Tag Archives: small paintings

Old Barns

Painting Inspiration: Old barns!

I love old barns, don’t you? They have such character! Now that I live in Northeast Texas, there seems to be quite a few. Even nicer is some aren’t very far away. This little trio cluster of barns wasn’t far from our home and became the basis for my painting titled “Barn Trio” which is 9×12 and available for purchase direct.

In Plein Air

When time permits I enjoy painting on location. If you wish to paint landscapes it’s such a valuable learning session because you see so much more than what a photo will show. But when combined with photos for reference, it captures the essence of the scene and becomes more true to life.

Here’s a little on location video showing the start of the painting and the scenery. Enjoy!

Small Autumn Landscape Painting for eBay Auction

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Autumn scenes are fun to paint and my latest small autumn landscape painting for my eBay auction was one of them. The auction ends Sunday December 15, 2013 6PM Pacific Time.

What’s fun about painting autumn scenes is the opportunity to strategically use pure color in the more intense areas especially in the tree which was the focus of this painting of a maple tree nestled at the bottom of a canyon wall.

It was inspired from a scene at Lost Maples State Park in Texas, although I used my artistic freedom to move some rocks around and put the tree in a better position, but there was a natural color harmony that I liked between the orange colored tree and the shadowed rocks which had a blueish color with hints of violet. It was a perfect colored background to set off the glow of these fall leaves.

I emulated the visual texture of the leaves by adding some impasto or thicker applications of paint to give them a slight relief giving them more dimension. It almost seems as though you could reach out and touch them!

This eBay painting is a full oil painting unlike my others whereby I start with acrylic and finish with oil. The reason is I had just completed another studio painting and still had paint on my palette, so instead of setting up another palette with acrylic color I decided to do the painting with the oil paints I already had on hand. Fortunately the other painting was also a fall scene and I was able to transition from one painting to another. I’ll share this new studio/gallery painting in an upcoming post.

For artists who are marketing their work, a consideration to keep in mind if your offering works on eBay is to keep your production costs down. Those on eBay are not there to pay full retail. I’m not there to pay full retail either. I’m looking for a good deal when I shop. Therefore on my eBay paintings I use cotton canvas that’s already stretched which I buy in bulk. However, the linen I use for my studio and gallery work is titanium oil primed canvas that’s hand applied that I purchase by the roll. I also have extra wide and heavier stretcher bars for these works. I then stretch the canvas myself or hire it out on occasion. So that right there makes the work more expensive even before I apply a single brush stroke to the canvas. Like any business keeping costs down while still retaining value must be considered as is the market you wish to reach.

Below is a side by side comparison of the backs of the canvas I use.

llinen and cotton canvas comparison

The canvas on the left is linen with some of the excess canvas stretched to the back. The canvas on the right is the cotton canvas I use for my eBay work. The texture of canvas also effects the visual appearance of the paintings. Here is a view of the texture of the canvases I use.

linen canvas texture

cotton canvas texture

The top image is the linen I use and in my opinion offers the ability to apply more detail as it’s more responsive to my brush work and I like the appearance of the weave. The cotton below that, is less responsive to my brush, thereby my technique is slightly more impressionistic for my eBay work but still retaining some degree of detail. I’m personally not as fond of cotton duck canvas due to it’s uniform texture. This is simply my personal taste and in some instances a more uniform texture may be favored. I did review some samples of heavier grades of cotton that is oil primed by the same company that I use for my linen. (AE Art Canvas) The canvas was quite nice in texture and appearance and is a premium product as well.

In times past I’ve shown some of my plein air work which is definitely impressionistic along with my more detailed work. Here are two examples.

oil study landscape near Cundiyo, NM by William Hagerman copyrighted

This scene was painted on location near Cundiyo, New Mexico and the oil sketch of blue silos painted below was near Fredericskburg, TX. I’ve kept these for myself and hang on my studio wall. They bring back to my mind two very pleasant painting experiences while enjoying the outdoors.

oil sketch of blue silos by William Hagerman copyrighted

When I’ve shown my impressionistic works such as these along with my studio or gallery work, some individuals favored these over the detailed work.The purpose of showing them here is to highlight that the work I do for eBay is somewhat of a cross between my impressionistic plein air work and my more detailed studio paintings. It’s just one more way to reach out to more people with my art who have varying tastes in style.

Artists are also individuals and they to may wish to express their talents by painting in other styles. Some even like to paint abstractly as a total break from their detailed work. I’ve been tempted to do that myself. If I ever do I’ll share those with you.

To view what paintings I have currently available you can visit my eBay profile page.

Small Landscape Paintings on eBay August 23, 2013

Small Landscape Paintings

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Throughout art history, artists in addition to their main body of work, have completed smaller works, sketches, compositional studies etc and many of these are complete works of art in their own right.

With that in mind, I’ve started doing some small 5″x7″ landscape paintings in acrylic on Arches watercolor paper and have found them very enjoyable to do. They’re sort of like warm up exercises for my artistic mind. They get me thinking about design on a small format and if I like the design well enough some of these works may become the basis for larger studio paintings. Even though they’re more impressionistic than my normal style, I find I like the departure.

The first is a scene that I captured with my camera in what I like to call drive by shooting. This is generally when it’s not convenient or safe to pull over. Therefore, while my wife was driving I was scanning the roadside along a pretty stretch of highway and saw this scene and clicked my camera. The foreground was in light and the middle distance in shadow. I intensified the effect and added more color, but it captures my intent of focusing on the light in the foreground which to me is the subject of this small painting. It’s rather fun, doing these drive by camera shootings, because I never know exactly how it’s going to turn out or if it’s going to be one big blur! But so far, despite the blurriness of some photos, they turn out pretty good.

This is another camera “drive by shooting” of a scene in Arizona. Very dry and hot, but had it’s own beauty in creating a somewhat triadic color scheme of blue violet in the distance dull orange and red orange and yellow green in the foreground and middle distance.

The scene below is from an area near Fredericksburg, TX that I had visited on other occasions and provided source material for other paintings. This particular day had cows and this particular day, I didn’t feel like painting them. So by way of the brush I sent them off to another area to graze.