It Stopped Raining

Rain, 36" x 60", oil

Rain, the photograph I used as reference. What I liked about it was the underlying grid that
the heavy rain  made on the windowpane that made the forms melt and the colors run.

Talk about photographing art. What a bitch this one was.  I spent the weekend getting it to the observational state of finish and couldn't get a decent shot, till I brought the picture plane  perpendicular to the floor and bounced my studio lighting. (The weather was too wet. The painting was too wet to go out under open sky no matter the weather).    Now that I know about ColorMunki, I was thinking about it the whole time, but this photo is as good as it gets.  I stand behind it.
I'm pretty satisfied with Rain. But it really cost me some paint!  I kept thinking about epoxy paints, the stuff that comes in gallons, as I kept tossing out empty tubes. 

In a summer downpour, the woods really look spectacular. 

 

Wildfire

Wildfire, 36 x 36", acrylics, in progress once again.

I got out my acrylics for the first time in months, maybe a year?  This painting was the perfect painting to jump into the day before surgery, ( Mark upon mark, color upon color, I could do no wrong. With a painting like this, you just let your self go and respond to  the reference photo--which is actually a rather sedate landscape  with normal landscape colors--sap green, olive--I don't need to tell you. It's a continuous drawing experience. Though it looks done, it isn't.  All the intensity I feel towards the Fall season, (which I do not welcome; it precedes winter) is not there yet. I haven't found the cohesive gray yet. This will be like Summer Shade, a painting that builds over time till I say, yes, that's it.  Landscapes, more about feelings than depicting a scene, provide  perfect balance to the more demanding genre, portraiture. 

UPDATE: it's the day after surgery. My knee is great. The rest of me is hung over. The saline solution they mix the anesthetics in nearly killed me. Saline is salt. Salt in such large quantities sets off my chronic vertigo. Ellis and I didn't talk about this with the anesthesia doctor and he didn't catch it when we were talking about the drugs I take to control the vertigo. The overdose led to a horrible day. Lots of nausea, dizziness and headache.

Today I' m on the mend. Still dizzy, but not nauseous. No energy for drawing, though;I'm hoping later. That will be a sign that I'm on the mend.Meanwhile, my knee is incidental. I'm hardly noticing it. Ellis is one fantastic guy. In spite of my sometimes very annoying personality, he cares enough to stick around and learn how to make my oatmeal. Now he can make bagel, lox and cream cheese sandwiches, old fashioned oatmeal and add noodles to chicken/ matzoh ball soup.His culinary skills are expanding. Next: scrambled eggs. He's my honey. I'm his baby. I'm never going to let him go.