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.

Last One of This Series

Well, at long last I have come to the end of painting old rusty trucks.  I'll do some more of them at some point in time, but right now, it's time to move on.  I've really enjoyed painting them, and have learned a ton.  Also, I've learned there is a ton more to learn.  Oy Vey!  Well, it's a good thing I'm still having fun with it and want to keep going.  I really do think this is the best one I have done.  I'm posting several pictures again this time too.  I got some good feedback about it last time and am going to try to incorporate pictures of the steps more often.

 Here is the start.  A simple drawing.  Only the truck and a little bit of the fence.  I've moved the center of interest off the center of the paper.  Hopefully, it make the painting just a bit more interesting.

The underpinning of the truck body.  You can see the green and red as well as the rust color.  More layers to come.

I'm not sure this is the perfect place to start, but I get so hyped to see the truck come to life that I start with it.  I may have made a small mistake by painting the bumper at this point, but I can fix it later if I need to.

Background, and foreground go in.  Nothing with any detail, just some basic colors.  Note there is just a hint of blue for a sky.   Trees will cover the rest.  I'm not sure why I did the inside of the cab and the grill.  Mostly I think it was because I was being interrupted while I was painting and that is just how it turned out.  Also, you can tell I added another layer to the truck body.

A few trees and some shadows.  I am thinking of leaving the trees like this, but they look a little to airy.  I think I will eventually have to paint a layer over them.  Some shadowing under the front clip of the truck and it really comes to life.  It's amazing what a little color can do some times.

Well, I painted over the leaves of the trees in the background.  I've got to do all my detail work on the truck now before I put the foreground on.  I have to do this so that if I paint over the truck with the foreground, it will really push it back into the painting.    At this point, I'm worried about the grill.  The picture I'm painting from shows the grill as black, or at least really dark.  I don't want it to be a big black hole in the center of the painting.

This painting for sale.  9x12  $30

Here it is, the finished painting.  The wheel is done, the grill is done, and the weeds help to push the truck back into the painting.  I think it turned out great. I couldn't be happier with it.  I hope you all like it too.

Camping, VW Style

SOLD!

Yes, Yes, Yes, I know I have painted this picture before.  I originally saw the photo that this was taken from and thought of my neighbors Jim and Karen.  They have a VW very similar to this, and go camping once a month or so.  The first rendition of this was OK, but that was the problem with it.  It was just OK.  There was nothing special about it at all.  This one is far and away better. Im working hard to allow the paint to mix on the paper instead of in the palette and I think I accomplished that.

I started this painting by putting down a light wash of yellow and green.  It covered everything except the person sitting at the picnic table and the posts.  After looking at it I panicked.  I needed to have the roof of the camper white.  I put a second layer on everything except the van and the person and the posts.  Still the roofline looked yellow.  I painted the van.  Still the roof looked yellow.  Everything looked yellow.  I painted the trees. Suddenly, not everything looked yellow.  The van actually stood out away from the background.  and there was a clear break between the hills in the distance and the camping space.  The trees worked great to break up the picture and give it the depth it needed.

After painting the posts, the picnic table and the person, I looked again.  Not too bad.  I might actually be getting the hang of this.  I put the shadows on, and the grass around the posts and that's a wrap.  I like the way it look.  The mostly brownish grass is exactly what we have out here.  It really looks like this could be a campsite on the central coast.

I'm hoping to see Jim and Karen this weekend so I can give this to them.  Hope they like it.  Hope you all enjoy it.  I had fun painting it.

Another Old Truck

THIS PAINTING SOLD

Another old truck. And surprise, its the same one as before.  The previous one is gone, off to someone else to look after it and I liked it so much I had to have one of my own.  Thus, this second painting of it.  I did a few things differently on this one.

First, i tried to make the hill on the right hand side a little more mottled.  It looks like there is some texture to it now.  Additionally I made it a little bluer.  It really makes it look like it recedes off in the distance.  I also tried to put in another level of weeds around the truck.  I thought this would really make it look like the back is way back and the front much closer.  I don't know how successful that was, but I don't think it takes away from the picture either.

