Turtle Point Alabama

Turtle Point is a country club along the Tennessee River in Killen, Alabama. I was there one dreary, misty morning for a baby shower. The river (and the country club grounds) was just beautiful so I walked around for a while taking pictures for use in paintings later.

Turtle Point
5 x 7 inches. Acrylic on painting board

This is a view up the river from the main country club building. I took some artistic liberties with the painting. In reality there is a boat dock and a small pier there. It was the rest of the view that interested me though.

There’s a lot that I like about this painting. This is another limited palette painting. Actually given a choice, I prefer limited palettes. If I have too many colors on my palette, I get caught up in the colors rather than the painting.

I’m still going through Stephen Quiller’s Color Choices. I had to smile at his comment at the beginning of Chapter 3. “I recommend doing many small studies before working large and going for your ‘masterpiece’! You can cover a lot more ground with a series of small examples rather than laboring over a large piece that, when finished, may or may not work.” I know I’m enjoying working on the small pieces and I don’t feel so bad when they flop.

Radio TV Hospital

Radio TV Hospital
9 x 12 inches, acrylic on panel

I started this painting a while back when I wanted to try out some gessoed panels. The subject is a tiny oddly shaped building near Pope's Tavern in Florence, Alabama. It used to be a Radio TV Hospital. There was something about the odd shape and the broken sign that appealed to me. In reality there were a lot of houses around the area but I decided to simplify the painting so I could focus on the building. I might do a little more tweaking but basically it's finished.

I learned a lot while painting this. I'm still not used to this gessoed panel. Even after all these layers of paint, it feels slick compared to canvas. Maybe I'll try another brand after I finish these or even make my own. I spent a lot of time trying to get the perspective right since this isn't a normal box-shaped building and since I don't paint that many buildings. I'm glad I did. I used yellow to highlight the sunny side of the building instead of white. I'm not sure if it's obvious from the photo but this worked really well. (Thanks to James Gurney for all of your posts on color and light.) The painting started out as an experiment that I almost abandoned a couple of times, but I'm glad I stuck with it.