Cool Jazz

SOLD!

Ok, so... I am trying to stretch my boundaries.  I've a friend that asked me to paint a picture of a drum kit for him.  He is a drummer and has a small band that plays together.  Well, I didn't want to just paint a plain old drum kit with nothing interesting going on around it.

At first I thought I should add some instruments to the drum kit.  Make a band out of it.  So, looking for some picture from which to draw inspiration, I got a number of instruments to draw, figured a place to put them on the paper, and began drawing.    You can see the original sketch to the left.  I actually thought it looked pretty good.  Drum kit mostly in the middle, instruments in front a bit larger, instruments in back a bit smaller.  Got it all good.

Well, I thought I would try to change from the really stiff painting I normally do to a much looser form.  I wet the paper and set about working.  It's difficult because if the paper is too wet, you just get sloppy colors, and if it is too dry, they don't bleed together.  Well, I tried for a blue background in the center and some red coloring as you moved toward the edge.  Then to color the instruments.  I wanted to paint them while the paper was still wet if I could (mind you I'm working furiously to do this), because I though some bleed out of the lines might look cool too.  Well, I got some, and some I didn't  The second layer of color on the instruments really brought them off the page just as I hoped.  The splatter is there to provide some interest in the painting (maybe i missed my mark on that?).

But I'm happy with this.  I'll definitely keep trying to perfect this technique.

Cyrano de Bergecat

I don't really know why I think this little guy has such a big nose, but I do.  I ran out of time painting this one, and so its a little unfinished.  But I still thought it was good enough to put up here.

I look at this picture and it looks like his nose is really bit.  I don't really think that it is, but to mee it looks like it.  For what he is, I think he came out pretty good.  This is another one that I am gonna use as practice.  I think that a few more and I'll be fairly proficient with cats.

Enjoy

GMC Truck

This painting for sale.  6x9  $20

Well, here is the latest old truck.  I keep thinking that the last one I've done is gonna be the las tone I'm gonna do, but.....  As a result, here is the latest one.  As you can see this one is sitting on the edge of a field with a lot of grass and weeds growing around it.

I really like the distant hill.  You can see that it is pretty blue and really looks like its way back there.  I think I got that right on this painting (not always the case on my paintings).  

I did one thing drastically different on this one than on others.   I traced a picture using blue carbon paper.  I don't know how much of the blue you can see, but it was really different painting with blue lines as opposed to grey lines.   I don't know why it should make much of any difference, but it really did.

Also, i thought this truck had been taken slightly better care of than some of the cars and trucks I have painted in the past, so you can see much more of the paint job.  I don't now why this one had to be yellow, but i just called to me to be yellow.  Well, hope you all enjoy.

Not This One, The Otter One

SOLD

This is a little change from the norm for me.  When I started painting, just about all I did was wildlife in and around my town of Morro Bay.  Then at some point, I got away from it and started painting all sorts of other things, recently its been cars and trucks.  Well, this one brings me right back home.

I found this picture on line.  An otter all wrapped up in kelp.  For those of you who have never seen them do it, the love to.  I don't know what benefit they get from it, but they love to wrap themselves up in it.

Here is the picture I started with.  Just a basic outline of the otter in the water.  (apologies for the darkness of the photo, the flash on my iphone was on, but must not be quite bright enough. )

The next step was to add fur and kelp.  I kept the kelp really yellow at this point.  I wanted it to really stand out when you saw it on the finished painting.  To do that I make it really bright to start with, and then add more colors over top.  Blues, reds and browns will make the final colors of the kelp.

The real challenge is to paint the fur without making it all run together   I chose to make the feet a little darker, and the face a little lighter.  Hopefully it all worked out.

As you can see the finished product has water around the otter and just a bit of reflection.  

I hope you all enjoy this painting.  I really had fun painting it.

Morro Bay from Abalone Shell Beach

Abalone Shell Beach is my name for the beach and not the official name of the beach.  I believe its actually Bluff Park Beach.  I call it Abalone Shell Beach because the beach is made of abalone shells that are probably 10 ft deep or more.  There used to be an abalone cannery that sat at the top of the hill.  What became this beach was the area where they discarded their shells.  As a result they just stacked up and stacked up and stacked up.   Standing on the beach, you can look back at the bluff above you and see several feet of shells above the height of the beach, and looking into the water, the shells stretch as far as you can see into the water.  Its a fantastic place sit.  There are lots of boats tied up there, and I have tried to paint them before.  This is my best effort.  Hope you enjoy.

Another One??? Really??

This painting for sale.  6x8 $15

You love it, you know you do, you can't wait to see the next old, decrepit car sitting in a field.  Well, your wish is my command.

To be honest, I'm not completely sure what car this is, but I'm sure its pretty old.  Its got a lot of weeds growing around it, and it looks like one of its tires has fallen off.  It's got a yellow license plate, obviously out of date.  Hmmm who could have had yellow plates back in the day?  Well, it really doesn't matter.  The car has found a nice home under an old tree.  Hope nobody totally forgets about this old car.

This one, and yesterdays, are the first old cars I have really done with any color (other than rust).  It got me thinking, how come I don't see more color on old cars.  After doing a little research I found that most cars like the ones I paint have a fair amount of paint on them.  I've just been so focused on the rust, I neglected to see it.  So, from now on, when I paint an old car or truck, I'm gonna do a better job of incorporating some of the cars paint.  That doen't mean there wont be a fair amount of rust, but there is definately gonna be a bit more color.