The truck is mostly the same.  As I learned to paint shadows, I learned that they should be a blue grey and laid over top of the underlying color.  I 'm not sure that that really makes for the best shadow areas. on this one, I tried to just put in a little darker more intense coloring in the corners so it looks like a bit of a shadow but nothing too harsh.  Looking at it, I probably could have been even more aggressive with the color.

All in all, I am really proud of this one.  I think it is at least as good as the first one.  If anyone wants to buy, I'll sell.  Just send an email and we can talk terms.

Old Truck in a Field

SOLD!

This was a great picture to paint.  I lived doing it.  The picture I took it from was really dark, and I wasn't sure I would be able to lighten it up and still keep the same look.  I think I did a pretty good job.

Well, I tried to make the colors of the truck and the grasses in front of it brighter and more intense that those at the top.  That pulled the truck foreword in the picture.  It really does look like the field in the top right hand corder is a long way off.  Also, I tried the trick with the ground in between the rows of vines and the vines themselves.  They are darker the closer you get to the bottom of the picture, indicating that they are closer to you.

The chrome was a challenge.  How do you paint old rusty chrome.  Well, the answer for me was not too.  I merely made the chrome stilghtly different colors away from what I thought would be the most reflective part.  So between the top of the hood and the diamond in the middle of the grill, the chrome is brightest (again, allowing that to seem further toward the viewer).  As the chrome goes back from there, it gets darker, and of course as it goes down it gets darker.  If you look closely, you can see different colors in the chrome.

I tried to paint the body of the truck in different sections as they would have been put together.  The door, the cab, the bonnet, the fenders, the grill, each got painted at different times.  I was hoping they would come out slightly different colors to make it seem as though the paint is oxidizing at slightly different rates.  You will have be the judge.

My favorite part of this painting is the big dark front wheel.  It turned out great.  The color, the shadow, even the hub.  I love it.

Hope you all enjoy viewing this as much as

blue door

Getting back to the doorway theme I was working on a while ago, here is a blue door.  The proportions aren't quite right, the angles aren't quite right, bars over the door aren't quite straight, but for some reason I like this little picture.

Broken Down and Rusting

Firstly, let me apologize for the quality of this image.  The size of the painting is larger than my scanner can hold so I had to snap a pic with my camera.  Obviously it didn't do quite as good a job as the scanner.

I've had a book of great pictures from across America for quite a while now.  One of the pictures had a truck in a field in front of a barn.  I like the truck a lot, the barn, not so much.  So here is my take on the truck.

When I drew the truck, I was thinking to myself, just dont screw it up.  When I had finished I thought I did a pretty good job, and wanted to take a picture so I could use the image again.  Then I though, if i can draw it once, I ought to be able to draw it again.  So I forged ahead with painting.  Then as I was painting the parts of the truck I kept thinking, don't screw it up its a long process to get back to where you are.  But in the end,  like the way it turned out.  I might to another one of these, but it wont be for a while.  I think I'll have more confidence in painting it knowing that I've already been able to do it once.


Painting is 11x15
For Sale - $20 - free shipping

final Heron and Egret

So that I could get outside and paint, I bought a little Van Gogh travel paint set. So that I wouldn't have to carry so much water with me I bought a water brush. I painted this picture with that combo. No drawing of the figures beforehand, just got the paints wet and started. I was really pleasantly surprised by the result.  Hope ou all enjoy it too.

Better one, or two, two or three

Three more attempts at the Heron and Egret theme.  I like bits and pieces of each.  Hope you all enjoy them.

Have we done this before?

Here we go again.  Trying to get a good Heron and Egret picture.  The hardes thing in this one is the HUGE amount of water.  It doesn't seem like it would be that tough but on a 9 1/2 x 12 1/2 inch piece of paper, it just seems like an eternity of water.  I am hoping to do only one more of these and I am hoping that the water on my next one will be just a bit better.  I do like the stump that the egret is on, and I like the reeds in front of the Heron.  Perhaps on the next one, I'll push both of them back just a bit further into the picture.  BTW, you cant see the bottom inch of this picture because the paper size is larger than my scanner.