New projects

Several of my friends have birthdays, so I am cranking up the paint projects. 

Still obsessed with old doors, i'm learning about shadows and rocks and when to quit. 

I got a new paint table. It's actually a drafting table from World Market. 

It's supposed to be used tilted, but I use it more often as shown above. 

It's a handsome piece of woodwork. So naturally, I've covered it with a cheap plastic tablecloth so as not to get it all nasty with acrylics. 

This is an unusually large picture of blackberries. No one likes it but me. I adore it. Maybe it reminds me of blackberry pie? Yes, Mom's blackberry pie.  We used to go in the woods with our boots on and longsleeved shirts, buckets belted around our waists.  You could pick buckets and buckets of berries at the right time of year. 

This is a painting of an old grist mill. It reminds me of the ruins of an old powder mill that used to be behind our house in New Florence, Pennsylvania. 

Our house was up Furnace Lane road, several miles out of town.  We had 50 acres in the middle of State Gamelands.  If you hiked to our upper field, then took off through the woods, you'd come to huge rocks, a briskly flowing stream that was almost a little river, and the ruins of an old powder mill. Some old-timer told us when we moved there in 1972 that it had been a place where gunpowder was manufactured during the Civil or Revolutionary War. There were big rocks that formed a sheltered area, which, it was rumored, had been inhabited by Indians years and years ago.  

Any way, this mill reminds me of that area.  A little nostalgia with fall colors. 

Waterfall

The doctor's painting

These steps look a bit mysterious. The flowers sweep up both sides. Deep woods surround, and the top step almost disappears in shadow.

Adding Depth

The shadows here create a feeling of depth and mystery.
    When I was a kid, we used to walk to an old powder mill in the woods. First, you hiked through two fields and a little patch of deciduous forest in between.  My dad could name all the trees. 

 

     "Look, that one's tulip poplar.  There's an oak, and that one is a maple." 

     If we walked with stealth, we might come across deer.  They weren't bold like the Texas deer, and took flight as soon as they got a whiff of a human.     

     this painting reminds me of deep, cool Pennsylvania woods, where barely a ray reaches the ground. 

Reflections

With this painting, I tried to show mist and reflections.  It's apparently a bridge in the woods.  I used the acrylics a bit like watercolor.