January 5th

Retreating Mist 5x7  Oil on Paper  $90

This is almost the weather we are having in Southern California this past week.  It's been absolutely beautiful!!!

This painting is actually a scene from middle Oregon, to be exact, just north of Dallas Oregon.  Dallas is a small town outside of Salem that I love to visit.  I especially love the people there.  Dallas is surrounded by farmlands and farmlands are my favorite landscapes, by far.  I enjoy them because they are open areas with obscure access roads that tend to lead to small hills with an outcrop of trees or blackberries.  There is stuff growing and signs of life but they are scarcely populated.  The crops that are grown make for fun color patterns that are always changing.  There seems to be deer everywhere in the mornings and evenings, I'm sure the farmers don't get such a kick out of them as I do.  The tractors are cool too, I just haven't painted any yet. On my next road trip I'm going to start looking more closely at the barns, tractors, and other large things that are used on this type of land.  I don't know if anything will come of it but there is interest.

Did you notice I used even less of the paint daubing thing on this painting.  This is a good direction for me.  On larger paintings I tend to scrub my paint in.  It's harder to do on such a small scale as these but by changing to a softer brush I am getting less of the paint to lift off.  Hard to explain - just one of those little things to work the kinks out of.

Here's some pictures of work in progress:

In the final painting I changed the clouds, lightened back mountain to left and signed it of course.

Have a good Thursday!

Larry