As I’ve been painting this week, I can see my sketches moving in two directions.

The first is capturing the colors as a background for a later work.  My current thoughts are to combine the New England landscape colors with a tropical element.  I have a few ideas for this, but experimenting is ahead.

This week’s small sketches were a sort of dichotomy… contrasts and similarities between natural elements from very different locations.

This sketch was painted in New Hampshire as the snow from the Halloween 2011 blizzard was beginning to melt.

The second sketch (shown at the top of this post) – also 8″ x 10″ – is a direction I’m even more enthusiastic about.  Simply, I’m realizing that it’s good to push myself into Impressionism.  By choosing scenes that I can’t possibly capture realistically, I’m rushed into conveying with color… and only color.

This sketch (at left) shows the impression of the sunset, seen through a thick cluster of trees.

Though there are limits to this, I have the feeling it’s going to take me in interesting new directions.  After a few more of these (see the last sketches I posted in my April Art 2011 post), I’m eager to work much larger and with more clearly planned designs.

Note: Until I upgrade my new computer’s Win7 system so I can use my older version of Adobe Photoshop, I’m working with Paint.net.

In general, the latter program is good enough for my online work.  Alas, it’s not great for posting my paintings with correct colors.  But… it’s good enough.  I think you can get the general idea of what I’m doing.

I’m rather pleased that, after a few months of being mostly away from my easel, I’m still in this painting mode.  I think of it as swatches of color, which form the general impression of the sunset colors I’m seeing from my living room window.