"Ron Guthrie Art" - 5 new articles
EucalyptusI have somehow managed to start a new routine while getting ready for the show this weekend. In staying up late, drinking tons of coffee and after doing things for the show I have managed to do another painting before bed...I always loved painting at night anyway, hahaha. Actually, all the fuss in getting ready for the show causes me to feel guilty I'm not painting so I end up just staying up late to paint. This one was finished at 3:30 AM. I should call it "The Nightowl Eucalyptus". Not from any reference photo, just painting away in hopes of completing another painting and brushing up on trees. I'm not a fan of the eucalyptus trees that look like this...I call them pom poms....but I have to try painting them anyways. I like the bushier ones that are commonly used for windbreaks on farms and ranches around here. So many trees...so little time.
9" X 12" Oil on panel I really like the foreground in this one as well as the background...really fun parts to do. The tree was painted a little differently than I normally do these so it took me a little longer to paint. I think it will take me a few paintings to get used to seeing them this way... Here are some details..... 
  Trying the Pochade BoxWas up late last night readying for the show and decided I couldn't wait any longer to try a painting out with the new pochade box. I decided to get the easel setup and do a painting. I chose a ref photo I took of the oak scattered foothills below nearby Grass mountain. The easel worked great but I need to build an attachment to hold my wet brushes. Seems to be a good steady platform though so I'm looking forward to getting out before it gets too cold to do it.
9" X 12" Oil on panel
 Evening Scene "Near The Eve"
12" X 24" Oil on panel
I am readying for a studio tour and have been doing all sorts of things other than painting. You just have no idea how cluttered and unorganized your studio can get until you have to straighten it up for a studio tour....and then there is all of the framing and hanging involved too.
I decided to stop for a bit to paint a scene yesterday. I wanted wide and I wanted to do some trees again since I have been doing so many vineyard scenes lately. I needed the tree practice...still do! hahaha. A couple of months ago I did a scene of Santa Ynez looking across the valley at the mountains all lit up at sunset and decided to try that again but in a more muted way. I wanted the focal point to be on a trail I would add and not so much on the blazing mountain colors. Lately in my work I have been trying out thicker, impasto, foregrounds or around my center of interest. I really enjoy impasto work especially on these little trails. It brings a nice bit of realism to the painting and adds to the viewers interest I would think. I find it hard not to enjoy that thick texture. The composition on this one is really like a full circle-type comp. The eye should be led from one part to the next until it returns again. Well, that was the plan anyways. A detail of the trail. I was dragging that shadow from the tree across the grass and decided to drag it across the trail too.  In the past I rarely did a lot of trunk and branch work...I'm pushing myself to add these more and more now. I hated my early results but they are coming along nicely.
  Tres Hermanas Vines " Tres Hermanas Vines"9" X 12" Oil on panel
This is a plein air piece that was done out at the Tres Hermanas Vineyard in Foxen Canyon. I did a show out there a couple of years ago and thought I'd go back up there to try some plein air work...this is the third one I've done up there. It's a good spot because there isn't much traffic, no pedestrians and I can just pull off to the side of the road to set up my gear...no hiking! Bonus!! I like the vineyards in the morning light because the tops of the vines get this great morning light and pop the heck out of the green against the dark undergrowth. I also like this angle of the vines too and my spot out there is right at the end of the rows. A detail of the painting........
  Homemade Pochade Box My Serrett Pochade Box
I've been wanting to build a pochade box much like the $300 models you can by without spending the $300. Jim Serrett had built such a box, the Serrett Pochade Box, using simple contstruction methods and scraps of wood keeping costs down and making building the box as simple as you can get. I've got to admit the reason I kept putting this off is that I kept thinking the results would be very unprofessional and look it. I couldn't understand how the lid hinge would work without looking like some contraption from a Jules Verne novel. All of the ones I saw that were homemade really looked homemade. Jims looked pretty good so I decided to just build it and make it work but keeping it as affordable as possible. I downloaded Jim's instructions and worked from those. I couldn't find the piano hinge he used so I used normal brass hinges. The table hinge that I bought was different and I had to cut off a bracket on mine and hammer part of the other end to make that work but it works great and looks good. Both of these parts came from Home Depot. I used a piece of hardwood (oak) for the mounting block underneath that holds the T-nut for mounting the box to the tripod. I'm not a fan of this though and if I did this again I'd probably use the Judsons mounting plate that costs around $19. It's an all welded aluminum plate that would last longer than the box itself. I'll give the T-nut a try and see how that goes. I also added a strip of wood to accomodate my longer hinge screws for the lid. No biggie there. The lockable hinge worked out excellent. I was worried about the single bungy cord holding the panel to the lid...looked kind of weak but it actually workes great. The panel is snug against the lid and not flopping around at all. Simple and effective and the wind won't blow it loose at all. Overall, if you want one of these types of pochade boxes and don't want to part with $300 you can build it for hardly nothing. I don't think I paid more than $20 for all the material. I used an air powered brad nailer but you could do this with small finishing nails and a hammer. I have a table saw too but all of the wood can be cut with a hand saw. It's a great little box and can handle anything up to 9"x12" panels. 
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