Pushing the Limit #paint52

After painting quite a few figure paintings, I felt I needed to release by painting some landscapes. Landscapes are my first love, although I do love doing people too. I am still on a journey to paint loosely. This years challenge to paint 52 paintings in one year, is pushing me to do just that. I don’t have time to ruminate and labor intensely over each painting and because of this, I am so willing to put the last painting away and push the next one further.

One of my favorite books is “Oil Painting the Workshop Experience” by Ted Goerschner. I decided to give his pallet a try, which includes, (four earth tones) terra rosa, burnt sienna, raw sienna and yellow ochre; (four spectrum colors) cadmium yellow-medium, cadmium orange, cadmium red light, cadmium red medium, alizarin crimson, manganese violet, magenta, ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, viridian and sap green; (black and white) ivory black and titanium white. I found that I love some of additions to my normal pallet and some I found didn’t work for me. But in general, I did love exploring a different pallet. I did find that his pallet lent to some beautiful neutrals and grays. And as we all know, that the neutrals allow the spectrum colors to sing. This is the painting that I created using his pallet.

I realized after I painted this painting that I wanted to take my landscapes a step further. I want to push them and have them be unique. I want to be able to call them my own. This painting taught me. I had a glimpse of what it could be. Some paintings do that. Some teach you if you allow and take the risk. This only can evolve after painting a lot and painting regularly. I do feel that this challenge is helping and forcing this to happen in a natural way. I decided to take this image and push it again. Here’s what came about.

I like it, yet I do feel that the next painting will be somewhere in between both of these, not so realistic, yet not so abstract. But I am willing to have the painting tell me where it wants to go. I’m pretty excited to see what will happen.

This was my fourteenth and fifteenth painting of my #paint52 challenge. Thanks once again for following me on my journey. It’s so appreciated.