Aureliano de Beruete y Moret

Aureliano de Beruete y Moret
Spanish painter 1845-1912

Seeing colours

I picked up the book "Hawthorne on painting" from the library. I have always wondered at the about how the colorists were able to see all the colours, and thought maybe the book would tell me how. Well I just finished it, and it doesn't say anything about it. It talks about seeing with your eyes on things as though it's the first time you are looking at it, and that it takes time to learn to see. It talks about carefully studying the relationship between one colour spot to another, and that if your colours are true, the likeness will come with it. The likeness Hawthorne talks about in the book is in a very broad sense. It includes the likeness of a person, the likeness of an object, and even the likeness of the time of day and the feelings, all attribute to the trueness of the colour spots and how they are next to each other. These are all very fascinating ideas, and allowed me to see things in a different way.
I also stumbled upon a few paintings with great use of colours.

Eric Merrell

Daniel Pinkham

Mark Kerckhoff

New Brighton park and a couple mountain paintings

I started this painting about 10 minutes before the sun went down, just enough time to record the colours. The rest was all painted from memory, as it all happened so fast I didn't even have time to take a picture. This was painted a couple days before the super moon. Apparently the super moon would be 14% bigger than the typical full moon and brighter.

Almost super moon - oil on panel - 6" x 8"

Normally I would have chosen a smaller size to capture such a fleeting light, but I only had a 9" x 12" left. You can see from the strokes how fast I had to work to get all the information down. After I came home I added the details such as the street lights, the path and the figure.

When the crows go home - oil on panel - 9" x 12"

This is one of those paintings when I extensively reworked the entire painting. I actually liked the paintings as it was when I finished it outside. A couple days later I decided to brighten the sky. I sat down, and worked on the sky, and felt the distant trees need to be more blue and hazy, then I brightened the highlights on the houses, then the saplings, the the grass... I am glad to say that I am happy with this new version, considering that I was already happy with the older version.

Maple saplings near sunset - oil on panel - 9" x 12"

The clouds were moving so fast going in and out of the mountains. I had to paint them from memory, and invent the foreground ones.

Cloudy view from up high - oil on panel - 6" x 8"

I have always wanted to paint a mountain when I get close to it, but could never find a location to do that. Finally I had enough and did this. I cropped in on a small section of the distant mountains and found this composition. It was so far away that when I used my hands to form a view finder, with my arms fully extended, it's only about a stamp size.

A world away - oil on panel - 6" x 8"

Driftwood and logs

I love logs. They have so much character and so many colours.

Large pile of wood - oil on panel - 9" x 12"

They form nice shapes and are great design elements.

Logs and hill arrangement in the rain - oil on panel - 9" x 12"

Logs and hill arrangement in the sun  - oil on panel - 12" x 16"

Frank Duveneck 1848 - 1919

Frank Duveneck made equally impressive work in both portraiture/figure as well as landscape. His handling was bold, textural and explosive, and surprisingly contemporary looking even today! Here are a few of my favourites:

Horizon at Gloucester - 1905

Red Sail in the Harbor at Venice - 1884

Rocky Coast Scene

Tuscan Hills - 1900

Landscapes from last week

This one was a tough one. It had so many vanishing points and lines. I spent the first hour drawing it out, and wiping it down, and drawing it out. I finally got around to painting it, but the painting after 3 hours was still a flop because the drawing wasn't quite right. After I came home I scraped the whole thing again except for the sky, and redrew it all over again this time using the photograph. The colours weren't a problem at all, just have to be aware of with what's in the shade and what's in the light. I am not quite sure yet how to make an architecture painting that's loose and still with accurate drawing, I hope that will come with time.

Alley way by the park - oil on panel - 9" x 12"

What I scraped:

This one I didn't have much problem with the drawing, it's much more straight forward than the one above.  The alley way was back lit and I wanted to capture that, but the sun went away half way through the painting. I was able to add the cast shadows and the strong highlights and sun glints when I got home from the photo I took. That's why I almost always take a photo before I started painting.

Garbage day - oil on panel - 9" x 12"

The ginat building on the left belongs to Viterra, apparently it's a grain handling business, I had to look to it. I assume they are grain silos? I don't usually paint something far away without a foreground, but I wanted to see if I could capture the morning hazy and light. I had to be very careful with the value level in the shadows as they recede in distance.

Hazy morning hill - oil on panel - 9" x 12"

Done is the same day as the above painting. These maple saplings are planted in the corner of the park, with the purpose of turning it into a forest in the future. I didn't plan on spending the whole day here painting, and when I got home after a whole day of painting I was completely spent.

Maple saplings - oil on panel - 9" x 12"

This view faces north, so I was waiting for a cloudy day to paint it without the annoying sun behind my back. The rain had just stopped and the low hanging clouds were very appealing, so I gave the painting a low horizon.

Farming the field - oil on panel - 9" x 12"

Drizzle turned into down pour, the painting and my palette (and me of course) were covered in water. It was pretty neat to see how the oil paint was able to still mix with each other in big water drops, though the water drops made it hard to judge colours.

Pine with orange bark - oil on panel - 8" x 6"

Looking like a hobo. I put my backpack in a garbage bag so it doesn't get wet.

It's not often you get to see driftwood near/in a pond. The beach was just to my right, the whole area was littered with driftwood, giving me lots of arrangement on top of the purdy clouds. The clouds were moving pretty fast so there was quite a lot of effect chasing.

Shallow pond with drift wood - oil on panel - 9" x 12"

I ran out of yellow and my next shipment won't come in until late this week, so I used yellow ochre instead. Obviously with a darker dirtier yellow I wouldn't be able to hit the bright green notes, but I hoped that they would still read as green. I guess in a painting with more saturated deeper blue and reds, the orche would read more yellow, but here it's not very much.

- oil on panel - 9" x 12"