I've been Doodelwashed (and that's a good thing)

I've been doodlewashed!!  Our good friend Charlie over at Doodlewash asked me if I would do a small piece for his website.  He's got quite a few people asking for videos for beginners, and boom! there I was.  

Check out his website.  Not only is Charlie a fantastic artist with interesting paintings and takes on his paintings.  He also asks guest artists (such as myself) to submit for his site.  The result is a website that is replete with interesting and beautiful artwork.  Please take a moment and check out his site.  

You wont be disappointed!

Are Grapes Really Made Out of Rehydrated Raisins?

Ok, so, like so many of my other paintings, I had an idea of what I wanted to paint, and then set about searching for the right picture.  In the course of looking for that right picture, I take about 300 detours and something completely different catches my eye.  This painting falls into that same category.  I started by searching for a truck to paint.  Don't ask me how I made it to grapes, I couldn't tell you.

What I can tell you is that this painting is not painted on watercolor paper.  It is painted on Mixed Media paper. Its the same weight, but has slightly different properties.  In my little region of the world, the air is quite dry and I have trouble keeping my paper even slightly damp as I paint.  As a result, I have to be very careful or I have A LOT of hard edges.  This paper has a slightly different surface that typical watercolor paper.  It's like its a bit slicker, or harder.  At any rate, this paper gives the paint a chance at flowing on the surface without immediately being drawn into the paper and drying out.  I found the paper in several different weights,   I bought a book of 90 lb paper to use for quick sketching, but this painting was done on 140 lb paper, just like my normal watercolor paper.

I made a concerted effort to use that to my advantage in this paintings.  You can see how wet the paper got if you look at the largest grape leaf and at the post.

I did an initial wash on this painting not worrying too much about what colors were where, and not trying to keep everything in between the lines.  Just tried to get the right colors in the right general area.  Then I went back an painted everything but the veins in the leaves.  What was the most fun for me was painting the dark between the grapes.  The grapes started as just a giant blue, red, purple blob.  Then I painted the in between parts and, Ka-Pow, there were grapes.  That was fun.  Iv'e actually got another version of this painting that I am working on.  Slightly different color scheme, but same basic grapes and leaves.  Hope you enjoy this one and that one.

More Sketching

Another lunchtime sketching session today!  We all walked across campus to the market and sat at picnic tables.  I didn't have the best view, so i decided to paint what was right in front of me, literally.

Ed was busily painting the CAMPUS MARKET sign above the doorway while I was painting him.  When we were done and comparing paintings, we all had a good chuckle over my painting of Ed.

Yes, I know that the painting is completely bisected by the umbrella pole, that is kind of the point.  We are trying to paint exactly what we see.  I could have looked around the pole to paint Ed, but for what we were doing this is much more accurate, fun and funny.

I'm having just a bit of trouble with this paint kit.  I feel like the paint is either too strong or too weak, and I can't quite get it right.  The background in this painting should have been weaker to push it back further, and the cement table should have been a bit darker to bring it forward.  Well, live and learn.  It was still fun.

Smoke Stacks

If you have not been to Morro Bay before, then you probably don't know that there are actually two different thing that dominate our skyline.  The first is, of course, Morro Rock.  The second, which most people think of as an eyesore, are the smoke stacks of the power plant.  Personally, I think that the stacks have been here long enough that if they ever were to go away, people would work hard to find a way to restore them.  I've been working on a way to include them in a painting for a while now.  Well, I finally found one.  I painted this very quickly and loosely.  I think rock came out pretty good, and I even like the bushes in front of it.  I couldn't help but paint someone walking down the road.  All in all, I think its a pretty good representation of what they both actually look like.  Hope you enjoy.

College of Business

This is a painting of  the back side of the College of Business.  The closest building is Crandall Gym.  I've painted the front of it which you can see in a previous post.  Yes, the grey thing in the middle of the painting is a post that is really there. Could I have drawn it out of the picture, sure, but I thought it would be more interesting with it in.  I think i did a pretty good job with the HVAC system on top of the building.