellow orchre, terra verte, raw and burnt umber, ultramarine violet, ultramarine blue, lemon yellow, white, and Portland greys.

Mason

This is oil on 6x8" canvas board. My little one asked me to do a painting of him. Since I was preparing the under painting for the gondola ride painting, I prepped one more canvas board for this painting. The ground is black and red oxide acrylic mix, but more on the red oxide than the gondola one. This is a quick oil exercise for me. I used yellow orchre, cadmium orange, cadmium red, madder, ultramarine violet, terre verte, lemon yellow, white, burnt sienna, black.