Thursday

I decided to do a quick three hour study today of San Francisco. The painting is a 22x20 in size and most likely will need some more work on it. The main point of doing it fast is to teach myself to make quick snap decisions and observations of what I am painting. I kept the colors very monochromatic since you are looking right into the sunlight.

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

These four paintings I finally finished off and will sent to the Mockingbird gallery once I get frames put on them. Jim from the gallery requested some more figures in the works, so I added some people here and there.

5th Ave & Morrison 20x20

6th Ave & Main 30x30

6th Ave & Yamhill 20x20

Taylor and 5th 40x40

The other painting here a 30x28 I am still working on. The tree off to the right bothers me and it might have to be changed a bit. I'll put it aside and think on it for a few days.

Southam Gallery wants me to do a demo painting in from of their gallery on Friday. The address is 152 south Main if anyone cares to watch. I'll probably do a small painting looking up the street

Richard Boyer

Thursday

This one I finished off in one session, okay its 3:30 in the afternoon so it was a long session, but still its more or less done. I'll have the crit session tonight so the others can weigh in with their comments. This 24x28 painting I will call "Market and Powell Cable Car Line" Tomorrow's painting will take some more time with all the perspective.

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

This morning I spent time stretching up some new sizes and blocking in a few new paintings.

This first one is a 24x28 gallery wrap from San Francisco. I want to capture that play in light from the shadow of the foreground and the tram against the background light.  The area in light is so bright that most of the detail is bleached right out. I also liked the tourists hanging from the side of the tram.

The next size I stretched up was a 30x28 gallery wrap, a view of a cable car at the bottom of a rather steep hill. The buildings line both sides and the sunlight is cast across the street between the breaks in the buildings. I took a few more shots of the start for you. First I marked the center of the canvas to make sure I didn't have some obvious thing right in the middle.

Next I put in the cable car and grayed up the foreground to help with the perspective.

Here the building start to go in. I need to cover the canvas with all the composition figured out. This way I can see problems or mistakes before I get to far into the painting and if there is something that's not going to work.

Finally I block in the rest of the buildings with a gray color and establish the play in light along the road as it goes up the hill. The composition is now figured out and I can go on with the real painting. This start took about 45 minutes, it was kept very loose but will make it so no major mistakes will come up later on down the road!

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

I finished off the 40x40 and sent the image off to Jim at the Mockingbird Gallery. He came back with the comment that the painting needs more figures, the element of life in a city painting. Thats one thing I find good, when a gallery owner says his piece of mind. Its a very easy fix now before I mail it off to the gallery. In fact tomorrow I'll add more figures to all of them. Most of the works do have people in them but obviously not noticeable enough to the viewer.

The 30x30 I also finished off today and I think I'll try this one in the American Impressionist Society show in the summer.

Richard Boyer

Monday

I decided to work on the San Francisco painting today.  After looking at the block-in and feeling so good about it, the suspense became too much. I just had to work on this to see how the whole thing will end up. I still have the tree on the right side and the roadway to work more on. Then I can start to add some popping colors to make it sing.

Richard Boyer

Friday

On Thursday I started this 40x40 of Portland, a view of the train coming towards the viewer. The paint was still too wet to work on it today. I find with oil primed linen the surface is smooth and not so absorbent as cotton canvas, so the paint tends to glide around more on this. The next day of painting I find myself scratching up yesterdays strokes with the fresh paint of today. I can't seem to get the darker values to lay on top of the paint. So I'm thinking another day for it to dry a little more and I can attack it without pulling up the first days work.

So I ended up digging through the images I had from San Francisco. One shot I took was with the sun right in my eyes as I looked up the street;  everything was hazed out by the bright light with the silhouette of the bus driving down the road. There was also a bright red awning hit by the sun on the left side. If I can pull it off this will be a really nice piece.

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

Woke up this morning to about six inches of heavy wet snow and its been snowing off and on all day now. Tomorrow they say it will be up in the 60's; welcome to spring in Utah.

I worked some more on the larger 30x30, trying to keep things loose in the painting. The sky was originally darker, but I thought it looked better with more light which I was able to reflect down into the road. There are a few things that bother me with it so its time to put it aside and look at it with a fresh eye in a few days. Maybe the lower right corner might be too dark?

Richard Boyer

Monday

This first painting from Portland is a 20x20. I decided to try the rails of the street car, they have a nice reflection from the rain. Most of this was done is a single session, trying to keep it loose with the brush strokes. I sent off a picture to Jim at Mockingbird and he seemed happy with the result.

On to number two where I'm almost hit by the car !  Actually I noticed they tend to slow down when they see a crazy guy with a camera standing in the middle of the road. This one was harder to get a good picture of with the subtle purple colors. I do like the red truck on the right side. the painting is also a 20x20

The third one I started yesterday with a 30x30 canvas. I'm trying to capture the last light of day.

Richard Boyer

Sunday

Its been a while. we did have a great time in San Francisco and I took over a thousand pictures of that town, especially at night with all the city lights.

Since then I have been to Bend, Oregon for my show at Mockingbird Gallery and then on to Portland to get some more city at night shots. I seem to be drawing more interest from the night time paintings of larger cities than from the more traditional landscapes. Jim Peterson from the gallery and I got into a few conversations about the changing art market. He feels they are moving more modern paintings with a contemporary frame put on them. I told him about the night paintings I was doing in salt lake city and he liked the images and felt we should try some from Portland. Move with the times.

The show went well with him selling three works on the opening night. They had it on their first Friday gallery walk which pulls basically the entire population of Bend through the gallery, or so it seems. Compared to Scottsdale where they have several hundred walking through, Bend had over a thousand over the course of the night.

I did try a small 9x12 city painting from Bend that afternoon just to chat with people about the show on the street.

The following day I went out plein air painting with Eric Jacobsen and the former owner of the gallery, Pamela. Eric took us up around his place in Prineville which is located in a nice valley northeast of Bend. Here is a view looking across some open fields with cows and the meandering creek.

The next day I was off to Portland where I stayed at Craig Srebnik's house south of the city. That night we went into Portland where of course it was raining and took shots. The weather was perfect for me trying to capture the reflections of the city at night. The next day I was downtown all day and evening doing it all over again in the rain. From the images I'll do some loose city paintings for Mockingbird Gallery.

I've actually started a few and will have images tomorrow

Richard Boyer