Painting Productivity!

This was a great work week, really realized how much I love my job, great to have that in my corner with the ongoing health issues - but making some strides and taking control with treatment for that, too (to be determined).  At least I'm trying to generally be more healthy with eating and exercise and just have to get the disease part under control - but the lifestyle change can't hurt.

Anyway, I spent time working on desert landscapes I've been wanting to paint.  I bought a 7 pack of canvasses a month or more ago and haven't used them yet.  Found some great wood material at the thrift store early in the week, and took some photos on the way home for inspiration.  I brought one of the woodblocks (about 11"x5") with me to work on one scene and ended up doing a couple tiny canvasses so as to not waste paint when I made way too much blue sky/water to start with.

Below are the results of this week's work, the top right is still in progress (needs detail).  I worked the most on the bottom one, the top left is more an abstract rendering, just loved the color.  Been a long time since I really sat down trying to render something semi-realistically in paint - probably since Basic Painting 2005!  I would like to submit the bottom one to our staff show at the end of this month - but I also don't want to part with it!

These are the images that inspired the paintings above.  Also, my little table is awesome.

 

And a larger image of the one above.

Not too bad if I do say so myself! I love painting on the wood more than canvas. Looking forward to the ideas I have for the other wood panels, two of them are sides of a shelf, symmetrical and curvy and tall.  I think I will do some kind of saguaro or cowboy silhouette with beautiful sunrise/sunset desert scenes in the background.

Update: Comparison shot of the small square canvas, completed this week.