Summer Field in Tennessee

This painting is based on one of the photos for the monthly Landscape Challenge over on the Wet Canvas web forums. It's of a sunny, summer field in the rolling hills of eastern Tennessee, probably not far from the Smoky Mountains. It's a beautiful part of the country and an area of great inspiration for painting.

Acrylic painting: 14" x 17"

Storm on the Chesapeake Bay

This one was inspired by the storms that sweep over the land in late spring and early summer. Here, we see a cloud-tossed sky late in the afternoon on a sunny, warm day down by the Chesapeake Bay. The landscape was based upon Down's Memorial Park; the two small pillars in the water are navigation beacons, which are quite common sights on the Chesapeake Bay.

Acrylic Painting: 14" x 17"

Bacon Ridge Natural Area: Forest Edge

In Crownsville, Maryland, there's a wilderness conservation area that is destined to become over 1,000 acres of parkland. Most of the park is still wild forest, and though it is usually closed to the public (until it officially becomes a park with proper trails, facilities, etc.), it is open a couple of times to anyone who enjoys hiking. Saturday was one of these "walks in the woods" and the weather was perfect. This is view is based on a photo taken at the edge of the forest looking towards an old meadow. It was a chaotic scene of spring greens, leaning trees, vines, and bushes - beautiful, but complex to paint. I hope the painting captures this jumble of life under the glow of a spring sun with a gentle breeze in the field beyond.

The organization that hosts these events and who has pushed for the conservation of this large tract of wilderness is the Scenic River Land Trust. They've done a good job, and I look forward to the day when this park is open to the public.

Cherry Tree and Pines

This one continues the spring theme of flowering trees - can you tell I'm sick of winter? Here's an old cherry tree growing near the edge of a scrubby border near two big pine trees. The mix of light and shadow makes the composition in this painting, while the cherry tree holds the viewer's attention. The cherry blossoms are echoed in the distant cherries and the petals on the ground.

Acrylic painting: 14" x 17"

Cherry Tree on a Windy Day

Well, it is FINALLY spring!

So, I figured I'll paint spring-time scene, and flowering trees are the perfect choice. Here, we see an old cherry tree in flower on a breezy, spring day. You can see the shed petals blowing in the wind and scattered along the ground. In the background on the left are some smaller, young cherry trees. The trees were tricky in this one since I wanted to give the impression that they had almost finished leafing out, which is not easy to do, but I think it turned out pretty well.

Acrylic painting: 14" x 17" (framed, SOLD)

Sunlit Hillside and Storm Clouds

I've decided to paint something that is about as "opposite" as one can get from the unending blizzards and snow that have hammered the region this winter. This scene, taken from a reference image in this month's Landscape Challenge on the Wetcanvas forums, is of a bunch of small trees on a sunlit hillside moments before a late afternoon thunderstorm unleashes a torrent of rain over the lands. The cloudscape was inspired by one of Bierstadt's works, though his scene was of a similar storm over a small farm. Either way, I think most of us would welcome rain vs. snow and ice at this point!

Acrylic painting 14" x 17"

Poconos Hillside in Winter

This painting was inspired by a photo in the monthly Landscape Challenge on the Wetcanvas art forum. The original photo was taken somewhere in Canada, but it reminds me a lot of the snow-covered forests in the rocky hills of the Poconos mountains of northern PA. It was an interesting challenge to produce realistic snow while not also making the painting feel cold or uninviting.

Acrylic painting: 14" x 17"

Redwood Path

Here's my latest painting, inspired by the article about redwood trees in the October 2009 issue of the National Geographic. While I've never been to the redwood forests, I'd like to go there someday and walk in the shadows of the huge, ancient trees that stretch to the sky. The path in this painting wanders amid the giants, leading one through a silent forest that has stood for thousands of years.

Acrylic painting, 14" x 17" (framed, SOLD)

Snowy Field with Trees

Here's a tribute to the first snowfall of the year! An inch of slushy snow is still enough to inspire one to paint a wintery field in the gleaming light of a cold day.

The trees were particularly tricky to paint, since they were bare of leaves (or almost bare since some trees, like oaks, hold on to some browned leaves until deep into winter.) That, and the subdued colors made for a challenging painting, but I think it turned out pretty well.

Acrylic ainting: 14" x 17"

Field of Sycamores in Autumn

This painting was inspired by the monthly challenge in the Landscape forum of the Wetcanvas artist's website. One of the photos has an open field with dry grass with some hills and trees on the right and a smaller, closer tree on the left. I tweaked it a bit, making the trees more distinctive; the larger trees on the left are sycamores (with their distinctive bright and mottled bark), while the distant trees have a mix of red and yellow to draw the eye into the painting.

