I set out Golden Heavy Body Acrylic Titanium White, Carbon Black, and all the Neutral Grays in between that Golden makes in a plastic container with compartments and a seal. Value studies are so important, but premixing all those grays ahead of time can be cumbersome enough to put it off time and time again. Now I have no excuses, and this container makes it so easy to pop the lid and paint at a moment’s notice.

This book is about 6×9″. I’m reserving it for my value studies in acrylic, and have dubbed it “Shades of Gray”.

Here’s the first page. The cow was painted from a photo I took on Friday. The little landscape was painted here by the lakeshore this morning.

12×16″, Oils on Raymar panel

This is the Hudson River vista from Poet’s Walk in Rhinebeck, New York. It’s a beautiful location, but painting the Hudson from there means carting painting gear a mile over this pathway to the riverfront! It’s a beautiful walk, but one that I am more inclined to do with a camera, little watercolor pan set and sketchbook, rather than a large easel, 12×16″ panel, paints, brushes, etc. So, this is being painted from a photo. If the weather were cooler, I just might lug all my stuff out there to be able to paint it on site, but Mother Nature is not in my corner with the record-breaking heat and humidity we’ve had the past few days.

8×10, Oils
SOLD! Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com to inquire about a similar painting.

I didn’t quite have time to finish this today, but should be able to wrap it up tomorrow. This was painted from a photo taken along Florida’s Gulf Shore by my daughter, Sarah. It’s one of those paintings that I thought wouldn’t take nearly as long as it’s taking, but it will be worth the struggle in the end! With a little luck, the completed painting will be posted tomorrow. Stay tuned!

7×5″, Golden OPEN Acrylics on sealed, primed hardboard, custom framed to 11×9″
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

This is a painting I did some time ago. It is seasonal and has always been one of my favorite little garden/fountain paintings, so I am reposting it today.

Although this scene was an enormous challenge to paint, I think I had an even more difficult time trying to get the photo right! I can’t seem to get the dark trees in the background light enough without bleaching out the foreground flowers. This painting will be available here on my website for only a couple of weeks.

Since this scene presented so many interesting challenges, I decided to take a few extra pictures to share.

Here is a photo of the scene:

I was immediately drawn to the strong contrasts, and the L-shaped composition created by the flowers, fountain and figure. I also love painting stone walls, so it was a plus to have that in the composition as well. Fitting all this onto a 5×7 panel didn’t prove to be easy.

Here’s my pack stool and lightweight painting box. The umbrella clamp is affixed to my stool. I was using a Pittman bag, which can hold my box flat so the paint won’t shift as I change locations. My panel carrier and extra paints fit in there too, and even the umbrella.

Here’s a closeup of the box, ready for paint. The panel is affixed to the box lid with blu-tac. It works great. The panels and paper stay put, and there are no clips or clamps obscuring parts of the painting surface. My paper towel is clipped onto the box lid to allow more room alongside the palette for paints and my sprayer.

The plastic paint storage containers were purchased in the camping section of Sports Authority. They have a rubber seal around the outside so the paint stays fresh. I find it much easier to set out paint this way, rather than having to search for a tube and open caps.

The box further to the back contains my standard plein air palette:
Cadmium Yellow Primrose
Pyrrole Red
Transparent Red Oxide
Phthalo Blue
Ultramarine Blue
Titanium White

The box in the front contains add-ons that I use in the figure studio. I bring it along for plein air too, just in case….It has
Naples Yellow
Cadmium Yellow Medium
Cadmium Red Light
Oxide of Chromium
Cerulean Blue Chromium hue
Permanent Alizarin
I also carry quinacridone magenta with me for these garden scenes.

Whoever said that every painting has to have an ugly stage sure knew what they were talking about. There’s mine! I toned the upper part of the painting with transparent red oxide, and painted the figures a dark, greyed blue. That way, even in the underpainting, I could judge the figures more carefully. Then I worked in the green background. I blocked in the area of strong yellow below to reserve it—-a useful tip given to me by wonderful plein air artist, Lee Haber.

From there, it was lots of fun getting the painting to emerge. I feel like my painting process doesn’t really get underway until after this block-in step is done and I have a layer of paint down. Getting this much done didn’t take all that long, but I forgot to stop and get more pictures once I got past this beginning stage. It did eventually get done.

I started another painting later in the afternoon, but it started to rain and I had to pack up. I’ll finish it from a photo on a rainy day later in the week. I hope you’ve enjoyed these extra photos!

