Thursday

I started another quick 12x16 of San Francisco. You may recognize the land mark in the background as Coit Hill.  I'm working on these smaller pieces because I ran out of linen. I ordered a few roles from Utrecht art store a week ago and hopefully they will be here anyday now. I really do need to get some large scale pieces going for the May Gallery in Scottsdale. Their season hasn't started yet but its good to be ready.

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

Just for fun I did three small 12x16's of the San Francisco area. This first one is a small road construction delay !

the next a quiet night scene with some shop windows over to the right.

and finally a more busy evening view with busses.

I really liked the road construction one at the top and think I might try that as a 30x30.

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

Would you believe I'm still waiting on Lycos to get back to me about transferring over my domain name to Squarespace.  Lycos is basically a bookie for domain names, they hold millions of the names or addresses for websites. Once you design a web site at one of the many hosting companies you need to get a domain name which is also attached to a series of numbers - an address for the internet that leads people to your website.  Lycos had some hackers attack their company and now are taking their time getting everything up and running again.

This painting I worked on some more. the foreground was too open so I added some figures to the left and concentrated on the red umbrella woman. It seems to balance off better now.

The second piece I also changed. Originally the lines with the tracks and guide wires above came right to the center, it had a tunnel effect. So I decided a bus would help to break it up and I got rid of a few of the overhead wires.  Looks a lot better now.

Richard Boyer

Friday

I've been off this blog site for a while now. I got preoccupied with creating a new website for my paintings.  My old site is very out-dated and uses all HTML.  Since I know very little of that it was next to impossible to change things around on my existing site. It was also very time consuming to update with new images; requiring me to get into the program and write all these html codes to source to different image locations.

So I have been playing around with "Squarespace"  one of the new "do it yourself" website design companies. So now after a few hundred frustrating emails I might be getting close to done.  They don't have any live person to client help, just through emails!!! So as you can guess when a problem arises, everything comes to a grinding halt, because I have to wait on a response from their email which would take hours… I can't say I'm happy with their customer service !

Once I can get my site address switched over I should be up and running.  They also have a store option, so I can start posting limited editions of my paintings. That part of it will be another learning curve for me, so it might take some time to do.

I worked on a few paintings this morning, while working on the website as well.  In this one I changed out a few cars and defined some people off to the left side.  There are a lot more paintings that I have been working on but as of yet have not had a chance to photograph them; maybe tomorrow!

Richard Boyer

Thursday

Howard/Mandville Gallery has a miniature show coming up sometime in October, so I thought I should probably get a few paintings done for that. These are both 9x12's and done in one sitting. I wanted to practice getting the paint on thicker and keeping them more spontanious. The piece above is from San Francisco.

This little one is from Salt Lake City and I did exaggerate the reflections somewhat. The vertical piece was done yesterday and this one above was done today.  We have the crit session tonight at Nick's sons place out in West Valley, so I will have to figure out a was to transport both of these dripping wet works.

Richard Boyer

Tuesday

Back from the long weekend. we actually went up to the cabin to get out of the heat of the valley and do some bike riding around Kamas valley. This valley up at the 6000 foot elevation mark was flat and dotted with picturesque farms. i kept thinking it all would make for some great paintings.

This morning I worked on this 24x24 from San Francisco, the painting that looks more like a dark canyon. I want to play up that effect with a few rays of light hitting the bottom.  That is one thing that fascinated me about the city as well as New York City, the fact that most of the life exists in a verticle formation with high-rises everywhere you have that feeling of being at the bottom of a canyon.

I'll put a few more window lights on the right side to add to that dark feeling of the valley floor.

Richard Boyer

Thursday

It was a long day of painting for me; but I wanted to get along on this piece. To capture that feeling of the noonday light. It still has a lot more to go, but do like the way its heading. there are more wires across the road that I need to fill in, which will give it that busy urban feel. The figure in the middle of the road needs a lot of work also, with both the people being more or less in the center, they will need to be defined better.  I'll see if I can get more done on it tomorrow.

Richard Boyer

Wednesday

I started two new 30x30's yesterday of San Francisco, just to build up some of the cityscape inventory. I'd like to start applying to some galleries in Carmel or San Francisco…so the more paintings I have the better my odds will be. This one above is just the block-in, about an hour and a half on it. The view is of one those old trolley busses with some figures walking across the road in full sun. There was also a red road work sign off on the right which added some nice color

This one I blocked in yesterday also and started in on it today, trying to get the cars in as best I can. The road is coming up the hill towards the viewer so it create some perspective challenges. I'll see if I can pull it off!  I like the way the road sits at the bottom of a canyon of buildings; with their height the street below appears quite dark with just a few places the sun can reach down to the pavement.

Richard Boyer