"Seafaring Wreck"

On the South Carolina coast in the barrier islands, this old hull spoke to me like a beached whale, still breathing. 

"Seafaring Wreck", 14" x 11", oil on canvas panel, studio painting from photo reference

Summer is All About the Color Green

Tomorrow's the 4th of July, and already it's so hot and humid I feel like I need to swim through it sometimes.  Presently I'm reading Pat Conroy's South of Broad which takes place in Charleston, SC, the city near the barrier islands of Seabrook where I painted in the relatively dry spring.  He describes the summer in Charleston as being even more humid than Indiana so I shouldn't wine too much.  The other thing about summer that painters want to wine about is the color green--there's just tooooo much of it in the landscape.  Painting in the summer is all about seeing how many variations of the color green we can come up with.

This is my first painting of the summer, and I'm trying to discover some of the greens in the trees over Burnett's Creek outside Battle Ground, IN.   I've included a photo of the initial drawing on the (oil primed) linen canvas with its "block in" to show you how it looked as I began the painting.

"Sultry Afternoon on Burnett's Creek", 20" x 16", oil on linen canvas

This is how it looked when I "finished" it yesterday.  But I'll put it away for a week and then see it fresh to determine if I need to tweak it one way or another.  If you'd like to make a comment, I'd love to hear them.  And please forward this on to anyone else you think might like to see it.  Hope the summer's been good to you so far and that you're staying relatively cool.