Tuesday, March 25, 2008

"Sniffin' the Breeze"

10 x 8" oil/canvas panel

sold

This is Bill again, sitting in "The Potato Patch." Its not really a potato garden anymore, but a nice place on our ranch near the creek. Sometimes a place gets a name through years of habit. I'm not sure who actually first planted potatoes here or when this name came to be, but several of the old timers in our area still call it that.
Anyway, there are lots of wild critters living down in the willows and a few old farm implements remain, sitting where they were abandoned years ago. I like to go down and do some plein air painting now and then. Bill loves it because of the creek and all the different smells.

Here I am chasing that stylized approach again, with Bill as the subject. Nice simple shapes and strong contrasts. Holding onto that first sketch outline. I kept this one loose and lost the details. Trying to paint what I saw, not what I knew.