Working on This Weekend-Thanksgiving 2014

  A painting that I started a few months ago and then forgot about got most of my attention this weekend. This is the first layer, on top of a pencil drawing. The photo is of roses at the San Antonio Botanical Garden, in front of the Auld House, a beautiful historic Texas farmhouse that was donated and relocated to the gardens. I think it already looks pretty great, should only take a few more layers to get right.

Three Pink Roses, 8x10, oil on panel, unfinished.

Three Pink Roses, 8x10, oil on panel, unfinished.

Color Sketch for Winter Deer Skull, 5x7, finished.

This was a little color sketch I  did to check the colors I picked out for the big winter deer skull painting.

Stormy Clouds, 5x7, oil on canvas panel, unfinished.

A little landscape I've had in mind for a while, storm clouds from a few weeks ago. I love the colors of storm clouds, this is my first try at painting them. This will need at least one more layer, once it's dry in a few days.

Working on This Weekend-11/23/14

I was stuck working on some little pencil drawing for the last week, because it was too cold outside to spray them with fixative. But Sunday was nice and warm, so I was able to fix them and work on the next layers.

Hall House Deer Skull, pencil drawing with white acrylic highlights,  5x7 on bristol paper, finished.

This drawing is mostly pencil, with a little white acrylic paint to bring out the highlights, and that white paint made a huge difference, the drawing looked pretty flat before the whites were brightened.  

Thistle Seed, pen and charcoal, 5x7 on bristol paper, unfinished. 

 I did the underdrawing for this with copic pen, so the sharp spines wouldn't be blurred by blending the charcoal. Making this look 3D will be my goal, because even the photo looks pretty flat.

Torrit Grey Lady, oil painting, 11x14 on a canvas panel, unfinished.

I've been wanting to paint a figure for awhile now, so I picked a vintage erotica picture to work from. These pictures are old enough that the copyrights have expired, and there are tons that would make beautiful paintings. Also I prefer these "real" figures over the oddly photoshopped anatomy you see in most modern photos. She needs a good name too, but there's time to find the right one.

Deer Skull, oil painting on Gessobord, 16x20, unfinished.  

This is the big picture I'm working on now, and it's slowly progressing. I wasted some time drawing in grass in the background and then losing the drawing when I tried painting over it, but I was trying to figure out how to deal with the grass and I think I'm closer now.  With a mid-tone background I can draw in the light colored stems of grass and add in the darks around that.

Working on This Weekend-8/5/2013

Better late than never I guess. I added all the pictures to this post a year ago and then never finished it.

Guadalupe Fail, 9x12, oil on canvas panel, unfinished.

I never finished this one, it just got too messy, but the colors were nice in some places. Might be worth trying to paint this scene again eventually.

Weaver's Needle, 5x7 oil on canvas panel, finished.

A little 3 hours painting from a photo my mom took in Arizona.

Rhino at SA Zoo, 5x7, pencil and charcoal on bristol paper, finished, sold.

A three hour drawing from a picture I took of the rhinoceros looking lazy at the San Antonio Zoo. I had a hard time figuring out the shadows on his face, until I started drawing the shadow and realized there were two horns and not just one.

Butterfly II, 5x7, oil on Claybord, unfinished. 

It was a really cold day at the Arboretum when I took this photo, and it was around freezing the night before too, so it was a nice surprise to see a butterfly. I had a hard time identifying it, turns out there are lots of orange butterflies in Texas. So I submitted a photo to the nice people at butterfliesandmoths.org  who identified it as a Danaus gilippus, or Queen butterfly.

Sophie, the best studio cat ever. 

Viola

This pansy is the first painting that I did on Claybord*, and scrubbed in colors in thin glazes. The white areas were scraped back to white, and then painted white. The nice thing about Claybord is that the gesso layer is extra thick so it can be painted over and etched back to white without scratching through it. But the drawback is I've seen oil paint flake off more than once, I think the board sucks all the oil out of the paint and the pigment falls off. So now I mostly paint on Gessobord, which is slightly less absorbent and save the Claybord for pencil and ink drawings. 

Viola, 5x7 oil on Claybord,  finished.

Viola, detail, 5x7 oil on Claybord,  finished.

Viola, 5x7 oil on Claybord,  framed, finished.

You can find Viola in the new book "Flowers in Art: Contemporary International Artists" by Cindy Ann Coldiron. It is a beautiful book showcasing all types of flower art from over fifty international artists. The book is available from amazon.com and many other retailers.

*I have not been compensated in any way by Ampersand, I just love their products.

Working on This Weekend-11/2/2014

The main project I have going now is a big painting of a deer skull hanging on a fence. The light was great that day, sharp and wintry, the shadows on the skull were bright blue and the grasses were grey and gold.

Deer Skull, 16x20, preliminary drawing for a painting. 

Laying out the drawing and doing the transfer to the painting board was tedious, but it's finally done. I also decided to leave out the fence post and the tag on the right antler.

Deer Skull testing color schemes for a painting. 

Picking the colors is the next part, I want to do glazes of pure color over most parts of the painting. Glazes will glow and be intense, but that means all the colors have to be right from the beginning. First I tried Pthalo Blue, Indian Red, Yellow Ochre, Titanium White, and Vandyke Brown (the bigger sheet on the left). But the problem with Vandyke Brown is that it tends to look dead and gross when it mixes with white or yellow, and is hard to get dark enough because it's so transparent. So I tried again with Raw Umber, which is about the same color as Vandyke Brown, but plays nicely with other colors and is nice and dark. And I switched the Indian Red for Permanent Rose, because that makes a nice pretty purple with the blue and it will work on the parts of the shadows that look pink too. Currently I'm thinking Pthalo Blue, Permanent Rose, Raw Umber, Yellow Ochre and Titanium White will be the way to go.

Hall House Deer Skull, pencil on Bristol paper, 5x7, unfinished.

I also have a few small pencil and pen drawings floating around. This is another whitetail deer skull, from the tree in the backyard at my grandma's house.

Thistle, pencil on Bristol paper, 5x7.
Another small drawing, of a thistle seed pod in the winter. I haven't decided whether to use copic pen or pencil yet, maybe both. 

Beach Shells,  oil on Gessoboard,  5x7, unfinished.

Still working on the little sea shell picture, mostly frustrated with it though. I haven't figured out how to get the sand to look right, and the orange shell is a mess. Some areas are too dark and opaque, it looks blotchy, and I think I might need to repaint most of it to fix it. I used Neo Megilp on Gessoboard and ran into an issue with previous layers wiping off when I tried to scrub in the next color. Maybe sealing the layers with Galkyd Lite might be the way to go. Gamblin used to say not to mix their mediums, but now they say everything can be used together, so maybe I'll ask what they think before I try that.

AZ Blue Sky, 5x7, oil on a canvas panel, probably finished.

A little painting from a picture my mom took somewhere out near Big Lake, Arizona. I keep messing with it, but it's probably done now.