I haven’t had a lot of time to paint the last couple weeks but this afternoon I had the chance to spend time looking at the color. Although the intensity was nice, bright like I like,  it was feeling ingenious somehow. So, today I softened the light and gave it diffusion, defined the clouds a little more, and began to move closer to the viewer.

The pictures I take for this process blog do not capture subtle color well but you can see the light growing … and the detail of the midground begin. This will be a tough painting but they are more fun and more satisfying when done – solved.

This is the slow part of any painting. I add a little color… I add a little light… and sometimes I have to take it out and put it back several times to get it right. There is still a lot of tweaking to go in the sky but I’ve started to move into the mid-ground, adding a little detail there. Both sky and mid-ground must be done before the for-ground and the last detail is added. It’s still a far from done. It looks like weather is going to keep me in tomorrow so I plan to stay at the easel quite a bit. Stay tuned and let me know what you think.

This phase is fun, loose and fast painting as I add weight to the ground to help decrease the tendency to be flat, and begin to add atmospheric softening to the sky to imply more translucency. I also added the lakes so that I can work the sunset colors and the reflected colors equally as they develop.This one is going to be just a little different again, and fun.

I am working a bit larger in this series of landscapes with this one and the last one being 24″ x 30″ sized canvasses, and it feels good to stretch and move faster and looser with the base foundation layers.

Let me know if you enjoy seeing them as they grow. I am having a whole lot of fun and I hope you are too.

I am happy to say that I’m back at the easel with a new canvas… A new landscape starting. This piece is going to be a sunset. Yes I’m having fun with the colors that happen in the sky in the morning and in the evening in my current series. Anyway, this painting is going to be a little bit more about the reflection of sky in a very small lake. These postings will be sharing the process paintings like I have done before. Feel free to join me. I hope you enjoy.

I think that perhaps the painting is completed. Of course, now I need to look at it for a couple days and decide. I added a lot of last minute light on the foreground, and a little more light coming through the big tree. It’s always hard to decide at this point. I could keep tweaking it till the cows come home, but I have to stop somewhere. I hope you enjoyed walking with me. I will post the entire process line over in the process gallery sometime later today. Thanks for your company.

Today provided a little time working on the painting. I added a layer of density to the big tree and spent the rest of the time building the foreground field. It’s slow going but so very enjoyable.

I know it is hard to see changes in these thumbnail images so I will take all of these and post them in the “Progress” gallery when I get close to done.

I didn’t have the chance to work on the painting again on Sunday, but today I have spent a little time adding the closer treeline.

Getting the depth in a landscape is a slow build but fun to see how it begins to push the land backwards.

My pallet is becoming a bit hotter lately and trying to capture the color of sunrise as the rising sun begins to burn off the mist and fog is made more difficult but will be worthwhile if I can do it.

Yesterday I concentrated more on the land and fixing those parts that made me uneasy.

I wanted to have a little country road to help establish scale and depth but no matter what I did it kept fighting the plan and distracting the eye flow … so, it had to go. I am not sure if I will try and add something else to serve in that role but we will see. Maybe … or maybe not. That is the true joy of this process. I can think I am planning a painting but once the process begins it becomes more about the ever evolving act of play and less about the ‘work’ of it.

This brings you up to date with camera shots of the painting in process. I plan on spending a few hours working on it today and will post a picture here so you can see what happened. My holiday is over but my determination to go to the easel each day has been set so keep an eye peeled here and I will keep you abreast.

If you know of someone who might enjoy watching, pass on the web address, or if they are on Facebook, encourage them to like the connected page at Kelly James Art.  See you later – I have got to get to the easel.

The last week I have been able to work a little each day so the 2 process pictures from the previous post and this one have been changes each day I was able to work. I have been on holiday break so the time at the easel has been more frequent in the last week.

The sky is locking in now and I am adding depth to each puff of cloud and thinking about how the light and the refracted color might reflect on each of these elements based on degree of transparency or opaqueness.