This painting may look like a duplicate of the last post and it is but it isn't. It was done in acrylic on canvas. I looked at it as an experiment and had a good time doing it. 
We had a severe ice & snow storm just before Christmas and I was inspired to capture the moment once things settled down. Ice hung from all the tree limbs and covered the snow drifts making each step crunch. This is December in the midwest, or as they say in Iowa the "middlewest". 
At the Christmas art show in Milo the paintings that sold were mostly winter scenes like the one above. They are simple scenes but full of emotion that speak to the heart. 
There are times when the sky seems heavy and loaded with snow, ready to touch the ground. I've seen that effect during many snow storms. You'll se it when there is a lull in the storm but more is on the way. 
I'm still working on a winter theme and the weather here in Iowa is reminding me old man winter is on his way. The lower painting is the first washes of the sky and the top painting has a cut out of a couple of barns. Sometimes I use a cut out to get the placement right.
SOLD
I just started to paint with no real idea or real location in mind. I haven't done something like that in several years. Usually work from a real scene somewhere but not this time. The finished painting will probably be a snowfall scene. I've been working on house projects so much lately that the blog has had to suffer.
Does this painting look a little different than what Ive been doing lately? It's all acrylic. Fall is on the way or maybe here by the looks of the fields here in Iowa and I wanted this painting to look like the fields are just starting to turn colors.
Here is a project in acrylics. As you can see the acrylic paint goes down heavier and more opaque than water colors. The sky is done but the foreground and landscape around the barns needs some imagination. We'll see!
This is the completed painting of Allerton, IA's round barn. That small community is trying to preserve this barn, a one room school house, and a large victorian house on a museum property. I usually don't show the painting in the frame but I thought some of you might want to see how it is matted and framed.
Here is a painting of the round barn in Allerton, IA that I painted last year but in the 5x7 size. This painting will fit a 16x20 frame and hopefully be an improvement of the first one. The sky started out with a lot of big, puffy, billowing clouds. Yet, I couldn't make them look right so I smoothed them over and you see what I come up with. Maybe this is better in that they don't over power the white of the barn.
Well here is the finished painting with its corrections! The fence row making its way over the rolling landscape leads the eye to the barn just as it should. This painting has much more appeal than the previoius rendition. 
The lower photo shows a painting I had completed in November of 07 but was never really satisfied with it so this week I took it out of the frame and gave it a stronger foreground and some fall foilage to the bare tree limbs. I'm not finished yet but will add a fence somewhere and a 'v' of ducks in the sky heading south for the winter.
Several weeks ago we went yard-saling around the country side and drove past this farm. Everything seemed to be in place perfectly and the composition needed little improvement. 
It may look like these barns are floating on a brown pond but once I'm done the small barn to the right will be set back with a windmill at its side. The two close up barns and grasses will lead the eye to the focal point .
Several years ago when I dropped off my daughter at a friends home I parked the car in the driveway looking right at this barn and silo. I had my sketch pad with me and quickly scketched this scene but did not take any pictures for a color reference. This painting medium is my special egg tempera mix. The finished painting has a rich, thicker texture than water color and dries with a nice glossly look. 
This painting is coming off a little more loose than most that I have done lately. Sometimes a change is good. I don't have to worry and try to make the sky perfect, the buildings perfect, the grass perfect, etc. You get it. We finally got high speed internet here in Iowa, it took a while but things move slow here.
Here is the beginning of my first painting started in Iowa. We moved to the heart of the nation this past week and are settled in enough to begin painting again. My studio is still a wreck filled with boxes and will stay that way for quite some time. We were greated to Iowa by storm and tornado warnings this past week but we are all safe and sound. My wife and I already have had the pleasure of watching the grandchildren and just love it!
The lady that gave the photo of this farm grew up on a farm in Wisconsin where her dad built a great round barn. She gave me several pictures of it from different angles. Sometime in the future I am going to put together some drawings and try to work out a painting of it. This will be the last blog for more than a week as we relocate to the state of Iowa. My son and his family live there and my daughter and her family live in Nebraska so we will be close to them. It will take us sometime to get settled in before I can get back to the computor to post a new painting. See you then.
One of my dear friends at church showed me her album of barns she has photographed over the years. This is one of her barns. I took the liberty of making it a winter scene and when I'm done there will be snow falling.
As the spring winds blow and dry the fields out the farmer is ready to work them up for planting. All this must be done in a timely manner to get that seed into the ground.
Dramatic skies really help to tell the story in a painting but boy are they hard to do! I wanted a dark sky but not stormy looking. Two things have delayed my postings; my camera didn't want to focus for some crazy reason and we just took a trip to Iowa for a long weekend. Sorry for the delay.
SOLD
Here are two stages of this painting. I like to work from the top down, meaning I start at the sky and end up at the foreground at the bottom of the painting. Little details like windows and background trees start to be filled in at this time also. The next blog will be the finished painting.
It's a little unusual to put the main focal point in the center of the painting but with the strong red barn off to the right of the house it works this time. The sky is acrylic and gouche and the house is all acrylic paint. I'm finding the acrylic is getting easier to work with as I use it more and more.
Here's one farm job nobody likes doing. Throwing the cow manure into the spreader and spreading it onto the fields!
The composition of this painting has given me trouble from the start and that is a big clue I should have scrapped it when I had the chance. Now it has a mind of it's own and won't settle for the waste can. It should be done in a day or so. I've not posted as I should because of a back log in house repairs that couldn't be put off any longer. I've been trying to get accepted into an artist websight but the fact that I don't post several times a week is a handicap. They want artist that are very regular and produce weekly if not more to keep their 1.5 million viewers happy (and buying).
This is a scene right after the wheat harvest. The golden stubble left by the combines fills the field in front of the barn and the straw left behind will be made into bales to be put in the mow of the barn. They will be used all winter as bedding for the barn animals.
I'm trying to keep a strong foreground in this painting so that the barns and house stay in the background but that isn't always easy to do. We'll see how it turns out.
The brown building in this yard seemed quite out of place being too close to the house and closer to the road than it should be. But the only thing it could be was an outhouse! 
This is a painting that I gave to my son Nathan and his wife Heather. It is a representation of the farmstead we lived in Michigan when my four children were young.
This painting conveys the idea that winter has been a little too long and everyone on the farm is waiting for the snow to melt and spring to burst forth.
It has been quite a while since I last posted but I just got back from a mini vacation to Iowa to see my son and his wife and child. We also drove just sort of Omaha to visit my daughter and her husband and two boys. What a week! There is farm land on top of farm land in Iowa. 
This painting came out just as I had hoped. The sky and the snow in the foreground set the mood for this lonely house on Lorie Road. It had sat vacant for so many years that the paint was beginning to peal and wood trim was falling off. Today it looks well taken care of by its new owners.
This is another look at the same farm house from the previous post. I'm going to change the season of the year and the time of day for this painting.
This house was abandoned and run down but about ten years ago was purchased and refurbished with all of it's beautifull style. The owners' had me paint a large size commission for them but there are still a lot of views that I never got around to painting. This is one of them.
I've had a head cold for most of the week which has prevented me from performing my blogging duties but finally here is the beginning of my latest painting. The goal here is to have a glow from the morning sun coming from behind the house leaving the house itself cast in a shadow.
Last week several tornadoes spun across a couple of states and did a lot of damage. That got me thinking about tornado season and the dark, moody skies that come with a dangerous thunder storm. Sometimes the whole sky is nothing but black, purplish clouds ready to drop a twister. 
I'm trying to make this sky look like it is ready to blow in a tornado at any minute.
This is how a painting starts out for me. I draw a pencil sketch for composition
