Storm Clouds 3/11/16

This was the view out my office window a few months ago, one nice and half stormy afternoon. I tried to enhance the sense of depth in the painting, fixing what the photo lost. The photos I took looked flat, and lost how the layers of clouds moved into the distance. Some parts were also messy in the photos, so I moved clouds around and took some out.

Storm Clouds 3/11/16, oil on panel, 6x12 inches, finished.

Here's the progression from sketch to finished painting. This painting was done with no medium in the bottom layers, so the paint would stay wet and be blendable all day. The top layers did need a little Neo Megilp medium added to give transparency to the color, and make very thin glazes possible. For instance the blue sky has a very thin layer of pure blue over it that makes the color more intense.   

Storm Clouds 3/11/16, painting process.

I found a new tool to use for the under drawing this time, watercolor pencils. Regular pencil smudges too much to be used under oil paint, because graphite is non-polar just like oil paint, so they're attracted to each other. But I like a detailed drawing to start from and pencil is a natural fit for that because it can be very precise, and faint enough to not show through the paint, unlike ink or charcoal.

Starting sketch with watercolor pencil.

Water-soluble graphite doesn't interact with oil paint, so the drawing stays put nicely. The drawing can be painted over with water too, and the color gets much darker. I tried that at first, in the top left corner of the painting, but it wasn't really helping so I didn't do it anywhere else.

Storm Clouds 3/11/16, detail.

Here's a little detail from the left side of the painting, showing the smudgy grey clouds in the front, cumulus clouds behind them, and the background layers of clouds.
This painting is currently for sale in my Etsy shop here.

Working on This Weekend- 7/10/16

This is the painting I spent the most time on this weekend, and it's finally cooperating. I had a lot of doubts about whether or not I could make the sand look good, and the first few tries didn't go so well. Sand hasn't been easy for me in other paintings, it has a funny texture and more colors than it should. So to try to trick myself into finishing this painting I decided to do the background first, and save the flowers for last. That seems to have worked, now it's close to done, just needs another layer or two, to detail the sand and make the flowers pop.

White Beach Flowers, oil on panel, 5x7 inches, unfinished.

This painting is coming along smoothly, it's a Celestial flower with a tiny spider. These flowers are fragile and only last for a few hours, and the spider hanging out was a lucky find. Once I got close to the flower to start taking pictures the spider put his legs up like he was trying to scare me off. I'm happy with how deep the background looks, and how the bright grasses stand out. One thing left to fix is that the values of the lights and darks are too far apart on the flower head. That makes the light looks like harsh afternoon sunlight, not the last evening light it actually was. So I'll probably try a faint blue glaze all over it, to even out the values and match the color a little better.

Celestial and Spider, oil on panel, 5x7 inches, unfinished.

Ducks! This is a silly drawing I've been slowly working on for a while. Duckies are surprisingly easy to draw.

Ducks! sketch and White Beach Flowers, both in progress.

My latest little hobby has been making wire wrapped rings. Here's one made with 20 and 26 gauge coated copper wire, and twisted strands of electrical wire in the middle, it's about a size 6. These will be for sale on my Etsy store soon.

Copper wire wrapped ring.

In Progress- Storm Clouds 3/11/16

Clouds are so much fun to paint! These are some storm clouds from an afternoon a few weeks ago. I experimented with doing the under drawing in water color pencil, and that worked really nicely. You can see how the left side is darker, I was trying to draw first and then brush it with water, but it got surprisingly dark and smeared. So on the right side I just used them like regular pencils, and painted right over it with no problems.

Storm Clouds 3/11/16, 6x12 inches, oil on panel, unfinished.

 The first layer was painted without any medium added, so the paint would stay wet and workable all day, and I could save the mixed up colors for next time. It's a great time saver to be able to pull out the old colors instead of having to remix, and it will match for sure. Mixing the same exact color twice can be tricky sometimes. 

Storm Clouds 3/11/16, 6x12 inches, oil on panel, unfinished.

