Day 19 of the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge

  Here's a caveat to non-painters.  This may bore you to tears. It's a little technical. For painters I'm not overediting so read at your own peril. The secret to loose paint is focus on design and irreverence towards the outcome.  

The 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge has been a great exercise for me. Finishing small work each day has allowed me to focus on working out design issues and I've been able to play with different approaches to the paint (brushwork) and new color combos. Those themes are actually a good thing to home in on for the rest of the month. 

Yesterday I spent the day painting at the Santa Barbara Courthouse with my friend Steve Richardson.  As you can see he is a master of plein air and he's fun to paint with. We always laugh and that joy comes through in the paint. 

Getting back to plein air always recharges my batteries!  It was good to get back to architecture and use it to explore some simple graphic designs. With the first piece I discovered I need a much larger canvas to work on for the subject. I felt very cramped on the 5x7s I brought with me. That's when I decided to look at a small area of the building and lay in the shapes you see here. Then I threw on the paint.  

With the second piece I decided to return to my watercolor roots and build a soft atmospheric piece with negative shapes working from light to dark.  There were no shadows so this was a good approach.  I laid in a light, premixed wash and blotted it with a paper towel to cover the whole canvas. As an oil painter I HAD to do that. No raw canvas for me.  I then carved out the simple negative shape of an archway and softened the facade around it to reflect the shadowless, atmospheric light of a Santa Barbara day with the fog burnoff that takes place in the late morning or early afternoon.

That's when I got comfortable. This is what happens in my zone. I tossed that panel aside to start a new one. It flipped wrong side up. I righted it and went back to the next piece. I stepped on the same piece that had flipped while working....that irreverence when working outdoors is something I like to teach when working with anyone who has a fear of white, uninterrupted painting surfaces. Lay in your design, paint, don't worry about the outcome until later. That may be on location or later the same day. Begin again- quickly. Rest, talk, get coffee, work quickly! Be yourself. 

There.   Secrets revealed.