Practicing the Figurative

After being snow-bound for several days, I decided to try a quick run on a number of studies of faces and people in the landscape, using old photos as reference.  This old Salt above had a haunted look in his eyes, and an odd disconnect between hair color and beard color.  Once the oil dries I need to go back in and work on the beard some more, but the blue was getting into the white in a way I didn't like, so I will wait.  I hope that readers of this blog understand that I post photos of work that is not yet quite finished; that may not be the proper etiquette, but I tend to paint in a flurry, take a snapshot, and then think about correcting small things in the paintings over the next few days.  But when I push myself to post something, I just grab whichever photos are at hand.  My purpose in posting is to share my efforts as I push myself to produce and practice.  Maybe one day I'll post only things I think are worthy of sales, but I haven't arrived there yet.

There is something about the people in the mid 19th century, something more honest and direct in their actions at work that makes them more interesting to me for painting.  Maybe it's that in our time people pose more than then (though the rigid poses for formal portraits gives the lie to that argument.)  Maybe it's that they remind me of people in impressionist paintings I like.  Whatever the reason, I find it more fun to paint them, even though the colors have to be invented.

All these were done in a few hours at the easel whipping them out, not going for paintings to hang, but for practice at working with the face and form in the field, as it were.  The next one was a small color study because I thought it might make for a larger painting, but I am unconvinced at this point.

There is something definitely romantic about that era of hay-gathering.  I grew up around haying every summer of my youth, but it was done with machines spitting out bales.  My grandparents had not long before then left behind the horse-drawn wagon with the hay forked onto it by hand, and there are old photos of them standing proudly by their loaded wagons, but it was nothing I ever saw first hand.  

And then at last, here is what it really looks like outside right now.  I've been working on a couple of snow scenes, but I'm not pleased with the results.