A collection of stories, thoughts and good vibes from my back porch

One of the things I enjoy about painting is the fact that I have the ability to work fast. Painting en plein air is good practice. I have learned that I need to capture light and color while it is there because everything changes so quickly. This has helped me tremendously in the studio. I have spent many hours talking about and studying color and color mixing, how to make them dark or light, and how to create light. One of my mentors showed me how to mix those different values on my palette before I laid them on the canvas. He also showed me how to mix enough color to cover a large area, and how to apply it quickly with a knife. Another mentor of mine showed me how to block in a painting with shapes and blocks. All of this has helped me in creating a painting quickly.

I have a ritual I do before every painting. After I tone my canvas, I pour myself a glass of wine or a beer and give a toast, "to a great painting." My goal is to make this painting better than the one before. There is a fair amount of thought that goes into planning out a painting. I think about how to compose it to make it interesting and impactful. 

I can see the painting on the canvas even before the first stroke is laid. The process is really pretty simple. I imagine my canvas in thirds, horizontally and vertically. My horizon typically is on the bottom third, my sky takes up most of the top two thirds. And there is some interesting middle ground also. I try to create some focal points and see if I can make the eye follow an S pattern through the painting. My points of interest are usually where the third lines intersect. Here's how my paintings begin:

The canvas is toned, and I have blocked in my foreground, leaving some negative space where I will insert highlights and lighter colors. You can see in this painting my focus is going to be on the sky. At this point, I already have in my mind how I am going to make the sky and where my main focal point will be. 

On to the sky, which I do next before I finish the horizon and three line. 

I now have an interesting sky, and I will finish by adding in the tree line, the main focal point (the setting sun) and then add highlights in the sky and foreground. 

Here is the finished painting:

I added the setting sun, inserted highlights in the sky, and created an interesting (not too detailed) foreground. My main focal point is the sun, and the secondary focal points are in the sky. The eye follows this easily from the sky and ends up at the sun. You can imagine a giant S starting in the sky and coming back around into the foreground. And that makes a good painting. Composition, color, and content. This was about 4 hours of work, ala prima, in the studio.