Another Sky Painting

I love painting these sunsets, sunrises, whatever you see in there!

Sunflowers Oil Painting + Butterfly

So I decided to go ahead and work on that sunflower painting today!  Got a good start this morning and will start again tomorrow.  My wife and oldest daughter stopped by a field close to a place called the Agricenter here in Memphis and snapped some photos of these beautiful sunflowers when they were in full bloom.  They do this every year and each year I stop by and take a look and some photos.  Just happened to catch a nice butterfly leaving a flower.  Thought it would make a nice painting, so this morning I got to work and knocked it out.  Was fun to paint and have some more to do to it but putting paintings on my blog always makes me want to go back and do some more!  This is a 16x20 oil on canvas.                                                                          
         

Avenue of Oaks

Commission painting of "Avenue of Oaks", a beautiful place in South Carolina. .  A lot going on in this painting and trying to do justice to the moss that hangs from the branches.  When I first saw the image to paint from I thought of that scene from the movie Forrest Gump where he was running with his leg braces and they started falling off.  This photo of the painting was not the final product.  The painting got delivered before I took one last photo.  At first I thought this would be too busy of a subject to paint but it actually was a lot of fun and I enjoyed working on it.  I started off by blocking in light and dark areas with acrylic paint and just simplified the grass and trees concentrating on the play of light in the tree branches and the road.
SOLD

Avenue of the Oaks

    

Red Flowers (picked)

11x14 (canvas)  Reworked:  I just didn't like the last post of the red flowers on a summer day. Never got them to look like i wanted so I just (picked) them out and made it a field of smaller flowers!  I may try using the palette knife in the future for looser flowers as suggested on WetCanvas in the landscape forum.

Red flowers

11x14 oil on canvas: Just tried a small flower/landscape of some red flowers in a field. Enjoyed just putting all that color in there. Thought I'd paint a end of summer picture.

Barn commission

This is a painting from a photo a friend of ours ask me to paint of a barn where she grew up.  The photo was almost a sepia color due to its age so I had to put in my own interpretation of color.  The painting is 8x10 on panel and I'm going to paint a larger 16x20 for her as well.  This small one will go into a frame that is made from the actual barn wood.   SOLD

Big Tree

Oil on canvas 18x24. This is a large tree in my neighborhood that the developer left on a lot by itself and put a nice brick fence around it. It must be 150-200 years old. I improvised the surroundings but it's not far off from the landscape around Arlington.  There are several of these large oak trees around the town and I always wonder what all they've seen over the years!  I have this picture on Etsy for sale!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/48348154/country-roads

Peaceful Road

Oil 40x32 canvas: Commission painting for someone who had a similar painting stolen from their home. Had fun painting on such a large canvas.

SOLD

Mountain stream

Found this picture and decided to give it a go. I love the mountains and especially streams like this one.

Cotton field

This is an old picture I did many years ago of the area that I grew up. This is around Medon Tn, a very small town.  I did this picture that I painted in a small community college class with Norma Dennison as my teacher.  She was a great teacher and I learned so much from her.  I learned all of the basics of oil painting from her and am very grateful.

S.Y. Wilson commission

Oil 14x18 on canvas. Just finished a commission of the old S.Y. Wilson antique store in the town of Arlington Tn. Loved painting this old building again and learned a lot from the first one.
SOLD

April in Arlington

Had a great day at the April in Arlington festival. It was moved to Sunday because of the bad weather we had here in the mid-south on Friday night into Sat. There was a great turnout and my wife and I both sold several paintings. I painted a picture of the old general store (now antique shop) called S.Y. Wilson and sold it in the first few minutes after setting up the booth to the mayor of Arlington Russel Wiseman. He and his wife are really nice folks! This is a picture I snapped with my cell phone. My wife sold several of her paintings that she does with stucco on canvas and acrylic. She is well known in Arlington since she has her work in several of the shops there. Arlington is such a great place to live and we are really enjoying it there. I love the old red rocking chairs out in front of the store.   SOLD

Peaceful Place!

16x20 Oil on canvas. This was a picture in an old art instruction book I had and liked the colors so I gave it a shot. I liked the cool shadows and water feature in the picture.

Logan Pass Glacier National Park Montana

Oil 8x10 on panel. Got to visit my wife's sister and brother-in-law just outside Glacier National Park in Montana last summer. Did a quick study of the view just out back from the Logan Pass visitors center. Would like to do a larger studio version sometime.

Sedona

Found a photograph in a book we purchased in Sedona a few years ago and thought it would be fun to paint. We really love Sedona and would like to go back some day. I'd love to take my paints and do some plein air pictures there. We stayed in the Junipine Resort in Oak Creek Canyon and had a great time.

Large landscape for my fireplace

My wife encouraged me to paint a large colorful oil to go over our fireplace in the new house. I have not done a large painting in a long time but this one was a real joy to paint. My sister-in-law liked it so much that she got one for Christmas this year (bottom). This is a reproduction of a painting I saw in a book by Bob Rohm. I have been using a three color palette lately and it really keeps my colors clean. This scene reminds me of several trips that my family has taken out west.

Backyard plein air

I've struggled to capture the scene that I look out over from my back porch. The light changes so quick during the day, especially if there are a lot of clouds moving thru. I've just tried a few quick paintings of the field and the light playing on the grass and trees. Hope to get some more of these done this spring. This painting was done last summer.

Post office in Pastel

Also did the same old post office in pastel just to try out a new medium. Have used pastels to do portrait work in the past and love how you can get such bright color and much less mess to clean up after. It's harder to get the clean lines that you can with an oil brush but it gives a much more painterly effect. Again I just made up the background in that I don't know where the building was originally located. I'll post if I find out!

Historic Post Office in Arlington Tn

Just finished an oil painting of the old historic Post Office located in the square in Arlington Tn. Have lived here about a year and drive by the old building everyday. I love to paint and used to paint old barns and cotton fields when I was younger. This building just begged to be painted. Took some snapshots with the camera and improvised the background as I imagined what it must have looked like many years ago before it was moved to the square. Arlington is a great little town and reminds me of where I grew up as a kid.