Acrylic painting 14" x 17"

Forest Path in Autumn

Here's another autumn scene: a quiet path through the woods as the leaves change colors in the crisp fall air. When painting this, I thought of the red-orange trees as some species of oak, while the yellow ones are hickories, though most any trees of the right autumn colors would work. This is a timely painting since the autumn colors are peaking about now as they do most years from the end of October into early November. The color is quite good this year, though the rainy weekends have cut down on how often I can get out into the woods. Thankfully, this past Sunday was beautiful and perfect for a walk down a path like this one.

"Forest Path in Autumn"

Acrylic painting, 14" x 17"

Autumn Barn by the Road

Here's my latest painting, based upon one of the photographs for the October Landscape Challenge at the WetCanvas Landscape forum. The original barn is somewhere in Upstate New York, I believe, which is a beautiful part of the country.

The key to this painting was the multiple layers of color glazed over each other to create variegated autumn foliage on the trees and even in the grass. Distance regression - where the far away trees and barn have lower contrast and fewer details - was also important since there's a lot of open space in this painting between the background woods and the foreground trees.

I had another pleasant surprise while painting this one, as my brother and sister-in- law visited me on their way back from a wedding in Virginia. The painting still needed the last highlights and shadows added in when they arrived, but they liked it anyway, and even took a few of my other paintings back home with them. Publicity is good, and what's the point in painting if you can't share the results with others! Thank heavens for the internet since that makes it a lot easier.

"Autumn Barn by the Road"

Acrylic Painting 14" x 17" (framed, SOLD)

Ahwahnee Meadow, sunrise

A few years back, while wandering around the internet, I happened to find an amazing webcam in Yosemite National Park. This webcam looks out across Ahwahnee Meadow, towards the mountains and typically provides a clear view of a beautiful region of the park.

One morning, I was fortune enough to visit the webcam during a golden sunrise, with clouds rolling down and through the shadowed mountains and mist in the field. I knew I had to paint this image at some point, and here it is. The foreground trees - large, old conifers of some sort - were added in to give a sense of scale to the meadow through use of an interesting foreground. They also let me get in some dark values to balance out the glowing sky. Enjoy!

"Ahwahnee Meadow at Sunrise"

Acrylic painting, 14" x 17"

Storm over a Mountain Lake

Here's another summer scene - storm clouds pass between distant mountains while sunlight falls on old conifers by a large lake. The weather in the mountains can be violent and unpredictable, but also beautiful.

Painting mountains is still a challenge, as are exposed rocks. It may be a case of "paint what you know" in that there are no mountains or exposed cliff faces here in Maryland, so I only have photos to use as a reference. Still, I think this one turned out pretty well.

"Storm Over a Mountain Lake"

Acrylic painting 14" x 17"

Summer in the Park

Here's a new painting based upon a reference photo for the monthly Landscape Challenge on the Wetcanvas forums. The photo reminded me a lot of a local farm park that has a lot of open, prairie regions with some woods mixed in along its edges. If you walk the paved perimeter trail, you'll see lots of cleared meadows between the trees - in some places, if you take a photo at the right angle, you can get an effect like that of the Great Plains.

This painting was an experiment in dappled light filtering through the edge of the woods. The mix of shadows and scattered highlights, particularly along the grass and road, add an almost Impressionist quality to the painting. I added the flowers on the right and in the grass beyond (the white tufts are Queen Ann's Lace) since it summer, and what is summer without wildflowers?

Acrylic Painting 14" x 17"

An Autumn Glade for the Autumn Glade

Well, I named this blog "The Autumn Glade" since I love the woods, particularly in autumn. Then, I realized I didn't actually have any really good paintings of a clearing in a forest in autumn! That lead to my latest painting, which is of an open area in an mostly oak forest near a hilltop somewhere in the mountains (probably the Smoky Mountains or Blueridge Mountains.)

It was an interesting challenge to add enough color to the autumn leaves without making them look fake and over saturated. I particularly like how well the depth regression turned out in this painting - there are multiple "layers" in the painting of landscape features, each further away from the viewer. The hole in the treeline leading to the far-away clouds and mountains worked out well; the clouds are on the colorful side, but I find that I like to paint them with stronger colors to add more depth and interest to them vs. "chalky white clouds."

Acrylic Painting 14" x 17"