This is the second layer. After the first layer dried, I went back to rework some areas, and add brighter whites. From the photo, it's kind of hard to tell which clouds are in front, so I was trying to make that more clear. Some of the areas needed to have a little stronger color, like the blue parts of the sky, so I added Neo Meguilp medium to the paint and glazed it on. The medium makes the paint more translucent, so it can catch more light and look brighter.

Storm Clouds 3/11/16, reference photo.

Working on This Weekend- 5/17/15

I finished a few little things this week, that's always fun. All three of them are now available in my Etsy store.

Winter Thistle, mixed media drawing on paper, 5x7 inches, finished.

I've been trying to finish up some of the many little drawings that I have floating around, and I started this one quite a while ago. I started the drawing by transferring the pencil outlines, tracing them with pen, and then scrubbing in shading with charcoal. Tracing with pen works nicely, because it doesn't smear or disappear when the charcoal is added over it. After that I refined the dark areas with more pen work, sharp pencils and charcoal, and added in the white highlights with white acrylic paint. 

Beach Shells, oil on panel, 5x7 inches, finished.

This is another picture I gave up on and put away before finishing. But I tried again, and now I think it looks finished. The sand has shape and interest to it, and the shadows on the shells make sense now. 

Dam Sunset, oil on panel, 5x7 inches, finished.

I love the colors in this one, and after a few tries the grasses look good too.

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

Still working on this one, I tried another color on the fence, and this time it looks better. The fence and sidewalk at the bottom still need a little more work, but it's close to done.

Working on This Weekend- 5/10/15

 I finished a few things this weekend, trying to clean up a bit so I can start new pictures.

Dry Wash, charcoal drawing on paper, 10x14 inches, finished.

This drawing came from a photo my mom took in the desert a few years ago, of the patterns in a dry creek bed after a rain. It's charcoal on soft paper, with highlights in white pastel and white acrylic paint.

Beach Shells, oil on panel, 5x7 in, finished.

 I started this little painting about a year ago, and then didn't like how it turned out. But I reconsidered abandoning it and worked on the background a little more. Now it's more finished looking, the sand is interesting to look at and has a sense of distance and shape.

Dam on West, oil on canvas panel, 5x7 in, maybe finished.

 This is a little sunset painting I started a few months ago and then didn't know how to finish. I added detail to the grasses in front and worked on the road today, and maybe it might be done now.

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

 Still tinkering with this one, the clouds were easy, but the tree and the fence in the front have been trickier. And for some reason the colors are hard to photograph, they come out looking strange no matter the settings. 

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

Working on the grasses in the background of this painting now, but there's still a lot to do, just because of the size.

Working on This Weekend- 4/19/2015

Kinishba Ruins, oil on canvas panel, 11x14inches, unfinished.

I started the sky on this painting today. It was an afternoon in the fall when this picture was taken and the sky wasn't really a rich blue, more of a hazy, dirty blue. The pure mix of blue and white was too bright looking, so I ended up adding Yellow Ochre into the mix to get the right color.

Winter Deer Skull, oil on panel, 16x20inches, unfinished.

A little more work on the background here, I added in greys all over the background, trying to tie together all the sections I've been working on separately until now. Overall, it's kind of a mess at this point, but the end is in sight finally.

Little Pen Sketch, 6x8 inches, copic pen on bristol paper.

This is a little pen drawing, just for fun, using some pictures from Yellowstone as reference.

Here's a few photos from this weekend, the weather has been so nice, with lots of rain, and the plants and animals are growing like crazy.

Butterfly on a thistle.

Whitetail deer.

The deer here are ridiculous, this little buck was only a few feet away from me, and basically ignoring me. But it was mostly dark so the picture is a little grainy.

Guara flower, front view.

I knew there were guaras in this spot, but I couldn't find any when I walked by at first. When I went back that way later, after the sun had set, they were everywhere. Since it was too dark for pictures outside I grabbed one stem and took it home for better lighting. These flowers fall apart very quickly, I'm amazed they even manage to get pollinated.

Guara flower, back view.

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.

Three Pink Roses

Here's the finished painting of pink roses from the San Antonio Botanical Gardens, in front of the Auld House. The Auld house is a historic farm house built in the 1880's that was donated to the San Antonio Botanical Garden, it was moved from the original location and rebuilt in the garden. 

