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.

Down on the Embarcadero

Ok, here we go again.  This is a second painting of Giovanni's Market and Gallery.  If you don't remember the first one, you can view it here.  This painting is from the opposite direction and some obvious differences.  

The first real differences is that this painting has all the proper colors.  The previous one was taken from a black and white photo, and I was working from memory on the colors. This one was painted from a color picture and so, all the colors are correct(ish).    I got a bit more ambitious with this one too.  Obviously there are people in the painting, but also there is tile and brickwork, among other things.

I used ink to outline and highlight edges on this painting.  My intent was to not to do that.  I wanted to only use paint to edge the painting, but I couldn't quite keep the lines straight enough, so i had to switch over to pen.  I like how the outlining turned out everywhere except around the main awning.  Oh well, that's how it goes sometime.

Anyway, I had a great time painting this, hope you all enjoy it.

PAC Center

This is a quick little painting I did of the PAC.  The Performing Arts Center.  People seem to call it the PAC Center for some reason.  Really they ought to call it the PA Center.  There are some dorms that really should be behind the trees on the left hand sid, but I took a little license.  And there should be some mountains behind the trees as well, but......  I think i did  a great job with everything I did put in.  Looking back a t the picture, the only thing i forgot to put on are some shadows across the sidewalk.  enjoy it.

Around Campus

This first picture is of my building, but not an entrance for my department.  The wheel on the bicycle rack has been there for about a year and a half.  I don't know if its ever gonna be removed at this point.

This picture is of the very top of our library.  OK, its not the most exciting in the world, but it looks a lot better than the unfinished concrete box that it is.  The greenery in the bottom of the picture is from the tops of trees in front of the library.






This picture is the back side of the taco stand that I described wanting to paint in a previous post.  I still wanna do one from the front of the stand, but this one is nice too.

New Sketches

Two buildings from the Engineering complex here on campus.  I couldn't tell yo the names of them, but I can tell you they have some fun angles to try to paint.  I think these are really fun and I can't wait to get out and paint more of the campus.  While I was painting, a student happened along and stopped to look over my shoulder for a few minutes.  Truthfully, I was getting a little annoyed, when he said, "Those are looking pretty good" and went about his way.  

Hope you enjoy them too.