Late Afternoon Sun

A view of Phoenix on a winter day, late afternoon.
Focused on simplifying shapes and values.

6 x 8, oil on card board

Another painting where I set a limit of 1 hour.

6 x 6

Gouache

Just South of Downtown Phoenix in the old warehouse district. A little gouache study.

I may have mentioned before, I have a love hate relationship with gouache. I enjoy it's opacity and the unexpected accidents that happen. And I love the matte satin finish. It can be a little tricky though because it changes value so much as it dries.

Finished?

(Edit)
Turns out I wasn't finished. A kind soul from the internet pointed out that I had spelled Charlie Chaplin's name incorrectly. Here is the corrected version.

I started this painting 3 months ago. Due to schedule and a few problem areas in the painting, it has taken me til now to get it finished. 

Gordon's Market

When I first moved here to Arizona, I began roaming around town searching for places to paint. It seemed a little harder to find what I wanted than it was in LA where I moved from. But then I came across Gordon's. It was a little neighborhood grocery store on Roosevelt and Third Avenue. It has long since been remodeled and turned into some kind of school. This little study, 6x8, was done from a Kodachrome (may you rest in peace) slide I took 30 years ago.

Here is another painting I did a few years ago.

To Paint…or not…

This is an older apartment building that has intrigued me for years. It is nothing fancy, just a solid building from…the 40's? I've often thought about painting it but never quite got the final click in my head that there was something worth spending a few hours on. Last week I went into Phoenix to paint, after driving around for over an hour, I decided to give this place a shot. I think there are some possibilities here I want to further explore. 8x10 on canvas mounted to board.

Mesa Churches

Practice, Practice …

This past weekend I participated in the quickdraw in Scottsdale's Fall For The Arts Festival. Main street was blocked off and 30 artists filled the street, each creating a piece of art in 2 hours. I wanted to paint this theater from a photo and sketches I had done over in LA earlier this year. I knew it would be a little ambitious to finish a painting this involved so I did a practice version a few days before the event. Sure enough, it took me 4 hours to complete the painting. I did it again and got it down to a little over 3 hours. After 4 more repeated paintings (so 6! altogether), I was able to get it down to 2 hours. Painting the same painting 6 times in a row may not sound very creative, however, I found it to be instructive. It taught me how to better simplify and economize - making every stroke count. When I did the painting on Saturday, I finished in time, not by feverishly throwing paint around, but by making decisions (both rationally and intuitively) about every color I mixed and every stroke I made. It turned out rather well. 

This version is the 6th practice piece.

Fast food

This KFC gave me a chance to work with some interesting shapes and thick paint. Painted this past Monday morning, 6x8.

Intensity/neutrality

This is a little 6x8 painting based on a photo I took a few years ago in San Francisco. Aside from the point of view and the interesting shapes of darks and lights, I was interested in the neutrality of most of the color with just a few accents of intensity.

Harvest Moon over New York

My friend Brad Teare, art director at the Friend magazine (he's also an accomplished painter with a good blog) asked me to do a cover for their October issue. He said they wanted something that looked a little more urban than their usual pastoral settings. Also, that I might include something about the season.

The Friend is a publication of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (of which I am a member). For their covers, they assign an illustrator a month and let him or her come up with five or so ideas and they choose which one they want. It's not real often that I get that kind latitude. Thanks Brad!

Here is one of the reference photos I took of my grandkids.

Urban Bungalow

Another plein aire bungalow.

Yellow

I find I paint a lot of yellow things. I should probably write about that sometime. For now, here is a little sketch I did from a photo I took in San Francisco a few years ago.

Evolution of a painting

Back in the early 80's I went back to my hometown of LA and spent a few days walking around downtown shooting slides (how I miss Kodachrome). In those days, many of the wonderful old theaters were still in fairly good condition. Among others, I shot this image of the Globe.

For years it sat in a stack of slides always beckoning to be painted. I finally listened and a few years ago did this little study.

Finally, a couple years later, I began a full size painting. Here are some sequential pictures of the process. 

Things were going along fine until I decided the marquee needed to be larger.

Later, I felt the letters spelling GLOBE  were too tall.

Making changes like these can sometimes cause real problems, on the other hand, they often add a richness to a painting that doesn't happen when every stroke seems to be just right. I felt this one turned out pretty well.

Here is a link to see how the Globe has faired in recent years.