12×12″, Golden Fluid Acrylics on canvas covered hardboard

This painting was started yesterday morning. It was the first really warm day, so I was excited about getting the acrylics outside for my first acrylic venture of the season. I only had a couple of hours with it, so this will have to be finished up in the studio. What a great way it was to spend the morning. I really enjoyed the way the fluids allowed me to texturize and glaze so quickly. I was planning to do the upper layers with Golden OPEN, but I was having so much fun with the Fluids that I decided not to switch. I’ll post some of the earlier progress images and the final painting once it’s finished.

28×42″, Oils on stretched canvas
SOLD! Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com to inquire about a similar painting.

Finished at last! This was such a great painting to work on. Those of you who have been following along may remember that my client for this painting sent me samples of her carpet colors to work into the landscape. They were gorgeous rusts, ochres and muted greens. Selecting a specific color palette is a great way to commission a painting that you know will go with your decor!

Here’s a link to the painting’s beginnings, if you’d like to see how I started it.

Here is a link to the color/compositon study for the large painting.

Lastly, here is a link to the plein air painting I did on location. I took my painting gear up on the chair lift!

I’m nearing the finish line on this 28×42″ oil painting of a Catskills vista from the top of Hunter Mountain. The colors are actually a bit warmer than they appear in the image above. When I finish the painting, I’ll get a more accurate image of it. You can see how much I’ve done on it by viewing this previously-posted version of the work in progress.

4×2″, Golden Acrylics on gallery wrapped canvas, miniature easel included
The quote above is inscribed around the stretcher bars on the back of the canvas. Quarter is in the image for size reference only.
For purchase information, please email me at JamieWG@aol.com.

I immediately thought of this quote when I set up to do this painting. The canvas is gallery wrapped, and the image is painted around the sides of the canvas, so that it can be viewed from all sides. The miniature easel will be shipped with the painting.

It is so difficult to get good photographs of miniatures. They always look much better in person. This one has a fairly dark background with some sheen, so it was impossible to get rid of all the glare from the lights when I took the photo. Here’s another image of it, with a Coke can for additional size reference:

For such a little painting, I used a tremendous palette! Colors:
Cadmium Yellow Primrose
Cadmium Yellow Medium
Cadmium Orange
Cadmium Red Light
Pyrrole Red
Cadmium Red Medium
Alizarin Crimson hue
Cerulean Blue hue
Cobalt Blue
Ultramarine Blue
Oxide of Chromium
Jenkins Green
Titanium White
I had a few other colors out there as well, but the ones listed above were the ones I used.

I toned the mini canvas and the sides with a mix of Transparent Red Oxide and Ultramarine Blue Golden Fluid Acrylics. Those dry quickly, so with a little help from my hair dryer, I was then able to use Golden OPEN Acrylics to paint the rest over that toned canvas.

I started working on the basic placement of shapes, and then worked more and more toward contrasts and details. I use blu-tack to adhere the mini canvas to a larger piece of foam board. That way I can hold it securely in one hand when necessary, while painting with the other.

This is a progress image of the 28×42″ commission I’m working on. It all started when my client and her dear hubby met at Hunter Mountain in New York State! She saw this painting on my website, which I did from the top of Hunter Mountain, and purchased it through RiverWinds Gallery, where I had it displayed.

She decided that she wanted a large version to take up a wall of her dining room, and wondered if I’d be willing to incorporate some of her room colors in the painting, and omit some of the colors of that smaller version that didn’t go with her decor. She sent me these color photos of her carpets which displayed rich earth tones perfectly suited to landscape work, but far different from my usual palette.

Because both the color palette and proportional ratio of the painting were to change for the commission, I decided to do this third painting using the same ratio and colors as the commisioned work, which I posted the other day. (See below the previous post below or click the link.)

From there, I moved onto the full size version of the painting. Here’s the large, white canvas looming before me in the studio:

The first steps were to tone it, place the compositional elements, add the dark areas and pull out the lights.

Then I started going in with color. The first photo in this post shows the current state of the painting. From here I’ll be pushing the lights and darks, adding in more of the colors from my client’s samples, and making adjustments as I go. I’d like to drop that foreground horizon line a touch too….It keeps on creeping up all by itself when I’m not looking!

Some of you may recall my recent painting, The Road Home in Fall. I liked that painting and the location so much that I’ve decided to make a series out of it. My plan is to do a 12×9″ painting in each season, possibly selecting one or two of those to do larger paintings as well. I am calling this “Early Winter” because I hope to do a late winter version too. I just can’t seem to get enough of this magical location! The winding, uphill path, evergreens on the right, and steep hill on the left offer a good composition with lots of variety.

This one is not yet completed, but shouldn’t take too much longer. I think I’ll have a finished version up this week.