Hope you enjoy this little painting.  I had a ball painting it.

Old Dodge

This painting for sale. 6x9  $15

This isn't a picture I planned on posting this week.  I had been working on this at home and had been taking my time doing it.  For some reason, I brought it into work with me, and then felt compelled to finish it here.

I've do this with just about every painting I do, and I thought I might share with you all.  My friend, Bob Ross, always says to make up a story about what it is that you are  painting.  When you do this, you will create a better connection to the picture.

This car is obviously sitting on a plain somewhere,  I imagine it is South Dakota.  The summer is gone, fall is in there air.  There hasn't been much rain for the past several months and the grasses are going dormant just before winter sets in.  Here the car sits, just rusting away out in a field.  Probably there are animal trails all around it.

Well, for what it is, here it is.  Hope you all enjoy it.

Portrait

Ok, so, the art site to which I subscribe holds monthly competitions.  This months topic is portraits.  I've never really done portraits, and as such wanted to give this a go.  I did a quick search for portraits on google and a portrait similar to this popped up.  I hope I did it justice.  There are a few things I really like about it.  One is, I think the shading on the shirt is great.  with just a few strokes of color, it totally looks like there is a collar on the shirt and a few button holes.

The nose was intersting to do.  I didn't really draw a nose, just figured if I shaded everything but the nose, it would have to stand out and look like a nose.  I'm not about to say I nailed it, but I think I had a great first effort.  What do you all think, leave a comment.  Thanks, and as always, enjoy.

Some Sketching From My Back Yard

I was reorganizing my office this morning (It was badly overdue).   For those of you who don't know, my office has many many paintings taped to the walls.  The picture below is just one portion of one wall.













Well, while I was moving the pictures, I noticed that I had painted on the backs of many of them.  A way to save paper as I am learning to paint, no doubt.  One painting in particular, an old rusted truck (go figure) which is the one that got me started painting old rusted cars and trucks in the first place, had a few quick sketches on the back of it.  I remember doing them.  I did them in two settings.

   
The first setting, which, if I remember correctly, was done in about a half hour in my back yard. They came out ok, but not steller.  They were done when I started outlining the subject matter of the paintings.

The last one, if memory serves me right, was done the next day.  Living in Morro Bay, it's hard not to paint the Rock.  It is hard, however, to get a good painting of it.  It is kind of just a big hump out at the end of the beach with nothing else around it.  Well, this one was done with me sitting on my front porch.  Before you ask, yes, that is my view, and yes there are two different types of trees that frame the rock.  Well, without further ado, here it is.  Hope you enjoy.

I really feel like I learn a lot when I go back and look at these old paintings.  I can almost remember everything I was thinking while I was painting them.  I can also see how far I have come from these meager beginnings.  If I were to redo these, and I may, they would look radically different now (and with any luck, radically better). 

Next week, I am hoping to have at least 3 new painting.  No quick sketches like these.

Going Back On My Word

This painting for sale 9x12  $30

 Well it didn't take long for me go revert to my old ways.  A short few posts ago I swore off cars for kittens. It looks like I was abel to keep that word for all of a week.

With that, what we have here is a Studebaker.  I can just imagine this cars sitting, baking in the sun somewhere in Texas, or Oklahoma, Arizona or someplace like that. The blazing sun has cracked the pavement and provided no relief to the dry, brown dirt on the other side of the parking lot.

I didn't take pictures for the whole process this time.  This is the first one I took.  You can see the sky is already done, but there is plenty to do on the rest of the painting.  I tried hard to put in some coud details on this painting instead of just a plain sky.  It's a bit hard since we don't have many real clouds here to look at in real life.

I've jumped ahead quite a bit here.  You can see the shelter in the background is done as well as the sidewalk, the windows, and the chrome on the car.  If you look at the shadows, they are different than the final product.  I thought I had them right when I put them in,  then I stepped back to look.  Wow! was I ever wrong.  I had to go back in and fix them.  They look a lot better now.

Finally, a few finishing touches and the painting was done.  I strengthened a few of the colors and put in the trees and weeds.  They seem simple but they really do add a lot to the painting.

Hope you all enjoy.

Cat 3

SOLD!

Ok, so I am back on animals full time now.  Here is a nice calico cat I've been working on.  With the background colors, it kind of looks like some kind of Oriental painting or something.  I'm really facing a dilema.  How much fur, or detail do I put into these paintings.  It seems as if I put in none, it's way too little, but if I put in what I think there ought to be it's way too much.  Maybe I'll just have to stick with whiskers   I don't really know what to do about it, but I am determined to figure it out.  I guess you all are going to have to get use to seeing some animals for a while I work it out.    Enjoy

Test Sketching

Ok, so I've moved past truck.  What do you think the next thing I would paint is?  Well, it's kitties.  Here are two that I have quickly done.  They are just quick sketches to give me a little indication of how I might paint them.  I never really know where to start with each painting so these sketches are valuable in helping me figure it out.  I think these came out kinda cute.  Be sure to look for bigger better ones next week.

I was a bit unsure of how to paint fur with watercolors.  I originally thought I might not need that much detail, but as it turns out, I don.  But it looks like there is so much going on in the tail that if I were to paint the fur on the entire cat, it might be too much.  My solution, detail on the closest part, much less detail on everything else.  It kind of worked.

This cat is sleeping in a blanket.  I tried a bit of the same technique:  more detail on the head, less as you go back.   Again I'm not sure I really got all of it, but it's a start.  At least in this one the blanket looks like it has some folds to it.