Great Blue Heron

Back again with another bird painting.  This one is a great blue heron.  These prehistoric birds are all over the place where I live, and I hope you have them where you live too.  Here they stalk the tide pools and seashore looking for small fish to eat.  I've even seen them in the fields and on the golf course looking for mice or moles.  A big one can stand in excess of 4 feet tall.  I don't know what its wingspan is, but its big.  They will stand motionless for quite a while waiting for a tasty morsel to come into range.  As soon as it does,... Whammo!  Thats is.  Feeding time.

I've got a nice heron her for you to view.  He is in a classic standing stance.  Just surveying his surroundings, waiting, biding his time.   I've used a healthy dose of cerulean blue in this painting.  Used it both in the bird and on the background.  The bird itself is tempered with a little mix of my own grey too.

For those of you interested in seeing how I painted it, you can view the action below.  Even if you don't give a view to the video, thanks for taking the time to read a bit about this bird.  Enjoy the video.

Truckin' through a field

For some reason, I felt the need to paint another old truck.  I just cant seem to get enough of rust and faded paint.  So here it is, an old Ford sitting in a field.  It looks like its been here for about a dozen years or so.  No wheels at all, so it is never gonna move.

I love the effect of the distant trees in this painting, and I can live with the sky.  I only wish I had painted the truck in my usual way.  One piece of sheet metal at a time.  It usually allows for nice breaks in the painting and I don't have to paint the joints between the panels.

Well, I like this and even the field seems to have a lot of texture to it. Enjoy.

Oh, and by the way, it comes in video too.  Check it out.

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.

Another Old Truck

So I thought I would let you all see the steps I take to create a painting.  We'll start with a drawing and go through the final product.  I've kind of wanted to do this for a while now.  I think it is much more interesting than just seeing the final painting.  I apologize for the quality, or lack there of, some of the pictures.  instead of scanning all the picture, i just snapped a photo with my phone (wow, doesn't that sound funny?).  While I did use the flash on it, and the picture is under a light, I somehow still get grey spots on the photos.  So, without further adieu, here we go.

Here we are with the drawing.  Not too  much detail.  The truck has a lot of detail, but the foreground and background not too much.  I go back and forth between wanting more, and wanting less.

This is the first layer of paint.  It is this layer that will add the color that you will see on the truck.  You can see the reds, yellows, blues and greens.  Even though more coats of paint will go over the top, this layer will always be able to be seen.

Here is the second layer of paint on the truck body.  At this point I need to decide if I like the color or not.  If not, I'll add another layer to change the color.  What do you think from the final painting, did I add a third layer?

Here I've added a blue sky and some trees in the background.  Notice that the truck still isn't done.  What I have left is mostly detail work.  I like to leave that till the end.  Since a lot of the detailing is at or around the edges of the truck, I want to get the mid-ground and the foreground in place so that I can paint over it if I need to.

Nearly done now.  You can see I've go the grill done, and the shadowing in the cab, wheel wells and around the grill.  I've put some shadowing on the truck itself.  The last detail is to put in some weeds in the foreground.  Adding the weeds will help to push the truck back in the picture a bit.  This is also a good time to mention the red in the foreground.  I think I've mentioned it before, but red tints make things look closer, blue tints make things look further away.  Just look at the mass of trees int he middle of the picture.  They are clearly bluer than the trees around them and look much further away.

This painting for sale.  9x12  $30

And here is the finished product.  The truck sitting in a field rusting away with some weeds growing around it.  Hope  you all enjoy it.

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

horses that look like horses, sort of

So I hiked up to my new favorite spot on campus again today.  And again, there were horses around the pond.  I decided to just try another sketch of them, and I think these ones came out a lot better.  The veiw is actually pretty spectacular, you can see the peaks like are in this picture but if you were to pan to the left you would see another one framing the valley behind.  The horses were very gentle and I took a few minutes to talk to and pet them on my way too and from the side of the pond.  I'm not sure if they wanted to be painted or not, but after about 15 minutes they got a little restless and 2 of them wandered off.  I guess I should have said that there really were about 6 or 7 horses there.

On my way back, I stopped off at the Arboretum.  I wanted to see if there was anything of interest there to paint, and if there were any seating areas where I could spread out.  As it turns out there are a lot of interesting things to see there. I'll definitely be doing a couple of paintings from there.  Get ready to check them out.

Vineyard

I was asked by a friend to paint a vineyard, barn, or boat.  I've done a few of each with varying degrees of success.  I decided to take up the challenge of a vineyard for her.   This is one attempt.  Actually this is a picture of a vineyard in the Paso Robles area, about 40 minutes from where I sit typing this.  It won't be my last attempt at painting a vineyard.  Like with all of my paintings, I think that I am getting better at painting them.  I might end up just doing a bit of pen outlining on this one to give some definition to the grape leaves in the foreground.  If I make any changes, I'll repost.  Hope you enjoy.

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

Woman Running in Field

This painting for sale. Contact
Michael for details.

This was painted for an art challenge from the website Paint My Picture.  The challenge was to paint a picture using only one color.  I think I did a pretty good job of showing the flowing dress and the bodice that the woman is wearing.

To be truthful the painting really didn't seem like much until I started lining it.  It just didn't have enough contrast.  Once I put on the lines, it really started to pop.