Quick weekend sketches

Some quick weekend sketching fun.  Ill be honest ins saying most of what I did was pick through garage sales, and watch the kids, but I did find a little time to  paint.  Not much mind you, but a little.  This first picture is of a stone statue that sits on my front porch.  I'm trying to paint more quickly and more intuitively, rather than trying to exactly replicate what I see.  So here it the cat in all its glory, just sitting there staring at traffic as it goes past.

This picture is one I'd previously drawn. It was just sitting there in my sketch pad begging for me to do something with ti.  So here it is.

Finally, the thing everyone wants.  A picture of an old cat tree.  LOL.  Well, I know one member of the family that couldn't get by without it.  (mostly because the dog can't climb.)

A light hearted posting today.  Enjoy, and thank you.

Owl at night

Ok, so they cant all be winners.  This one got away form me pretty early on, and I couldn't quite tell how to write the ship.  I just kept painting and painting.

After only about 5 minutes of painting I decided I didn't like this.  But having as thick a head as I have, I just kinda kept plugging away at it.  I will admit that the longer I painted, the better I felt about this.  I think one of my big problems is that when you paint owls, you have to put on two eyes.  You never see owl pictures with one eye.  The yes are what make the owl.  So... since the eyes are such a focal point of the owl, you have to have them look correct.  Right from the beginning (I mean even the drawing) I think my eyes were not quite right. Now they are different sizes, and that sets the painting off.  Grrrrrr... Oh well, that's why these are practice and I have an actual day job.

On the bright side, I painted lots of layers on this.  I would bet that there are places that have as many as 8 or 9 layers of paint.  And on the wing closest to you, you can really see that.

I've been trying to paint in more, lighter layers.  Trying to give my paintings a bit of depth.  The down side, is that in the back ground, on the inital layer, I had branches behind the owl.  Adding subsequent  layers has rendered them invisible.  Oh, well, take the good with the bad.

I still had fun painting this one.  I've got  friend who was looking for an owl painting, and this one just might end up in her office.  Thanks for viewing.

Oriole

Here is the latest.  It is, as you can see, an oriole.  Not sure what I liked so much about this picture when I stated painting it, but I think it turned out nice.  A lot of times, it seems when you paint birds, you end up doing them in profile.  Maybe I liked this one because it wasn't in profile.

He's just sitting there checking out his surroundings.

Hope yo enjoy this one.  Thanks for the views.

One Great Tit

Ah Hah!  Gotcha.  I posted a picture of a bird.  I don't think that's what you were expecting.  I love doing that.  Last year I posted a picture of some cantaloupe  melons.  I titled my post something like a great pair of melons.  I got more hits on that than I had on my site total to that point.

Well, as I have said so many times, I love painting birds.  Something about them makes me happy.  I always like to make up stories about them as I am painting.  And they all seem to have individual moods.

Usually when I paint, I paint from black an white pictures.  I did that with this one.  It really helps me see contrast.  But where I am able to see a lot of contrast, I often get my colors a little wrong.  On this guy, I should have had a grey tail.  He originally had a beautiful yellow tail, but once I finally looked at a color picture, I realized I should have given him a grey tail. I quickly tried to make an adjustment, but.....  

Ok, now let's talk about a little of the good for a second.  I basically painted this in about 4 layers.  I tried hard to leave his chest a little lighter and his belly a little darker.  I think I got it on the yellow.  And I was worried that his head wouldn't come out quite right when I started, but i really like how it turned out.

Well, hope you like this one.  Thank you.

European Robin in Winter

Yesterday was a really busy day for me.  Running non stop from the time I got to work, until nearly quitting time.  I did find just enough time to paint this little guy.  I must have been in a bit of a dour mood yesterday, because he seems to be in bit of a huff.  Let's hope I wasn't showing my frustrations.

This on is from a winter time picture.  The bird has obviously gotten his down up a bit to keep warm.  I tried to paint it with all cooler colors.

