American Avocet

I found a picture of this bird while surfing the web nearly a year ago.  I printed it out and then it got lost in a drawer somewhere.  I found the picture the other day and realized that I needed to paint it.  I was thinking what could I do to this picture.  There really isn't a lot going on with it.  Just a bird standing there.

So much like the beach here where i live, when you look, the beach just kind of disappears in the distance and the sky starts.  There is no real line of demarcation. I tried to make this painting resemble that.  A nice gentle transition from sand to sky.

As for the bird, i really like everything except its head.  I just don't understand what happended there.  Love the wing, love the underbelly, like the legs.  Head.... meh.   Oh, well,  I guess thats why they call it practice.  Thanks for taking the time to read, and check out the picture.  Hope you enjoyed it.

More Gulls

I started this picture at the same time I started the previous Gull painting.  This one took just a bit longer.

I was really concerned about painting this because the picture I started with was really dark, and I don't typically  like to paint that dark.  I tried to keep it dark on the bottom, but lighten as you look up.

After drawing this picture, I started by painting the grey wings and then the driftwood.  Lots of coats of paint on the wood. Then the rocks and water behind.   Finally, beak and legs/feet.

I like the way it turned out.  It reminds me of my home.  Lots of overcast days keeping the bright colors down and greying everything, and plenty of sea gulls everywhere.

Driftwood Christmas Tree Centerpiece

I had at one point in time, seen, on Etsy, these cool driftwood Christmas trees.  I thought to myself, I could make those.  I live near the ocean, and have an ample supply of driftwood.  All I need to do is collect the right pieces. and find a way to put them together.  How hard can it be.

Fast forward 2 years and I have my first one.  Its not that I couldn't have done it.  Having made this first one, I have found it to be just as I thought it would be.  I just hadn't had the time 2 years ago, and by the time I got back to it, I'd forgotten about this little project, and my stack of driftwood relegated to a back corner of the garage never to be seen again.

Well, this weekend I found the wood, and constructed my first Christmas Tree centerpiece.  Its just the right size to sit at the center of your holiday table, and looks nice enough it could sit out all season.  The biggest problem I had was trying to balance all the pieces so that the piece would be stable and sit flat.  Once I got that accomplished, all went smoothly.  

Event though it is only May, I might have to build a bunch of these, and have them ready for sale when the holiday season comes rolling around.  

Thanks for taking a look.  Hope you enjoyed seeing this little project.

McWay Falls

Ok, this is a quick sketch, a trial of sorts, for a picture to be painted later.  I did it on cheap paper, but there are some things I really like about this.  For those of you who have followed my paintings, you know that my paintings have been very tight in the past and have been getting looser and looser recently.  This painting displays some of my best wet in wet to date.  

The parts I really like:  the beach and the trees on the left hand side.  I've been trying to get the whole paper wet with paint at the beginning of the painting, letting all  the colors mix and trying hard not to force the paint to do what I want it to do.  In this painting I let the paint do what it wants to do, and tried to stay hands off.  The way the water dissolves into the sand of the beach, or the beach into the water, whichever way you want to look at it, makes me happy to see.  The layering of the trees also makes me happy.  Ok, I got a little too much saturation of color in the distant trees, but the technique and thinking was right.  I can fix the saturation in the next one.  and in the foreground, it looks as though there are 3 or 4 layers of pine trees.  I tried mixing a few different colors of green so that it didn't look like one giant green blob.  I got at least a few different colors.   and the closest ones, while they were wet, I just threw in a little purple for no particular reason.

I should say at this point that painting on a larger scale seems to be easier. It was fun to just scribble in some lines and see it come out close to what I wanted to see.  And for some reason with a bigger brush, this was easier.

I had to put in some leaves from the gum tree in the foreground.  I think in the finished piece, I'll put in even more leaves.  It really did help to push the rest of the painting back.

I'm not a big fan of how the rocks turned out.  I'll have to work on those.  My intent was just to show some texture, but I think I over did it.

Overall, I'm happy with this and if I get a few things worked out with it, I know that its intended recipient will be ecstatic about it.

Thanks for viewing.

Morro Bay City Limits

Yes, this is Morro Bay.  I know there was some question about what this painting is.  This was painted from a picture taken in Morro Strand.  You actually have the city limit sign with some bushes behind it, and the rock in the background.

The thing I like least about this painting is the sign.  I thought for sure I would like it best when I was drawing it.  As it turned out, painting around all the letters was pretty difficult.  I think I'm getting much better at letting the paint mix on the paper.  If you look at the bush behind the sign, there are lots of different colors, brom yellows to greens, blues and purples.  They all seem to work together to give you the feeling of a huge bush.  and if you look at the ground around the bush, it is blue at the top, which pushes it back, and has a reddish tint on the bottom which serves to pull that area forward.

Hope you all enjoy this.  It was fun to draw and paint.

Beach House on the Moon (well, maybe the beach)

Watercolor 9 x 12.  This Painting for sale.

Trying to do the stylized method on this picture just like on yesterdays bird.  Putting the darkest part of the sky at the horizon and the darkest part of the ground at the horizon line is supposed to make whatever sits along that line really pop out.  It certainly did with the bird yesterday, today, not quite as much, but i probably didn't make the sky quite as dark as I should have.    I tried to blend and lighten the green as it came down the beach toward the viewer, the ad som mounding and beach grass.  Seeing this painting scanned in, it looks a little too grey for my taste.  I wish I could would have noticed it while i was painting.  I guess that will come with experience.    Also the outlining is purposely done very loosely.  I didn't want to do an exact outline of every shape.  This style gives you indications of where the lines should de, and allows your eye or mind to fill in what it thinks should be there.  Hope you enjoy.

Beach House

Just a quick little painting of a house set back from the beach.