2013 Syracuse HOF Portraits

I thought that I would take a break from showing Croatian landscape paintings on the blog posts for awhile. I'm always producing other types of images including portraiture. These are some of the portraits that I painted this past Fall for the Greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame. This is an ongoing project that I have been a part of since the HOF opened. For this year's portraits I went back to my mixed media approach and also experimented with a warmer underpainting. I was pleased with the results of the warm tones since it can be difficult to achieve pleasant skin tones if the initial layers are too dark or too cool.

Last Days in Croatia

Sorry for the long break since my last post. Im back on track now. These small gouache paintings were the final two that were done on location in Dubrovnik, Croatia. They are 5 x 7 and were both done from the top of Fort Royal on Lokrum Island. The first one looks south on the Adriatic Sea and the second view looks down on a Monastery ruin near the SW shore of the island. Needless to say that this three month stay in Croatia was an awesome, life-changing experience and I hope to go back with another great group of students someday. The thousands of photographs that I took while traveling through Croatia and Bosnia will serve as inspiration for many studio paintings for years to come. I will post some of those that I have already completed in the near future.

Lokrum Springtime

All of the Plein air work that I produced in my final weeks in Croatia was done on Lokrum Island.

It was truly a spectacular place. I did notice that my palette started to get much more vibrant as the weather warmed up. This was not a conscious effort, it just happened. In the top piece I have depicted a natural salt pond, complete with a cave that led to the sea. This was the most popular spot on the island for swimming and sunbathing. The second piece was completed from the vast rocky beach on the south side of Lokrum, looking back to the forested hill on the island. Mt. Srd can be seen behind that on the mainland. The routine of painting on location several times a week really paid off as I was getting quite comfortable with this gouache technique. It never felt easy but it was always a pleasant and rewarding experience.

Windy Pines

Here is another painting that was completed on location in my final weeks in Croatia. I was fascinated by the form of the pine trees on the edge of the Adriatic Sea. They are hardy and majestic as they stand with and against the sun, wind and salt of the sea. Their form is nothing like the pines we see in the US. I saw them as dominant graphic shapes in the landscape. They all seemed to be leaning dramatically...pushed by the wind since early growth. This gouache was painted in the mid afternoon facing south near a shady path on Lokrum Island

Ancient Olive Grove

This is a small gouache painting that I completed on location in the final weeks of my stay in Dubrovnik. It is from an ancient olive grove on Lokrum Island that has dozens of these sculptural, twisted olive trees. Peacocks and hens were everywhere in the grove and they will make appearances in future paintings that I create in the studio based on this site.