Mermaid

My daughter's best friend is going through a mermaid phase right now and asked if I would paint one for her.  I, of course, said I would.  I first had to find an image, then draw it out of course.  What followed is this painting of a mermaid.  It's not the best painting of a mermaid, but I think its a really good first try.

My favorite part of this painting is the ribs on the tail.  I think they turned out really well.  The next painting will probably have some scales, or some such.  And I'm always looking to work on hair.

I got about half way through this painting and then thought I needed to have her sit on something, so the rock is somewhat improvised, but I think it mostly works.

I've also made a video to go along with this.  As if you hadn't seen that coming.

Morro Bay at Sunset

This painting for sale.  Watercolor.  9x12. $30

Ok, I think that every now and again, I will alway do a really loose paintint like this one.  They are fun to do, and have an interesting look to them.  Trying not to keep the paint in the lines, just in the general area is quite often maddening, but the results can be outstanding.  Also, I trying not to worry about my drawing quite so much too.  It was a little un-nerving to draw with ink like I did.  I think I will call this style coffee drawing, since it looks like I've had a cup or two too many to make the lines straight.  I actually didn't want to make the lines perfectly straight.  I've seen some videos lately of people talking about ow the irregular lines add more life to the painting that straight lines.  I wasn't sure I believed it before I did the painting, but I'm nearly convinced afterwards.

This is a painting of the Inn at Morro Bay, one of my favorite buildings in Morro Bay.  It's right on the water.  Of course, any good picture of Morro Bay is gonna have the Rock in somewhere.  And since the whole town is a bird sanctuary, I thought I would throw in some birds for good measure.

The west facing side of the Inn is almost all glass, and when the sun goes down, the windows really do look orange, red, purple and blue from the outside.  It's quite a site.  Of course most people look west rather than east, and never see the windows.

I like this painting and will hang it proudly in my office until its sold.  Hope you all enjoy it.

Some Sketching From My Back Yard

I was reorganizing my office this morning (It was badly overdue).   For those of you who don't know, my office has many many paintings taped to the walls.  The picture below is just one portion of one wall.













Well, while I was moving the pictures, I noticed that I had painted on the backs of many of them.  A way to save paper as I am learning to paint, no doubt.  One painting in particular, an old rusted truck (go figure) which is the one that got me started painting old rusted cars and trucks in the first place, had a few quick sketches on the back of it.  I remember doing them.  I did them in two settings.

   
The first setting, which, if I remember correctly, was done in about a half hour in my back yard. They came out ok, but not steller.  They were done when I started outlining the subject matter of the paintings.

The last one, if memory serves me right, was done the next day.  Living in Morro Bay, it's hard not to paint the Rock.  It is hard, however, to get a good painting of it.  It is kind of just a big hump out at the end of the beach with nothing else around it.  Well, this one was done with me sitting on my front porch.  Before you ask, yes, that is my view, and yes there are two different types of trees that frame the rock.  Well, without further ado, here it is.  Hope you enjoy.

I really feel like I learn a lot when I go back and look at these old paintings.  I can almost remember everything I was thinking while I was painting them.  I can also see how far I have come from these meager beginnings.  If I were to redo these, and I may, they would look radically different now (and with any luck, radically better). 

Next week, I am hoping to have at least 3 new painting.  No quick sketches like these.

A Barn in the 'Hood

Ok, so on this painting i was working on letting color mix on the paper.  You can see on the barn roof and siding, that the colors are not uniform.  We all want to think that colors are mostly solid, but if you look closely, most colors are a mishmash of many many different colors.  I think I am getting a handle on form and shape, I might even be getting a handle on depth in my paintings.   Painting while allowing multiple colors to make up the body of each object may well make my paintings look more alive and vibrant.

Hope you enjoy.

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.

Angel's Landing

Some good and some bad on this painting.  Lets start with the good.

I was gonna do a dark sky, or at least darker, but when I saw how this one turned out after only one layer of paint, I liked it so much I stopped.  And knowing what the sky looks like in Zion most of the time, there are no clouds anyway, so the sky seems about right.  The next thing that is really good, I think, are the mountains in the background.  They really do look like they are far away.  Just enough detail so you can see a few crevasses in the rocks, but not too much detail that its out of place.  I really like them.

Now for the not so good.  I don't think i got quite the right shape of this hill.  It is, in general, dome-ish, which I got, but somehow its not quite right.  I might go back and see if I cant make the far side of the path fall off just a bit, maybe that will help it look like it is rounder.

I might go back and pencil in some chains like on the real pathway, but I don't have time to do it today, but wanted to get this picture up.  If I make changes, I'll repost.  Hope you all enjoy.

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home

Here's home, Morro Bay.  This would be the view walking down the centennial stairway.  Of course every good picture of Morro Bay gas to have the Rock in the background.

Two things i really love about this painting.  The sky and the tree.  This is a new sky technique.  Still trying to get the darkest part of the sky toward the bottom, but building it up in layers.  This one is three layers deep. If you look you can see the three different coats of paint.  I think it made for a  really dramatic sky.  Then the tree.  This is the new tree method, where I don'f focus on painting a tree, but rather on putting colors where light and shadow might be hitting the tree.  It takes the focus off of trying to get individual leaves and twigs, etc.  and allows me to focus on the bigger picture.  In this, it works because it kind of makes the tree look slightly out of focus.   The real focus being on the chess board and the Sun-n-Buns.

I wish i had had some green ready when I painted the rock.  I love the mottled look of it, but it needed a little more.  I tried to get it to stand apart by making the base of it darker.  I think i did an acceptable job, but it needed a bit more.

