A Coffee Stop Drawing

Having coffee the other day in Scottsville, I brought out my pen and drawing book then got to work on this inkspot. I enjoyed the time, and I was daunted by the overwhelming variety of brickwork that I needed to finish. In order to do it right I needed not to let anything out. I know that it's not quality of them but the quality of the bricks and how I sought to give each one its own character as I pen'd them in. It was a task that took some time, but I had the time on that particular day so I got to work. I guess it was an hour or perhaps and hour and thirty later on that I was done. I did hit it up a bit at home later on that week but it didn't need much more. I plan to go back again sometime to work on other vistas at the nice wooden tabletop in Blane's Books and Coffee.

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What Has Worked;

The Barn on the Holland Farm

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    This building had been painted earlier, just not from this angle.   I took a top downward look in this composition in oil.    I liked the perspective of the fence running downhill and swooping around into the back of the barn.   I was thinking that I had made an error in judgement when I painted the one side of the barn in shadow, but after working moreso I saw that it seemed to work since the shade is marked with details of the wooden doors, and other details worked out in blues and dark browns.   As they say, getting some distance by letting it sit for a while without me looking at it allowed me to really see that what I had done was ok in fact it worked pretty well.       I feel that this canvas is successful, but its one that a person needs to take a good look at what one is seeing before deciding if it works as a work of art or not.   You don't want to just gloss over it with a quick ...
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Lost Mid-Alantic Church in Nelson County

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     This painting was conceptualized once I saw this Church or what remains of it on the side of a country road around here near my home.   It's presence was impressive with its clean white clay brick towers where windows once stood.   One could easily tell that its walls once held a congregation in prayer on any particular Sunday a century ago or so.   Bringing it onto a canvas was a chore.   It had to be painted with care and granted it was an interpretation and hopefully mistakes were forgivable for the sake of memorializing it as a home for the southern culture held within its walls.   I played with the color of it and its fictional background.  It was all for the sake of conveying the spiritual nature of this lost building of worship. 
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Remains of an Early Virginian Church

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 The old world of European faith was rife with change when new varieties of religion left the old continent for the America's open horizons.   These remains of an older mud stone Church is still here in Central Virginia near where the Lock'n Music festival takes place, only but a mile or so to the east it still stands in its muddy sandstone way.   I didn't find out much more than it was a Church at one time where people placed their wants and needs on the Altar to the keep of a Higher Power.   I don't know what faith these remains belonged to but knowing the society around here it no doubt was a early Virginian Christian Church. 
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Hut for a Blue Tractor and a Red Grass-Cutter

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     Many of these farm structures that I live around out here in Central Virginia near Lovingston are made from wood that has been recycled from earlier farm buildings.   I am almost certain that a lot if it may just go back to the early days of European settlers locating here in Schuyler.   One can just take a quick look and even without carbon-dating one can see that the wood is old and weathered by the elements.   It is very heavy older hardwood that these folks used in making their farm structures.   One can also see how the buildings were shaped for the needs of the farm at a time and then torn down but not discarded but reused again for another purpose..   The sizes of the buildings are small.   They may house one farm implement or two but they are not like those northern Atlantic barns that have lofts and large areas for animals, these buildings are built to suite a single purpose and generally aren'...
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Planetary Objects On Canvas n Paint

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Circular objects are the unifying shape for most planetary objects, at least in our level of reality other obtuse objects are usually smaller and of the asteroid sort. Just kick'n home during this snow storm paints are what I turn to for spending my time indoors and so it was with this blizzard of 2016. I picked up on my acrylic paints ability to render a painting in short order by there fast drying and quick set ups so one doesn't have to wait long to over-paint anything. Mistakes are easily remedied with quick drying paints, you don't have to sit with your mistakes long before one can just paint over it with an opaque color. Ahh that magic eraser: opaque colors. And so with this painting there weren't a lot of mistakes per-say but there was a lot of working the paints to get a nice variation in color as the ball objects shown in light of an imaginary sun off to its right. I enjoyed painting this exercise in shape and working with light and color to crea...
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