The method I'm using this week... start with charcoal color chalk paint, available at home centers but not art stores.  It is matte, highly pigmented and cheaper than gesso.  I applied this to a 16x20 black canvas, then gridded off lines on this with pastel and on the reference photo with a sharpie.   

Whoa! the color balance sure didn't hold up for this photo, the land part of this is still the charcoal color from the first one, it didn't actually get darker.  Must be the time of day.  Anyway, I applied white chalk paint to everywhere I want sky in the finished painting, it is more difficult to make the smooth sky tones over dark.

Here I made some form with white acrylic.  Then I started to add color in acrylic and forgot to take a picture, so imagination. 

The final coat of paint is a glaze with oil paints and liquin.  For the sky I did a Bob Ross magic white, added liquin to my white paint and covered the sky then worked in the color,  Prussian and Ultramarine blue, the chemtrail and sun added after.  The same colors plus raw umber for the sea and sand.  Lots of white for the sun on the waves.

  This is one of my first tries with Liquin, an oil painting additive that makes a nice glaze medium.  The picture is my son and a pet rabbit from when he was about sixteen, he just turned forty four, so it's been a while.  It was really fun to use oils for the first time in forever, I have a big problem with solvents and can't be around them long without killer headaches.  This was better than turpentine and linseed oil by a long shot.  There is a nice low odor mineral spirits product too, Gamsol, which I never trusted but is great. I won't be using this too much but it's nice to have it available if needed.  I used a method on this painting that I saw on youtube about Carravagio's paint handling.   Starts with a terra cotta ground (I use chalk paint for all my gessos) and works directly with a burnt umber drawing and form added with white that some color is worked into.  I did that for the first layer with liquin as a medium that makes it all dry a lot faster and then glazed another layer of color with the liquin when the first was dry.

The backyard at the Florida house on the St Marks River.   24x48, acrylic.  For the same people as the NC piece, this was to go over a fireplace.  The river painting goes in the North Carolina house, the waterfall goes in the Florida house, and the big dog goes with them to both places.  

I just got done posting some landscapes from the Oregon coast, mentioning that I started them on black backgrounds when I realized that I never posted the paintings that got me started, except for a couple of pet portraits.  I may never work on a light surface again!   The method here is to sketch the subject with a white chalk pencil them just create the forms with white paint.  When it is complete  I can decide whether I want any color, but a lot of times I'm happy with the black and white.  There are a lot of possibilities for color, watercolor pencils or pastels plus acrylic medium, liquid acrylics thinned way down to glaze transparency with medium or the same thing with oil paints and liquin.  All these were done with acrylics glazes, Golden Liquids, like I mentioned many times, is very transparent and highly pigmented and takes about a drop.of color added to the medium.  Buying anything more than a one ounce bottle is a waste of money, it will last forever.   I use Golden gloss glazing medium for the vehicle and finish it with Golden gloss varnish with UVLS to protect the color from light.  If I use oils and liquin I don't bother to varnish.  I hate oil varnishes, nasty stuff.   About the initial sketches, I mentioned in the last post that I'm crappy with proportions and obviously some of these look like I do ok, my method when it makes a difference  (doesn't make a difference on a landscape and I just wing it) is to print the picture on computer paper, put white chalk or pastel all over the back and use it like carbon paper,, taping it to the canvas and drawing the lines I need. It leaves a light white outline that is easily removed with a damp sponge when the painting part is complete.  Saves a lot of time, and is not cheating.  There is no cheating in art. 

In August 2019 I had a show, the last show, the swan song, the I never want to do this again show.  I had taken a year to clean my palette from twentyfive years of putting pets in old master paintings and I just wanted some random paint splashing.  One thing I tried was taking a bunch of reference pictures from a local dance recital, I loved how the kids were the biggest fans, watching every performance, sometimes dancing in the wings.  I've always been a nut for Degas, but his dancers are pros and tired a lot and when backstage they are not watching but just readjusting and catching a breath.  I loved these happy, excited little girls.  I miss them, like everyone else they can't be doing this right now.  Hang on girls! better times coming!!  After never wanting to paint again now I want to do it more than ever, get back in the dance.  What a difference a pandemic can make.

Here are a few tiny landscapes (6x6) that I copied from  internet sources.  The first two are Monets and the last is by Degas.
Monet painted on location and Degas painted only in studios and clearly just made it up to please himself.  I hate painting outside also, but don't really like to make up the great outdoors so I have forsworn landscape paintings.  I somehow missed the possibility of using a photo reference for this, although I have no trouble using photos for people or pets or even still life... so that's pretty ridiculous.  Right now I don't get out much like everybody else and even if I could I'm not fond of Florida landscapes.  Too flat, too green with messy plants.  I really wish we had rocks somewhere.  Just some shapes.    I've got some great huge ice age rock pics, the Huelgoat in France, but if you don't put people in the pictures they just look like pebbles.  

This is a repair of a pastel more than thirty years old that got a soda spilled on it.  There are a few visible splashes left in the background but mostly it's ok. whew. 

When I was repairing the pastel above of Graham, I tried out the new Geneva paints I just bought on this picture of his big brother Shawn, who is now around thirty eight.  I have gobs of photos of him at the beach in Panama City.  This came out ok, but I don't care for the paints, they take forever to dry and are very gluey.  Glad I tried them though.  The DrawMixPaint guy on youtube is very inspiring, and while I don't have the patience for his methods a novice could learn a lot and get very good results.  One thing I did get from him that is VERY useful is a proportional divider, something I had never heard of that has likely been around since the Renaissance and made getting the proportions right on the child very easy.  I cannot believe it never crossed my path before now.  

Still working on those black canvases and loving it.  Bob and guitar 16x20 acrylic

Every time I decide I never want to do one of these again I see something I have to try out.  This time it was a basset hound I saw on youtube, and realized I didn't have one in my collection.  I don't have lots of breeds, since I only paint on commission.  I get mostly mutts.   This guy was just too cool, and he was a European basset, I had no idea there was a distinction.  Those continental hounds have a whole lot more of everything, more wrinkles, longer ears...  So this is not a commission, just a composite of a number of them.    After I made the decision and had a sketch I looked around for a canvas and only had black ones.  I have no idea when I got those or why, but you make do, so I sketched it in with chalk and painted up the underpainting with just black and white and it went even faster than my usual technique.  It did take several white layers to get to where I could put in the sky, but a small price to pay.  After that I wanted to try black again so I used my cat Marianna and gave her a fantasy kitten in a Vigee Lebrun mother and child piece.  Mari would have made a great momcat, but she was spayed at a young age and never got the chance.  She brings live things to my son night after night and drops them by his bed then purrs as she hunts it down again and murders it.  He refuses to learn to hunt and catches them when he can and releases them while keeping her locked up.  I'm sure she is very frustrated but she keeps trying.