West Fork Trail Study

 

12x9in. oil on canvas - available soon

Another Paint Coach Patreon tutorial study in the books! This one is a river/mountain landscape. I wanted to practice a tunnel river composition for a photo I have from Estes Park, CO, and the study has really helped.

Cornfield, Winter

 

6x8in. oil on Ampersand Gessobord - click to purchase here

Winter is a rather tough season for me. With the limited sun, the cold wind and the car scraping in the morning, it can seem like a lifetime to get through. However, with winter brings snow. Here in the Omaha greater area we don't tend to get a lot of snow during the winter season, but this year seems to be an outlier. We've already had a few blankets of snow which bring some very rare and beautiful landscapes. Readers will recognize this composition as the same as my other painting Cornfield. Seeing the snow on the cornfields was a very new sight for me. The serene landscape brings geese to the fields, pecking at any crops left over from harvest season. You can even occasionally see wild turkeys on the field. I love that the shadows from the trees still stretch across the fields even in very muted overcast light. I did have to fight with the temperature by switching my normal quick-drying medium with refined linseed oil. It was interesting, my quick-drying medium started freezing and gumming up with my paints.

Fall on the Keystone

8x6in. oil on Ampersand Gessobord - click to purchase here

This is the fourth and last painting out of the four for my October Plein Air challenge! I've never completed an October challenge that I've started before (like Inktober or Peachtober) but having finished this one makes me feel really good. I'll make another post later with my final thoughts on the entire challenge. This bridge is out on the Keystone Trail, one that I've ridden quite a large amount of times! I love being on the trails here, people were very nice to me when they passed me on their walks and bike rides. Some brush strokes I kind of regret placing, but overall I really like this piece.

Under the Bridge

6x8in. oil on Ampersand Gessobord - click to purchase here

This is the third out of the four plein air paintings for the October challenge! The section on the left where the rocks are with the darkest shadow was such an eye-catching area to me and I wanted to give it a try. This is my first plein air attempt of concrete forms! This painting started out pretty ugly but it quickly pulled together in the end. I also really liked the section of the overgrown dead grass. The highlights stand out against the darker orange-brown base and I feel like it really works.

Lost Home

 

8x6in. oil on Ampersand Gessobord - click to purchase here

This is the second out of the four plein air paintings for the October challenge! This is my first attempt at dappled light and it's definitely tough. I had a lot of fun making this and the weather was so nice. I had a kind of tough time editing the color balance of this image to match the painting itself, my phone's camera leans heavily blue. I had a bit of a hard time painting the dappled light on the ground, but once I internalized that it's just color blocks against a darker background, I feel like I started to understand the subject better.

Cornfield

6x8in. oil on Ampersand Gessobord - sold

This painting marks the beginning of my 2022 October Plein Air painting challenge! This month I plan on making four 6x8in. plein air paintings, starting with this one. I really liked the way the shadows stretched on the harvested cornfield from the rows of trees. I'm very lucky to live right across from a very interesting-looking cornfield. I just loved the way the rising sun cast the long shadows from the trees and how the hills influenced the crop lines.

Mountain Study

8x6in. oil on Ampersand Gessobord - click to purchase here

This is another Paint Coach Patreon tutorial that I completed in order to study for this year's October Plein Air challenge! I highly recommend checking out his YouTube channel. One of the things that really drew me to complete this study were the juicy paint strokes. As I continue to work on my creative skill, I'm realizing that I'm really drawn to making thick, juicy brush strokes rather than blended colors. The brush strokes blend together from farther away but once you look up close, you can really see the nuance between colors.

Sunset on Park Avenue and Dewey Street

 

7x5in. oil on canvas panel - click to purchase here

When I lived in the city you could see all sorts of clouds against the city skyline. Many mornings were washed in pinky-oranges while sunsets were washed with vivid reds and deep purples. You never knew what you were going to see until you opened your curtains or stepped outside. Don't even get me started on golden hour in the city - the beautiful and warm light flushed against the city buildings stole my heart. It just goes to show that midwestern sunsets in the big city are quite breathtaking. 1/52