Teeny, tiny (sort of) landscapes

 My beloved is preparing to go to woodworking school soon, so taht we can become a power creative couple. Meanwhile - he is able to make me lovely, well-finished cradled boards.

Many of my latest paintings have been on these boards.  

 

In order to maximize the number of cradled boards to be gotten from the sheets of Baltic birch he uses, after creating the medium size (15/16” x 20) he created several little ones (6’x12”). Now, I don’t normally work that small but it behooves me to create some smaller paintings as our local gallery is a small space, and also, it’s a good idea to practice what I’m bad at, I’ve learned.  So this week, I prepped three small boards, and created three paintings on them.

 The first was a view of Cape Flattery, northwest from where I live. I started with a yellow ground, working through it back and forth. I’m fine with it, but not pleased. 

The second was a sunrise over Port Ludlow piece, a study in which I wanted to show light using just paint. Again, no idea where I got it, it was just sitting in my photo reel. There’s a lot of these out there.  This one I edited and cropped.  

  

Here are these two together: I’m naming them “Sunrise, Port Ludlow” (duh) and “The Headlands Below.” 

The last one I did was a picture of a forest. I don’t normally do forests.  They’re messy. I wanted to capture how the forest goes back into mist, using this photo which, I confess, I have no idea where it came from.  I’m always saving these pictures to my photo roll for future use. 

I started with an under painting, using Alizarin crimson, transparent orange, titanium white, cobalt blue, quinacridone gold, and ultramine.  You can make an AMAZING number of colors with a minimal palette. 

 Messy underpainting. 

I did this surprisingly quickly!I figure 3 hours from start to finish. I’ve been chasing the impressionist nature of palette knife painting, and am finally getting comfortable with letting shapes and our brains tell the story, rather than trying to render something exactly. 

So this is the final result: 

Does it look like the original? Sorta. Maybe there should be more shadows on the right in the foreground. But this is a study, and art is not about looking like a photograph. 

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