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

More Arboretum Mayhem

Some more paintings from the Cal Poly Arboretum.  This on is a fountain in an english garden.  All the plants are cut with very specific shapes.  I really just wanted to paint the fountain, but have yet to figure out how to do it without quite a bit of greenery around it.  It was really hot today.  Had to be about 90 while I walked up to the arboretum, so I was glad that the place I sat while painting this was in the shade.  I actually think I was a bit too hot to paint as I had sweat rolling down my face while I was painting.  I'll revisit this at some point in the future.

This is a sign leading into..... you guessed it, the California Collection.  I don't know that I really got the wood of the sign the way I wanted to, but there are some things I like about this painting.  Using my trick of red in front and blue in back, it looks like the ground goes from front to back in the painting.  The rock in the front partly because of the red in the ground looks much closer than the sign or the rock behind the sign.  I don't know if you can tell, but the sign is not specifically perpendicular to our viewing angle.  The left side is just a bit smaler than the right.  I love the way the planter and plant came out.  It is just a mass of green coming out of this fantastic red pot.  I actually tried to paint the leaves individually, but quickly decided just a few splashes of a darker green would suffice for the leaves.

Hope you all enjoy these paintings.

steps

Well, I went back to the arboretum today.  It was really nice.  Yesterday there was a group of people at the gazebo and they were making a bunch of noise.  Today there was nobody but me.  I sat in the same chair, but instead of looking down the hill I move the chair into the walkway, and faced it up the hill.  You can see some crazy plants at the top of the stairs, and there was a huge terra cotta pot on the left hand side.

I chose this because I like the rocks so much from yesterdays paintings that I had to do some more.  I don't think I quite got the contrast in the rocks that I wanted, but I think i got a fair representation of the rocks on the path.  I didn't have enough time to do all the shading that I wanted to.  I might go back and put some in later.  I might, also, to make the individual stones and rocks stand out a bit more, outline these in black pen.  I havent really decided yet.

I purposely left a lot of white in this painting.  There was mortar between the stones that make up the stairs, but I thought it might be a little better to leave those spaces white.  I'll bet yo that until you read that last sentence and looked at the picture again, you didn't notice it the white spaces.

I painted this whole painting with one brush.  Usually, I use two or three.  My travel set came with a very small pure sable brush.  I had never tried it before, but it has the benefit of being small and easy to carry (I know, all brushes are small and easy to carry).  Having tried it, I can definitely see why so many people love sable brushes.  Not only could I do thin lines with it, i could so a larger wash and every thing came out pretty good.  I might have to invest in one, or in a set soon.  I'll keep you informed.  In the mean time, hope you enjoy the paintings.

Woman on Rock

Well, still trying to learn to draw people.  Took this from a simple picture of a woman laying on a rock. I think i got a little good and a little bad, like lots of my paintings.  The bottom half of her is too big, or perhaps the top is too small.    I tried to make her look 3D but I'm not sure i really got it.  There are parts of her that look 3D but all in all, she still looks flat.  On top of that, it looks like both her legs are at the same depth.  I like the shading on the bottom of her torso (what would be her oblique).  I tried several techniques to make her look more roundish and 3D.  First I put on the basic skin color, then I made the bottom and just a touch of the top blueish, then put some red in the middle.  in painting Blue things look further away, red looks closer.  I think I need stronger values.  Then I put shading on her limbs, took out some paint on where I thought light would be hitting, and finally shading under her.  All those together should have given her a more 3D look.

I think i just need more practice.

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.

Natural History Museum

This is, as the title says, the Natural History Museum in Morro Bay.  It really does sit atop a little cliff overlooking the bay.  It has stunning views and when the tide is out, like in this picture, the rocks at the the base of the cliff are visible.  I think I made the building a little small in this picture, but I'll get it all right at some point.  Just gonna keep working at it.  If I were to turn about 160 degrees to my right from where I was standing to take this picture, I would have Morro Bay rock directly in front of me.

I really like the look of this building sitting up there and am going to keep painting it until I get it right.  Oh, and by the way, until the 1950's, this was the clubhouse for Morro Bay Golf Course.

A Little Urban Sketching

Yesteday and today I decided to do a little urban sketching.  I suppose that is the new term for painting plein air.  Urban sketching sounds a bit less hoity toity.  I have been walking around campus trying to find places to sit in the shade and paint.  The shade part was crucial for me, and as I found out, was also the limiting factor in what I paint.  It turns out that nearly all the benches on campus are in direct sunlight at noon.  Who would have figured.  Anyway, in my hikes around campus, I found 3 places to paint.  They all seemed to fit onto one sheet, but the sheet is bigger than my scanner.  The first picture, Bench on Dexter Lawn, is actually on the bottom of the sheet.  You can see part of the Building 52 Plaza in the top right.

This is the picture that is above it.  This is Building 52 Plaza.  Or at least part of it.  I don't think I got this quite right, but you get the idea that it is a bench with mulch around it, and (absent detail) brick walkway in front of it.  I assume you all can tell it has a tree behind the bench?

This third picture is actually the first one I did.  I wanted to get the little taco stand next to this, on the left side of the tan building, but i didn't have a clear view from the bench I was on, so this got chosen by default.  Some different types of bushes and shrubs with a few rocks, and a wooden wall behind, just in front of the building.  I'm extremely happy with the way this turned out, I often have trouble working in different colors of greens.  The fact that you can see 4 distinct colors of green and a little shading in each is, for me, a triumph.