rusted lock

If you've read through my blog thoroughly, then you know that I like rusty things.  If you haven't then I'll let you in on a not so secret, secret.  I like rusty things.  Well, as I happened, I found a picture of a rusty lock on line and wanted to take a crack at painting it.  So.... Here is how it went.

I really like the hasp.  I think it turned out pretty good.  It looks old and a bit warn, but still could be used today.  And I really like the nails in the wood, and how the rust has kind of run and stained the wood.

As for anything else,  well..  lets just say i struggled a bit.  I'm not saying this is a bad painting, but I can do better.

As a critical assessment, I should have had more color variation in the wood, and probably made . a few more cracks.  As far as the lock goes.  I could have been more precicse with the bronze.  Though I do think the right hand side of the bronze locking mechanism looks great, the left leaves a bit to be desired.  Then we come to what I thought was gonna be the best part, the rust,  and well, it fell a bit flat.  First off, its too dark.  And being that dark, doesn't allow me to put much roundness into it.

If I were to do this again, I'd be able to do a much better job.  I am sure of it.  In fact, maybe I should do this one again to prove it to myself.

Think I'm right?  Think I'm being too hard on myself?  Leave a comment and let me know.

If you want to see me painting this lock in a video, check it out below.

Old Blue Chevy Truck (HOPE Truck)

This is my latest painting.  It is the HOPE truck from Dripping Springs, Texas.  A friend of mine took the picture and it was too much for me not to paint it.   I had a great time with this.  I love all the rust and faded colors.

Painting the shadow and darkness at the top of the painting (under the eaves and the tree shadow behind the building) was completely terrifying to paint.  I had what I thought was a good painting, but needing the shadow and I had to put it on.  the color is so dark, I was afraid I would totally mess it up.

Luckily, I like the way it turned out.

I was told that maybe i should have left the windows jus ta bit lighter, and darkened the ground below the truck.  Hmmm.  Something to think about.

I love this painting.  It is hanging proudly in my office.  I'm so juiced at the way this one turned out, I can't wait to paint my next one.

Oh, and by the way, if you want to see how I did it, I do have a video.  Thanks for the quick read.  Hope you love the truck as much as I do.

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.

Painting Metal Flowers

I just had to get outside to paint today.  I made up my mind early, collected my materials, and when lunchtime rolled around, it was out the door.   We have a lovely little arboretum on campus, and though it is a bit of a walk, I wanted to get up there to paint.

As it turns out, I might have been just a bit  early to get there.  Though it is near 80 degrees today, the flowers don't quite think spring is here.  Most of the plants are either still dormant or are yet to bloom.  So, I had my choice of colors to paint: brown, green, grey, or some combination of the 3.  Well, here is my lunchtime story.

A 13 minute walk up the hill to the arboretum.  6 minute walkthrough to find that there is no color yet.  20 minutes to draw and paint (thus the simplicity of the paintng).  A 12 minute walk back to the office.  9 minutes to scan the picture in and write up this quick post.  

I settled on this rusting metal sculpture of some flowers.  I've no idea of what kind of flowers they are supposed to be.  They were in the shade under a few California (Coast) Live Oaks.  I sat on a footbridge over a dry creek and painted.  A little vitamin D and a little exercise for the body and soul, and I'm ready to tackle the afternoon.

Wrenches

Well, I've been finding it hard to find time to paint lately.  It just seems that life keeps getting in the way of art.  Well, I suppose that's how it goes some times.  I'll get back into it soon, but in the mean time.  I just found this.  I did it probably 6 months ago.  Trying to be loose with the paint, but still allowing you to know what it is I am painting.   Also, maybe I was trying to see how many different shades of grey(?) i could paint a wrench.  LOL, well, anyway, enjoy.

No More Monkey Wrenches

This painting for sale.  Watercolor 5 1/2x 8 1/2.  $20  

Part of trying to elevate everyday things into artwork.  I saw an image of some wrenches and couldn't help myself. I probably made the ratchet in the front a little blue, but somehow it doesn't seem to matter to me.

I am happy to say that this was drawn and painted in one lunch hour.  I used to do this a year or so ago.  Then I tried to do bigger pictures or more detailed pictures, and my rate of painting slowed way down.  Part of what I really liked and still like about painting is seeing things come to fruition in such a short amount of time.  I know that the subject is rather simplistic, and the handles don't have names on them, and I could point out lots of other flaws, or drawbacks with this painting, but I really like it.  I think maybe it is the simplicity of it that I really like.

Its a bunch of straight lines, with a few circles and arcs thrown in, but if you've ever worked on a car or bike or something, you will immediately look at this and it will bring back some memories for you.  Maybe, in the end thats why I painted it.  I saw the photo and it brought back a fond memory and I wanted to relive that as long as I could.

Anyway, enough of my rambling.  Hope you enjoy the painting.

Smoke 'em If You Got 'em

I am beginning a series of paintings of everyday things.  I think it an interesting challenge to elevate the things you see around on a daily basis to works of art. This is my first attempt.

