I’m continuing to select projects that encourage me to keep practicing two-point perspective. This last week I selected a reference photo which I found online of a barn in — Slovenia (!) — set against a beautiful mountain backdrop. I’ve pretty much blocked in the painting and have done some of the initial layers on the barn . Now working on adding details to the mountains to make them look three-dimensional. Started with the large shapes but soon will have to make some decisions about how much detail — not too much — to add. I will add the fence and trees after the paint on the grass and that big brown area on the left are dry.

I dd alter the perspective of “my” barn, so that I’m not looking up at it, as is the case in the reference photo. That was partly because I didn’t want to have so much grassy area in the front part of the painting but still wanted to keep the fence.

Past couple of days i worked kind of all over the place on this painting — adding grass to roof; trying to improve the windows; adding vegetation, etc. Showed painting to teacher yesterday in class. She had not seen it yet and as she was lecturing on “shape drawing” she suggested i try to find interesting shapes in the sides/faces of the mountains. You won’t be able to tell by this photo, as i painted, brushed out, painted again, working on that assignment. Still part of the work in progress! I guess i did the most work on the mountain side closest to the front — the one with the most green. I kept some of those changes; not so much on the one next to that.

And finally, for Bern: chimney + smoke!

This is a new project, partially painted, based on a class assignment on composition with perspective. On a trip to Norway a few years ago we saw several of these grass-roofed houses in little fishing villages in the Lofoten Islands. This photo, though not one we took, is representative of those we saw. The perspective part of the painting is the mountains ranges in the background. There’s plenty to fix here, and a few more layers to lay on, so consider this definitely a work in progress.

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I decided to start fresh and redo the latest bird house painting. the angles were not right on the bird house, and i wanted to move it over to the left. I also wanted to give myself more practice with painting the foliage in the loose way I’ve been trying in the past couple of weeks. also, i had the foliage to the right of the tree going in front of the tree when it should have looked like it might be behind the tree. And then i had some fun playing with putting birds in the tree. There are 5 birds — one of the yellow ones is supposed to be partially hidden behind the foliage. Feel free to let me know if you think this works!