Night paintings

Todays Painting was a first for me - practice painting of night time with snow.  The reflection of the flash takes away some of the effect of the night sky but it is still visible.  Getting the right mix of color for the background was my challenge.  This was on a black background and was wet on wet with oil paints.  Learning to mix the white and grays was a bit of a problem but finding a picture for this painting would have decreased some of the challenge but it was interesting for my first night painting

Changing a finished painting

Sometimes painting over a  painting trying to create a better picture from something I do not like works and sometimes it does not work.  Judge for yourself and see if you like the change in this painting.  This picture  was in my previous blog.

I like the trees but some how the mix of two types of trees with different colors does not fit together in this scene

Changing the pictures I have painted

When painting a picture with oils I sometimes really dislike the colors or how a tree looks after I have painted the picture.  A doctor I worked with many years ago had a saying that the enemy of good is better.  When painting I believe that I would do much better to follow that advice. 

when painting and having problems I think I should stop and let the paint dry and add the colors I want at another time.  This Painting had problems with the trees and I might consider adding evergreens in front of the trees and doing more work with the stream.

The paints used are water soluble oils.  They clean up easy but can give me grief when layering to create the stream and the tree colors

Sometimes simplicity is the best for paintings.  Using two similar paintings and adding more to the landscape can make or break a picture.  With the two pictures below I think the simple scene with just the birds better than adding more to the scene.

Both of the paintings are acrylic paints.

Each painting was trying something different The top was painting the tree and the bottom was using the paints with mediums and making a wash to create the hills in the background

Working with acrylics to try to have an easy clean up was easy on the first attempt.  I was so happy with this landscape that I have decided to just add a few birds to the horizon to complete the picture. 

Hoping to take acrylics for vacation since oils take so long to dry.  This was easy and quick.  The clean up was about 5 minutes and the canvas was completely dry in a few minutes.  The canvas paper was in table form that can be purchased in many sizes.