Three Pink Roses, oil on panel, 8x10 inches, finished,

Three Pink Roses, detail, oil on panel, 8x10 inches, finished,

Three Pink Roses, detail, oil on panel, 8x10 inches, finished,

Three Pink Roses, progression, oil on panel, 8x10 inches, finished,

For sale here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/224530506/three-pink-roses-original-oil-painting?

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-12/21/2014

Mainly worked on two paintings this weekend, Three Pink Roses and the Winter Deer Skull.

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

 I went back to the shadow areas of the skull and
 added a light blue layer, with some texture. Then I redrew the fence wires and the cracks in the skull with Raw Umber, too.

I originally wanted to do only glazes of pure colors on this painting, but that isn't giving me the results I want, so today I tried working wet in wet on the background grasses. It worked really well, but it will be tedious to get all the background area covered. Galkyd tends to get sticky and messy very quickly, within an hour, so that means I can only cover small areas at a time, with small batches of mixed colors.

Three Pink Roses, oil paint on panel, 8x10 inches, unfinished.
 Mostly got the background out of the way here, now I can work on the fun part, the flowers! I swear painting backgrounds is like eating your veggies before the good parts of dinner. The first layer had already been done on the background, so this layer was easier to apply and adjust. I made three shades of grey, using a dark Torrit Grey from a few years ago, plus pure white and the grey for the darks; and added color all over, working from lightest to darkest with the same little filbert brush, and then blended it all with a soft brush. After the blending I cleaned up the stems and flowers with a clean brush dipped in mineral spirits.

Geraniaceae Seeds

I have a hard time deciding whether to call these pictures drawings or paintings, but it was an fun experiment, no matter the name. I transferred pencil drawings from photos that I took, painted in the background, shaded in the pencils drawings, painted over the drawings with thin washes of acrylic inks, and then scratched out highlights with a knife. I worked back and forth between the pencil and ink and scratching out whites, Claybord* is great for that because the surface is smooth and deep enough that it can be scratched off a few times without scratching through.

Geranium Seed #1,  pencil and acrylic ink on Claybord, 8x8 inches, 12/2013.

On two of the pictures (#1 and#3) I used multiple layers of acrylic ink to fill in the background, which worked pretty well, it just took a few layers to get even coverage. For #2 I tried acrylic paint, and it wasn't as easy to work with as the ink, it chipped in places when I scratched out the details. The paint also left lines that had to be smoothed carefully, so I'll probably stick with ink in the future.

Geranium Seed #2,  pencil with acrylic ink and paint on Claybord, 8x8 inches, 12/2013

The shine of the pictures made them hard to photograph, I tried several times and had no luck, even going all out and building a black light box didn't help.  Then I realized that I could scan anything small enough to fit on the scanner bed, so I tried it and had great luck.

Geranium Seed #3,  pencil and acrylic ink on Claybord, 8x8 inches,  4/2014.

The seeds are something in the Geraniaceae family, I'm not sure exactly what species because I didn't take pictures of the plants themselves. The seeds were stuck in my socks after hiking at one of the local parks, so I brought them home and took some pictures to work from. They're common Texas wildflowers found near San Antonio, Texas.  The seeds in this family spring out as they dry, launch away, and stab into to things to get themselves dispersed. The amazing thing that I found out when trying to identify them is that the coil changes with the humidity, getting longer when wet and shorter as it dries, and will screw the seed into the ground.

  

I did a little experiment by tracing a dry seed on a piece of paper, soaking it on water and seeing if it expanded any. Turns out that it did expand, after a few minutes, and within half an hour it was back to the original shape. 

Geranium Seed #1,  detail.

Geranium Seed #3, detail. 

Geranium Seed #3, detail.

For more information on the way the seeds explode out and bury themselves, see this paper:
Evangelista D; Hotton S; Dumais J. 2011. The mechanics of explosive dispersal and self-burial in the seeds of the filaree, Erodium cicutarium (Geraniaceae). Journal of Experimental Biology. 214: 521-529. 

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