Rather than start another landscape, I took a piece of plain canvas (not mounted), taped it to a board and played around with a variety of brushes (goat hair, synthetic etc). This is 16" X 20" water mixable oils. My inspiration was a photo of the rosette nebula online, but I wanted to use more colors so I'm just calling this "My Nebula". Anyway, it was a fun piece.
This is another study with big brushes. I followed along with a video online, but could not make my painting look anything like the artist there. I gave up and just made a plain sky. I think the problem was that I was using a board that was pre-gessoed and I probably should have put another layer of gesso on it. The ground was too smooth and the paint did not apply well. Using oil mixable paints again, 11" X 14". I have one more board to play with, a larger one, 16" X 20" and I will add another layer or two of gesso before I try that one.
I started a study of a desert scene today. Just made a little color study from an old photo of a Joshua tree in Mojave, CA. Not sure when I will actually start painting it. I just played with my old oil pastels to get a sense of composition and color while I work this out in my head first. No photos yet. I will probably try it on a smaller canvas before I try the larger ones I have been saving since last year. I bought two larger ones on sale and could not decide what to put on them yet. That is a good problem to have. I showed my husband several photos of desert scenes, but he liked the one with a bit more color (some of the desert scenes were quite drab).
