Working with a photograph

Since I most often take a lot of photographs of places that I love, and I use them as inspiration for my paintings, I decided to post a few of my photograps and talk about how I will use them to do paintings. This photo is of one of my favorite places - the beach - and one of my favorite subjects - waters edge. I have cropped this photo down to a square format and will emphasize the curve of the water at low tide. I will try to do this painting soon and post the result.

Horizon

Here is a new painting that is part of a series of "Horizons" that I have been working with. I thought that since I like to work with landscapes and abstract I could combine those two into abstract landscapes. This is looking like water to me, how about you? I would love some comments.

AARP class exercise

This painting, Square Dance 3, is the result of an exercise given by Steven Aimone to the AARP online class that he is doing. We started with a set of directions to follow, then we could develope the drawing/painting in any way we wanted. I was surprised to see that I ended up with a landscape design which I have been using in my most recent paintings. This was all done without any thought or direction at to how to adjust or finish the painting. I was just reacting to what was happening on the paper. I am actually rather pleased with how this turned out. I think the freedom of covering-up and repainting or drawing-into leads to some interesting work.