Warm Autum

A few weeks ago we spent a weekend biking on the trails around Lanesboro, MN, a small city that has built a local economy around all things biking. We stay at a very nice campground outside of the town called Eagle Cliff on the Root river. It is about a mile to the trail and once on it you can ride between several towns following the Root River all the way to the Mississippi river.

Dan took a photo of this bridge that is a few miles east of our campground. The light this fall has been so muted and warm. I did this one from the photo in acrylic on canvas. My big paintings seem to take about a week with lots of corrections along the way. This is one reason I like acrylic paints if the fence is crooked or too wide or the shadows not right--I can paint right over them and make the corrections. I had the most fun with the foliage because after I made an under painting with brushes, I changed my brush to a sponge and did most of the leaves in the trees and the weeds along the trail with a sponge dipped in a pile of slightly mixed paint. After every thing was done to my satisfaction I covered every thing with a warm glaze that pulled it all together.

In the mean time I still am working on that Ford Greyhound. What a job I cut out for myself with that one. With luck it will be done before Thanksgiving.
If I don't post before then have a very happy Thanksgiving holiday.

Newest Work in Progress

This is my biggest painting since I started working this summer. At approximately, 30x40, (can't remember exactly) I am standing to paint this one. As you can see I have been working all around the grey hound. He has really complicated highlights on his body and the pedistal where his hind legs are is totally confusing. I have picked away at the chrome and black paint all around him for almost two weeks now. Yesterday I worked on all those lines in the grill. A little tape helps in the beginning but the shading does not let you get away with tape lines. It needed lots of softening for the shadows between each grill piece.
Knowing that I have a show coming up in March, I may not do one of these chrome paintings in such a large format again. They just take too long. I figure that in order to fill the halls of my new venue I will need to paint at least one painting a week. There were only 13 weeks until the show in March when I first started counting. And all the holidays are in between now and then. So painting more landscapes and fewer really large chrome car ornaments is the plan.