Something more familiar

Around my neck of the woods there is this very sweet a quiet state park with a lighthouse as it's feature. Rocky beaches surround the area and I enjoy the short walk out to explore here. I'd say that I have been steadily burning out as of late with all of my studies and paintings of uncomfortable subjects. So, today a walk was in order. Sometimes it's a good idea to just leave everything alone for a while and take a walk to clear your head. Nature is my sanctuary so it helps me a lot to just be outside listening to the birds and looking at trees and rocks and stuff.

For these paintings I leaned pretty hard into as much nuance in the color of the rocks as I could. I used a very textured brush and just lightly spattered in lots of different tones to represent the very mixed colors of the stone. To bring out the rich reds in these stones I used a lot of cool blues, greens and purples in the shadows. I think one of the most fun things about painting is the relationships between colors. Colors on their own are not generally as brilliant as they can become when placed next to competing tones that serve to support the main color of your choice. In lots of older master paintings artists would use a warm undertone of ochre or reddish color in order to have the subtle cool greys jump out as they caught the light of the sky. A buzz happens when placing cool colors next to warm colors and finding ways to place those competing tones is one of the ways to create and image with a feeling of a lot of life.

I think this "break" really fed me for these paintings. After drilling complicated subjects this pulled me back into the play side of painting and I very much had fun playing with the rocks in these paintings. I heard recently that an artist's mood comes through in the painting so I hope you can feel the loose playfulness and dance in these.