A WIP! and Shed and Los Feliz

I hoped my little story could make up for a lack of exciting paintings this post. That clearly didn't work, so I'll try another angle with a WIP.

I hate doing these in case I choke, but what the hell live life dangerously. This is a 12x16 the usual Linen Ray Mar. first I did a wash on Gamsol and Alizarin Crimson, Venetian Red and Indian Yellow to get a cool red to warm red to yellowish tone. This is done keeping in mind the cool mostly darker complementaryish cool colors that will go over the top. After that’s dry, I then come in with a brown mix for the drawing. This is a bit more drawing than I usually do do to the complex perspective. I'll add to this post as I go. The observant regular will note this is a slightly closer and bigger version of "Engine." We will cleverly refer to this one as Engine #2.



the darkest darks and lightest lights. You have to establish them to judge the rest of your colors and values. Of course my battery started to die in the camera at this moment.




Could this photo suck any worse? at this point I worked on this a little longer than I planned as I was waiting for the battery to charge, so got a wild hair up my ass from looking at Edgar Payne a bit to much lately and wanted to try some "broken" Color on a more fussy level than I usually do just to make thins painting different form the other engine. But the main choice of what was next was my next biggest areas of darkness, the foreground shadow.



Another bad photo. Put the sky in and added more secondary mid- tones. Fixed some of the details in the darks... Feeling a bit on the fence on all the little fussy brushstrokes, I have no idea way I chose this one to try it out on. Maybe I like to crash and burn in the public arena?


Didn't like some of the choices I made so I got out the knife and did some scraping back mainly on the trains on the right and the bridges. I also did a little knife work on the ground and some rail detail. Generally stated to tighten up adjusting some spots. Next photo will most likely be the final.




Here are two poor little lost PA's that have found there way onto the bolg that needs to be fed while I wait for other paintings to dry in this cool weather. Both are 6x8 on linen oil. The shed was done one morning in Tuolumne behind the house of the owner of the Vault Gallery in about an hour tops. Sheep watch me for about 20 minutes before they go board and shuffled off.

The other is a view of the the overpass for Los Feliz, painted on the upper part of the LA river with J- Mac.
A shirtless, belly scared, sag titted, (but nicely tanned) thousand year old man came up to me and accusatorially asked if a pile of trash (about 50 feet from us,) belonged to me. Despite general respect for my elders, I sternly cut off his coming reprimand by acting shocked and insulted he would dare imply we were homeless trashs makers. I told him he was the half naked one and was closer to the trash pile, there for a far more likely a suspect for leaving a pile of garbage than the fully dressed two of us. He back peddled and offered his credentials that he had been walking this river for 25 years. I told him that was impossible as I painted there every day for 30 years and had never seen him before. I let him blink and sputter a few times before I told him I was pulling his old chicken leg. He than told me in prideful detail about his many operations and his golf game, despite that I still got though my painting and enjoyed the morning.