Angel Statue

I've painted a few statues in the past and really loved doing them.  This one is no different.   I started with just a bit of paint to put on a base color of this statue.  Then I just painted all the shadows.  I allowed those to give form and shape to the statue.  After several layers of shadows and a little rounding of the edges, this statue looks like it is 3 dimensional.

I also put on a very dramatic background.  Mixing reds and blues around this statue that has lots of yellow and green in it make the image jump off the page.  Contrasting colors will always make images pop from your paper.

Like I said I had a great time with this.  If you want to see how I did it, take a look at the following video.  It's sped up because the whole painting took me about an hour to do, and I didn't want anyone to have to sit through an hour of me talking.   Check it out, its pretty good.

Dorn's The Original Breakers Cafe

Double click this picture to enlarge.

This was done over the weekend.  I found out one really important thing.  If you have two sick kids who are pretty needy, you aren't gonna be able to paint very much at any one time.  This entire painting was drawn and painted in one to two minute segments.

Even with the challenges this turned out ok. Now, I will say that I have been past Dorn's a thousand time, and I don't think the colors are right.  As it turns out, I had to paint the entire thing from a black and white picture.  I should also say that I felt so confident when I started this, that I didn't even do it on really good watercolor paper.  I did it on a slightly lower grade paper.

Back Door to the CM Office

So, I was painting outdoors again today.  Once again I painted building 186.  Some good and some bad.  This is the first floor.  The second and third are of course not represented here.  The very top of this painting is where the railing for the walkway would be attached.  Yes the windows are a bit goofy, the bottom pane is opaque.  There are a few plants in front of the railing that comes from the door.  The lamp post is perhaps a little too thin.  It is close to the bench that I sat at to paint.

Now the good, I've been working on not having solid colors,  I think I got some of that where not all the sections of the wall are the same color.  Not all the panes of the windows are the same, not even all the concrete is the same color.

One more thing.  All but one line and I've got the perspective lines right.  That means my drawing is actually getting better.   Hope you all enjoy.

Building 186

Painted with my new paints.  This is the third floor landing of building 186.  I'm trying to do a more detailed drawings of what I paint.  In this painting I did the building outline, of course, but also the windows, window louvers, and even the railing.  It was hard to draw it and get it right, but I think I did  a pretty good job.

The worst thing about this painting is the railing in the foreground.  I tried to put some shadowing on it, but it just turned out as bad lines.  I like the windows a lot.  I think i did a pretty good job with the.  Yes the bottom row is blue/green.  They are panes of glass that let a little light through, but are not windows to look through

Bench and Brick Wall

Plein air painting at lunch today. Had to walk across campus to meet friends, find a place to sit, then paint, pack up, and back to work all in an hour. As you might assume, I picked a topic that I though I would be able to finish given the time constraints. The place we chose was in a bricked in courtyard.  It didn't afford the most fantastic views, but it did allow us to sit in the shade. 

The plants in the area while green, didn't afford me a real pop of color to offset the green.  So I chose a little different tact.  This afforded me the opportunity to work on perspective lines and trying to keep things square.  I think I might have been able to make the grey cement of the ground a little more angled to the right, but since I had to work quickly, I didn't have that much time to double-check my work.  I still think this little painting work out nicely.   Enjoy.