Thursday, June 30, 2011

The Hansen Place


This is a small (6x8) painting that I did on Tuesday while taking a plain air class with Jim Glover. The truth is, I have no idea who owns this old house, I made up the name, it looks like it should belong to someone named Hansen, as in "you go up the road a ways, past the old Hansen Place." So there you go. The house sits at the edge of Glacier Ridge Park outside Plain City. It looked so great with the sun hitting it so strongly, the mass of dark trees in the background and the gold grasses in the front, waving in the wind.

The park is a beautiful wetland, with wildflowers mixing in with the cattails and walkways crisscrossing through the whole place. It's the third park we've gone to in the class, we'll visit three more before we're done.

A couple important things I've learned in my painting class:

Name the color you see before you try to mix and paint it

Paintings are like movies, they need a star and a costar (focal point and secondary focus)

Painting outside is a fairly new experience for me, I love it, even if I end the day sunburnt, bug bitten and tired. It's a good kind of tired.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Welcome to The Artful Farm, where I'll write about all things arty, creative and fun. I've been working in the graphic design business for over 25 years and since I spend all day pushing little images around on a screen, I spend as many of my "non-office" hours as possible painting, drawing and otherwise working analog.