Well, he was fun for the 5 minutes or so I got to paint him.  Enjoy, and thaks for the view.

Painting with my daughter

One of the things I really love to do is paint with my daughter.  She has absolutely no fear about painting anything.  Her paintings might be one color, or they may be A plethora of colors.  But whatever the color just goes at it with little fear and great enthusiasm.  This past weekend we decided to paint a whale.  I spread some butcher paper on the kitchen floor and taped it down, she grabbed the iPad to look up whales.  She decided on the one to paint, in this case a killer whale, and I drew it.  I got her the largest paint brushes I had, and sat down beside her.  She told me some great stories about whales:  What they eat, what they like to do in their free time, where they go on vacation, etc.

There was supposed to be a lesson about whales to go along with the painting, but I think I got more of the lesson than she did.  Thats OK, I had a great time painting with her.

Old Truck in Front of Barn

Ok, first of all, let me say that this is still a work in progress.  Secondly, let me tell you a little story about this.

A colleague of mine, knowing my propensity for all things rusty and wheeled, sent me a picture he took of this truck.  I couldn't help but attempt a painting of it.  I drew it, and painted it.  It looked horrible.  I couldn't stand it.  Even my colleague looked at it and asked if I had regressed in my painting.

I literally started pouring on the water and rubbed most of the paint off the truck.  Having done that, I was left with a painting that still had color, but which was infused with tiny white dots where the paint had been taken off.  It still looked horrible.  So, here is what I decided to do.

I admitted to myself that I'd wasted a sheet of paper and used it for some practice.  I stood, instead of sitting, and started swabbing on paint, not worrying about color or exact placement of paint.  In short, painting more loosely.  You can see I got some red on the roof of the bar,  a big swab of blue on the side of the barn, some green for trees, and yellows, reds and greens for grass.  While still wet, I just flicked in a few weeds.  I touched up the paint on the truck, and POW, a huge difference. I couldn't believe the transformation of this picture. It went from something that was totally drab and blasé to something in which the truck actually stands out in the picture.

I know that I still have a little bit of work to do painting but I couldn't believe how much better it look when I stopped trying to paint so tightly.

I hope you all enjoy it I am going to be posting the finished painting soon. Thank you.

The End of Summer

Painting with my daughter has been an incredible sense of joy for me.  We sat down and painted a garden, and this is one of the things I came up with.  Watermelon from our garden.  Tried to give the melon a little depth, but not sure I really got it.  Regardless, it is so fun to paint with someone who has no fear in what she does.   I am trying to think less and do more with my painting, just like her.  Also trying to worry less about detail and focus more on getting the feeling of the painting across to the viewer.

Well, enjoy, and thanks for viewing.

House Plant

I promised that I was going to get back into panting,  Maybe I won't paint every day, but I'll put out more work than once a month like I did over the summer.  This past weekend, after I was doing domestic stuff (shampoo'ed the carpets in the entire house, cleaned two bathrooms, cleaned the kitchen, scooped the cat box and made myself a sandwich), I took a few minutes to draw and paint a house plant that I have.

The kids were at a birthday party, and I figured I had about 4 to 5 hours to get everything done.  After the previously mentioned housework, I figured I had at most 30 minutes left.  A quick drawing, a splash of paint, a quick second splash and I figured I was gonna be out of time very soon.  A quick clean up, and I was done.  Shortly after the kiddo's returned.  All in all a very successful day.

I bought a book of 90 lb paper last year, always intending to use it to do some sketching on, but never getting around to it.  Well, I pulled it out and used it for this painting.  I'll admit it's not quite as nice as my 140 lb paper, but its not bad for something quick.  As you can see, the paper didn't really buckle or bubble or anything.  There is some very slight warping, but given that the page was wet for 15 minutes I think it held up really well.  There are 40 sheets of paper in this book,   I'm looking forward to filling up the remaining 39.

Hope you enjoy.