Working on This Weekend-3/16/15

I got a lot of painting done this weekend, and started a few new pieces too. Mostly I was trying to avoid working on the deer skull, it's at a tedious place, working on the background. So I started a few new things on Saturday and worked mostly on the deer skull on Sunday.

Horse drawing with Copic pen, 5x7 on Bristol paper, unfinished.

Little drawing of a horse I started a while ago and worked on a bit this week.

AZ Aspen, 9x12, oil on canvas panel, unfinished.

This will be a painting of an aspen with yellow leaves, from northern Arizona last fall.  The sky was such a deep blue that day, and I think I got pretty close to the right color. I tried a few colors from Williamsburg oil paints, and their Sevres Blue has been very useful, especially for skies, because it lightens dark blues without looking washed out.

Kinishba Ruins, 11x14 in, oil on canvas panel, not quite started yet.

Another picture I took on my last trip to Arizona, at the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. These are the Kinishba Ruins, a Mogollon and Anasazi great house site from the 1200s, that are sadly in pretty bad shape. The ruins have been partially restored a few times, some walls propped up and such, but still need a lot of work. I just picked the colors here, and tok some notes. I need to lay out a drawing on the panel before I start painting, since there's a few things that will look wrong if I'm not careful about drawing them.

Texas Spring Flowers, oil on panel, 8x10 inches, unfinished.

This will be a little spring wildflower painting, from a picture my mom took a few years ago. I used a panel by a brand I'd never tried before and the surface was very slippery. So I just tried to get a first layer down to add some tooth, hopefully adding the next paint layer will be easier.

Winter Deer Skull, oil on panel, unfinished.

The deer skull picture slowly continues, I'm working on the background right now. About the bottom two-thirds have a dark layer done, and I'll finish the top third, then add the highlight and bright grasses on top. I think there will be a lot of adjusting lights vs. darks once the background is closer to done, to keep it from competing with the skull too much.

Working on This Weekend-2/7/2015

 Here's some of the stuff I've been working on this last month. A charcoal drawing and a few paintings: 

Dry Wash, charcoal on paper, 12x16 inches, unfinished.

This drawing is based on a picture my mom took a few years ago. It's patterns left in the desert sand after a rain. Only on the second layer, so the darks haven't really been built up yet, and I'll probably add the brightest white highlights with acrylic paint after I get done blending the charcoal layers. I don't like using white pastel because it mostly disappears when sprayed with fixative, and I like my drawing to be sealed and safe to handle.

Toxic Beach Foam, oil on canvas panel, 5x7 inches, unfinished.

This little thing is just an experiment, playing with sand mixed in the paint, and combining a few colors I had in mind.

Winter Deer Skull, oil on panel, 16x20 inches, unfinished.

Still working on the deer skull, kind of forgot about it for a few weeks, added a few things on the background this week.

Dam on West, oil on canvas panel, 5x7 inches, unfinished.

This is the first session for this painting, about an hour, and I really like the colors on it so far.

Three Pink Roses, oil on panel, 8x10inches, unfinished.

Almost finished with the roses, I worked on the shadows and the stems today, probably need one more sitting to fill in some of the pinks and whites. Some of the colors on the flowers look grey in the photo, so I tried that and it looked dead and wrong, so I wiped it off and tried a light blue, but that looked funny too. Then I tried a light purple instead, and that really popped.  It's funny how colors can be so tricky. Sometimes if I get really stuck figuring out a color I'll open the picture in Paint and use the eyedropper tool to see exactly what it is.

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-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. 

Beach Quickies

Little 5x7 oil paintings done a few months ago, before and during a trip to Port Aransas. All done in less than two hours.

Clouds and Seaweed, 5x7 oil on canvas panel, finished, 2014.

Pelicans, 5x7 oil on canvas panel, finished, 2014.

Morning Color Sketch, 5x7 oil on canvas panel, finished, 2014.

Night Clouds, 5x7 oil on canvas panel, finished, 2014.

Quickies

All of these paintings were done in less than three hours, and mostly in one sitting. I had to come back after the first layer dried and add in the bright whites in the clouds. 

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

Weaver's Needle, detail of clouds.

Port A Dunes,  5x7 inches, oil on canvas panel, finished.

Port A Dunes, detail.

Wupatki Grasses, 5x7 inches, oil on canvas panel, finished.

Long Landscapes

Two 4x12 inch landscape paintings on canvas. First one is of Four Peaks in Arizona, and the second is a view from Big Bend, in west Texas. 

Four Peaks, 4x12 in, oil on canvas, probably finished.

Four Peaks, detail. 

I changed the color of the blue in the sky on Four Peaks, the first color just didn't match. So the clouds aren't quite blended to the sky in a few places, but I don't think I'll spend any more time on this one.

Big Bend, 4x12 in, oil on canvas, finished. 

The sky is one of my favorites, it came out a subtle blue and blends into the haze of a hot afternoon. 

Big Bend, foreground detail.  

The paint on the rocks at the bottom is shiny from the Galkyd medium, to help it stand out from the far away background. The sky and the mid-ground was painted with no medium, so it's matte. I also found  a new trick for making really thin lines. The grasses were very tedious to do with a paintbrush, so I dipped a thread in paint, pulled it tight and stamped it down. Paint stayed exactly in a thin line, and some of it kept some raised texture. I think curved shapes could be made by carefully dropping the string from one end, too. 

Working on This Weekend-9/8/2013

Spent most of the weekend varnishing completed paintings and getting ready for a show. I did spend Sunday morning painting though, and got one small painting finished and another one started.

Port Aransas Dunes, 5x7 oil painting, finished.