Trying to get back into painting.

I've been making a living painting dramatic buildings and landscapes and evil villainous lairs out of my head for the last fifteen years.

But I've never really painted outdoors. (I've done some pastels & watercolors, but never oils.) I've prepped a bunch of boards and I'm going to try to get fluid. Here's the first one. Figured I'd add yet another Arroyo Suicide Bridge painting to the thousands that have already been painted.

There's so much information in the real world! Overabundance. The problem goes from trying to make stuff up, create color scapes from scratch, textures, tones, to editing it all out... I'm busy removing texture, smashing together tones, composing by elimination of visual noise. The creative problem is almost diametrically opposed to what I've been doing for all this time though the subjects are the same.

I'll see if I can find a villain's lair to paint during a storm. Reference makes all the difference.

And now for something completely different...

Not getting out much these days, so...I'm going to work from some of the reference material I've taken over the last few years.

Here's a sketch of a red volcanic neck near the valley of the gods (I think):

I'm just getting back into watercolors, here are a bunch of quick thumbnails:












I'm going to try to do tons of these. I figure eventually the fluidity will return and I'll do something good. In the mean time I'll have fun playing. I'd almost forgotten how much I love using a real brush...and I love the way the textures magically appear on the rough watercolor paper.

I think my favorite one of these may be the purple monochrome.