Landscape of Virginia

It was a very productive summer but as all things do this too has past us by, My final outdoor painting for the summer of 2011 is this one of a house on Belmont Ave. It is only the front porch of it but it was a noteworthy place and I featured a few figures in it in order to put some of the viewer into the canvas through identification with those people in the windows. The playfulness with which I worked the trees was enjoyable. I was able to show much of the lushness of that area's greenery in the yards of these houses. Charlottesville has no shortage of greenery in it's streets and yards, this house has a good deal of it in it's front yard and so I place a tree as a major part of this canvases composition. Being that it is the last of these outdoor painting season for myself I am thinking of putting a book together of Charlottesville's buildings. This book wouldn't so much be featuring the Rotunda and the University grounds but more of the bui

After a terrific bike ride on in the northern most part of the county of Albemarle where I live, I had to get a burger fix right away. "Five Guy" right after finishing up on this trail the Preedy Trail Park where I spent over a half an hour doing their loop. It was challenging but nothing too too much of a hazard for me to navigate. One needed to look ahead and see how to gear their bike for the terrain ahead but it clearly could be managed with some lightweight hardware and some nerve. The fun was that they built in some good up/down short hops all over the place and they put them in lines of three and four hops per run. Outstanding work whomever designed it, and my hats off to those men who did the grunt work of making it fit into the landscape by working with the hilly land around them. I ran into some disappointed dog owners who felt they were put off by having to have a leash around their dog's collar but man for the sake of some great biking trails it

Another two weeks and I will put away my easel and paints for my jobsite clipboard and such other teaching equipment because classes begin then. Before heading back to school I have had time to paint this summer and such is the result: it's titled :" Personal Dehumanization or Understanding Relationship: It's Up To You" it's an oil painting that is about three foot square and it's new. My work this summer has been an off and on affair but they do come into being occasionally this being one of those times when it clicked pretty well. I enjoy the "crispness" as one person put it to me last night when showed it to him. I think the quality of the painted surface has improved a great deal with the more time I've put into the making of my canvases. With more time comes a better understanding of what techniques work and which don't so I have better control in getting the effects I am looking for when I paint. The character with the wei