Morning Greys

Oil on canvas 12x16 $250

I'm exploring more greys and earth tones lately and feeling good about the atmospherics. This started as a plein air study and was taken further back in the studio.

Please Email me for purchase information.

Betsey Nelson - Parade Day

Betsey Nelson - Parade Day 10x8 $400

This a piece where the thought was more on color and flow than on subject.
Design should be the end all be all in painting.

Carol Marine - "Good Times Roll"

Carol Marine - "Good Times Roll" - 6x6in. - sold

This is the sort of thing I did when I first started painting small still life studies. Before I started buying panels, I was cutting up small peices of pre-primed canvas and taping them to a larger peice of plywood. I threw most of them away. I think that's a great, cheap way to paint when you're starting out and/or just want to experiment without feeling the weight of expensive materials and the fear of failure that comes along with it.

Michael Chesley Johnson - More Boats

"The Lucy B" 12x16, oil/canvas

Rainy weather drives us outdoor painters into the studio. When I'm in the studio, I sometimes find working from a single photo to be a dull exercise. I like to liven things up a bit by combining photos. Here are two photos I used for "The Lucy B," above. Can you spot the two elements I pulled from each?

Betsey Nelson - End Of The Day

Betsey Nelson-End Of The Day 7x5 $230
After a day of doing larger paintings it is nice to just quickly do a nice fluid small painting.
The thing is to keep it simple but strong.

Michael Chesley Johnson - About Boats

"The Simone & Rachel" 16x20, oil, en plein air

I've been painting boats lately. Boats can be complicated - they're full of compound curves. And boats can be undependable, because they go up and down with the tides, and they are likely to vanish when the fishermen show up for work. But I enjoy them. I like their shapes, especially when I have a big canvas and can let my whole arm swing as I sketch in their curves. I also like their proportions and consider them a worthy challenge. It's a good feeling when everything comes together just right!

The best boats to paint are the ones that are beached. If you can catch them at low tide, they will stay beached - it's not until the tide floats them that there's any chance of them being put to work. Today, I went over to Lubec, Maine, to paint en plein air the "Simone & Rachel," which is exactly that kind of boat. I've seen it at low tide several times, and I reckoned that at today's low tide, it'd be there again.

Once I got it back to the studio, I spent the afternoon adjusting values and edges.

Libby Caldwell - The Brave Little Boxer

Oil on Panel, 18" x 24"
Had great fun painting this dog - especially his face. I handled the painting of the face with short squishy strokes - rather like the shape and feel of the face itself. The water was painted surprisingly fast using thin paint. I used a palette of 6 colors.

Michael Chesley Johnson - Using Greys

Lately, I've come to love the use of grey, whether it's in oil or pastel. I've started using neutral greys to moderate strong color, rather than that color's complement. We've always been taught how a complement can neutralize a color. In my experience, the complement doesn't quite "kill" the color and, in fact, can often lead to an unintended color that doesn't quite fit the painting. Using a neutral grey, however, does the trick. It dulls the color perfectly. I suppose this is obvious to anyone who's academy-trained, but for me, this was a discovery and a real eye-opener!

For my pastel greys, I've been using the greys from the full Polychromos set and the set of 12 greys in the NuPastels. For oil greys, try the Gamblin "Portland" greys, which come in three values.

"Two Boats" 5x7, pastel

"Bernard Harbor," 8x10, oil

Vince Fazio - A Palette Knife Experiment

Oil on canvas 16x20 $300

This painting is almost all done with the palette knife, though it is a Sedona scene it somehow resonates as a colonial sort of thing.

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Betsey Nelson-Full Sun

Betsey Nelson - Full Sun 12x9 oil $625
This is a quick start-painting. I usually work on something with a lot if intensity and get almost done (or done). I then leave the piece and come back with a fresh eye and try to clean up, strengthen or restate. Sometimes it needs nothing but a signature.

Carol Marine - "Standout"

Carol Marine - "Standout" - 6x6in. - buy, $100

Recently my friend Qiang Huang, another daily painter, gave me several sheets of thin blue plastic that I taped to the front of my "daylight" spotlight lamp (a fairly yellow light, even though it's called daylight). This turns the light almost completely white - near enough - which I am really enjoying! If this is something you'd be interested in, Qiang's 10-yr-old son is selling them - just go to Qiang's blog and click on North Light Filter.

Carol Marine -

Vince Fazio -"Sisters"

Oil on canvas 10x10 NFS

This was done on Father's Day and depicts my daughters on a recent trip to Lawrence KS. A gift to my Dad - Happy Father's Day!

Betsey Nelson-Patient and Pretty

Betsey Nelson-Patient and Pretty oil 12x9 NFS
This is an end of the day start for a painting for tomorrows work session.
I often end a studio day (or plein air day) with a quick sketch for the next day.
It gets me right back into the game for the next day. Sometimes coming into the studio fresh with nothing on the drawing board so to speak makes it harder to get into the mood to paint.
This start is simple with no detail yet has all the information any painting needs. The challenge will be to keep it fresh and still do all that needs to be done.

Carol Marine - "Apple Pie?"

Carol Marine - "Apple Pie?" - 6x6in. - bid

This is one of my favorites of what I've done lately. I did a larger painting too with a similar theme for my opcoming solo show at the Wally Workman Gallery (opening July 11th).