Woohoo! Fall's Just Around the Corner!

So, after a crazy week, I've come to the painful realization that I simply won't be able to post every Sunday and Wednesday. That being said, I vow to make every effort to miss as few of those days as possible.  I have grown to enjoy this whole blogging process quite a lot since I started and miss it when I don't get a chance to post. Anyway, without further ado, here is the Sunday post.

Since I'm posting paintings for a few weeks, I thought some simple landscapes would be a good starting point. Most of the paintings I'll post in the coming weeks were painted during my time in college, but hopefully as time progresses, I'll produce even more to share with you.

These are both landscapes painted from photographs of Arkansas.  From very early childhood my family has taken camping vacations in various places throughout the southern United States.  Arkansas, specifically the Albert Pike Recreational Area in the Ouachita National Forest, has always been a family favorite spot. The period at the beginning of fall, when the leaves are just starting to turn is a nature-loving artist's dream come true.  Between these two paintings, I'm a bit partial to the first one. It features one of the more shallow spots in the Little Missouri River. Artistically, I like the way that the background trees going up the side of the mountain turned out. It was my first attempt at aerial or atmospheric perspective, where the contrast between the landscape features decreases as the distance from the observer increases. That's all just a kind of fancy way of saying that the stuff that's far away is less clear than the stuff that's close up. I opted for less detail and more of an abstract take for this one, almost going to the point of being impressionistic.

 This next one is of one of the many winding mountain roads that lead to and through the Ouachita National Forest.  I went even more abstract with this one, which gives it less depth. I also used more strong fall colors that really illicit great childhood memories for me. While the painting above gives a morning or early in the day feeling, this one has more of an afternoon or early evening feel. Were I to paint it again I would probably include a bit more tree shadow on the road, but given the more abstract overall feel of it, I guess they aren't that missed.

Well, there you go. There will of course be more paintings next week, so stay tuned for that. Wednesday, I'll try to get my regular post up, but barring any unforeseen obstacles I will be debuting the new blog page header. I hope you're enjoying the painting posts so far. Since I haven't mentioned it in a while, feel free to post any comments or suggestions in the section below, or send them to me by email. Hope you all have a terrific week! See you (figuratively speaking...er...typing) Wednesday.
Stay creative,
AH!