Winter Plein Air

I just built a new easel to use, and am going to put my french easel to rest. These two paintings were some of my last on the french easel.

I have had 9 french easels, and my favorites have been the original Jullian, and the Mabef M22. I am pretty hard on my easels because I mix with a knife, so there is a lot of weight on the palette. French easels are too short for me, and I am tired of leaning over them to paint. I don't mind the wing nut's, but will say that my new easel is much easier to set up and take down than the french easel. I'll post about my new easel soon! 

Tim Harms' Cows in Pastel

Here is another pastel, this time of my neighbor's cows. It's my farm in the background. This one features a gouache and watercolor underpainting, on the cool grey colourfix paper. It's hanging in my house right now.

Winter Forrest

Here is a pastel painting that I did a month or so ago. The top photo shows my gouache underpainting. I will use either gouache or watercolor to make a tonal underpainting, and then dig into the pastels to lay in some color.
This painting was inspired by a day of Cross Country skiing at the Hartje Center.

Pastel Paintings

There was a lot of cloudy days in November, and I decided to work in my studio in a new medium. I love to paint in oils, but I normally like to be outside working en plein air. I just like being outside, and oils work well outdoors because they remain workable during the duration of a painting session. I don't like using oils in my studio very much. I bought a set of pastels to try out in the studio, and I'm glad that I did. These are the first 3 pastels that I made, and it's fun to just be able to grab a stick instead of mixing a color.
Painting is all just shapes of value and to a lesser extent color. I have arranged my pastels according to value. So once I know my target value, I just choose what color will work well for what I want to do. The toned colors of the sanded pastel paper are also lovely to work on. I usually do a watercolor underpainting on the sanded paper, before laying the pastels down. I find that it's very fun to work that way.

James Schneider's house in Gotham

My Cousin James grew up on the farm next to the one that I live on. He has a historic house in Gotham, Wisconsin. I painted it over a couple of days in November. He received it as a gift for Thanksgiving. He took down a painting on his wall and put this one up in it's place.

Farm Chairs

This is a painting that I did in the springtime. I was painting a lot during the week that I made this one, I remember that it was my third painting of that day. When the sun is shining and the colors of spring are in bloom, it's almost like you have to paint all day. The best part of working on a few a day is that by the end of the day, your brush just does what it wants. Your brain is no longer a part of it. I used a think and chunky flat brush in size 12 to paint this one. It's a 14x18" panel, and I sold it to a friend of mine.

Dandelions in Gouache

This is a little gouache painting that I did on my front yard of the dandelions. Gouache has the best qualities of watercolor and oil painting all in one medium. You can start with transparent watercolor painting, and then layer up opaque paint on top. I would probably do more gouache painting if the tubes were not so small.

Devils Lake State Park in Baraboo en plein Air

This was a painting that I made at Devils Lake in the Autumn. It was the first time that I had painted in a couple of months. This break was because of a work commitment, but I'll take a week or two off from painting whenever I feel like it. It always seems like you come back with a new energy.

This painting was started on a pink toned canvas. I toned this canvas with acrylic paint, and it got a little pinker than normal for me. It was fun making it work and it felt good to be outside painting.