Do you have questions? Leave them in the comments!

September is great painting weather in Northern California, and I am hitting the road with my paints!  Next week, I will be a "celebrity" plein air artist and on the awards panel at the Mendocino Open Paint Out. But first,  I am headed to the Knowlton Gallery in Lodi, California for the opening of the group show  "Bouquets: Gardens, Farmer's Markets and Floral Still Lifes."  If you are in Northern California, this gallery is well worth a visit , and it would be terrific to see you there at the reception: Saturday, September 7th from 1 - 4 p.m.  The show will hang until September 28th.  Here is a slideshow preview of the five paintings I will be showing. (Note - if you are reading this post in a feed reader, please click through to the actual blog for the best quality images).

Here is a gray day landscape study. 

When I have been asked how I am able to get the light effects, I quote Charles Hawthorne (Hawthorne on Painting), "It is beautifully simple, painting — all we have to do is to get the color notes in their proper relation." 

This is what I try to do — decide which color note I can see most clearly, put that first color note down quickly, and then that note becomes the key to my whole painting because everything else is related to it. 

The sky is the lightest and warmest in this scene so I started the color of the sky near the horizon with a warm pink -- slightly lighter in value than the cooler and darker top part of the sky. The warmth in the foreground brings the grass forward. The water was seen as warmer than the top part of the sky.

Do you want to get advance notice of the book publication? Sign up for my e-mail list.

It was a rainy day, so I did this demonstration for my Monday class in the studio under artificial light. I overstated the warmth of the light planes and then eventually added color to them to bring them closer to the actual color of the objects. I also started seeing the transition colors from the shadow to the light on each object.  In Step One, please note that I started the blue cloth in light with a warm color, and eventually added blue to it. I couldn't start with a blue because I chose that color for the white bowl in shadow.

I was recently in Charleston, SC. Here are a series of paintings I did while I was there. They are currently on display in Galerie On Broad in Charleston.

Here is  a demonstration that I did at Weekend With The Masters in Monterey, CA. This is what Charles Hawthorne used to refer to as a “mudhead.”  These were models, backlit against the ocean. The flesh was so dark that is resembled the color of mud. Hence, the term “Mudhead.”
I warmed up and lightened the ocean color to offset all the darks in the figure. My Model, Erin, is a silhouette against the water in the distance.