While this picture was on my easel, I thought it was done.  Looking at it after it has been scanned, I think I am going to revisit it a bit, so you may see this one reposted at some time in the future.

 I walk through a courtyard, between the two buildings I work in, everyday.  With this being California, there aren't too many places to smoke anymore, but the students have found a spot, and squirreled away an ashtray next to a bench in a little nook.  Usually the whole tray is filled up with butts, but this day it had, as you can see a cup and some packs in it too.  I don't know what drew me to it, but I couldn't help but take a picture of it and paint it.

I really think it turned out great.  I'm looking forward to painting more in this series.  Hope you all enjoy it.

Another One??? Really??

This painting for sale.  6x8 $15

You love it, you know you do, you can't wait to see the next old, decrepit car sitting in a field.  Well, your wish is my command.

To be honest, I'm not completely sure what car this is, but I'm sure its pretty old.  Its got a lot of weeds growing around it, and it looks like one of its tires has fallen off.  It's got a yellow license plate, obviously out of date.  Hmmm who could have had yellow plates back in the day?  Well, it really doesn't matter.  The car has found a nice home under an old tree.  Hope nobody totally forgets about this old car.

This one, and yesterdays, are the first old cars I have really done with any color (other than rust).  It got me thinking, how come I don't see more color on old cars.  After doing a little research I found that most cars like the ones I paint have a fair amount of paint on them.  I've just been so focused on the rust, I neglected to see it.  So, from now on, when I paint an old car or truck, I'm gonna do a better job of incorporating some of the cars paint.  That doen't mean there wont be a fair amount of rust, but there is definately gonna be a bit more color.

Hope you enjoy this little painting.  I had a ball painting it.

Going Back On My Word

This painting for sale 9x12  $30

 Well it didn't take long for me go revert to my old ways.  A short few posts ago I swore off cars for kittens. It looks like I was abel to keep that word for all of a week.

With that, what we have here is a Studebaker.  I can just imagine this cars sitting, baking in the sun somewhere in Texas, or Oklahoma, Arizona or someplace like that. The blazing sun has cracked the pavement and provided no relief to the dry, brown dirt on the other side of the parking lot.

I didn't take pictures for the whole process this time.  This is the first one I took.  You can see the sky is already done, but there is plenty to do on the rest of the painting.  I tried hard to put in some coud details on this painting instead of just a plain sky.  It's a bit hard since we don't have many real clouds here to look at in real life.

I've jumped ahead quite a bit here.  You can see the shelter in the background is done as well as the sidewalk, the windows, and the chrome on the car.  If you look at the shadows, they are different than the final product.  I thought I had them right when I put them in,  then I stepped back to look.  Wow! was I ever wrong.  I had to go back in and fix them.  They look a lot better now.

Finally, a few finishing touches and the painting was done.  I strengthened a few of the colors and put in the trees and weeds.  They seem simple but they really do add a lot to the painting.

Hope you all enjoy.

Last One of This Series

Well, at long last I have come to the end of painting old rusty trucks.  I'll do some more of them at some point in time, but right now, it's time to move on.  I've really enjoyed painting them, and have learned a ton.  Also, I've learned there is a ton more to learn.  Oy Vey!  Well, it's a good thing I'm still having fun with it and want to keep going.  I really do think this is the best one I have done.  I'm posting several pictures again this time too.  I got some good feedback about it last time and am going to try to incorporate pictures of the steps more often.

 Here is the start.  A simple drawing.  Only the truck and a little bit of the fence.  I've moved the center of interest off the center of the paper.  Hopefully, it make the painting just a bit more interesting.

The underpinning of the truck body.  You can see the green and red as well as the rust color.  More layers to come.

I'm not sure this is the perfect place to start, but I get so hyped to see the truck come to life that I start with it.  I may have made a small mistake by painting the bumper at this point, but I can fix it later if I need to.

Background, and foreground go in.  Nothing with any detail, just some basic colors.  Note there is just a hint of blue for a sky.   Trees will cover the rest.  I'm not sure why I did the inside of the cab and the grill.  Mostly I think it was because I was being interrupted while I was painting and that is just how it turned out.  Also, you can tell I added another layer to the truck body.

A few trees and some shadows.  I am thinking of leaving the trees like this, but they look a little to airy.  I think I will eventually have to paint a layer over them.  Some shadowing under the front clip of the truck and it really comes to life.  It's amazing what a little color can do some times.

Well, I painted over the leaves of the trees in the background.  I've got to do all my detail work on the truck now before I put the foreground on.  I have to do this so that if I paint over the truck with the foreground, it will really push it back into the painting.    At this point, I'm worried about the grill.  The picture I'm painting from shows the grill as black, or at least really dark.  I don't want it to be a big black hole in the center of the painting.

This painting for sale.  9x12  $30

Here it is, the finished painting.  The wheel is done, the grill is done, and the weeds help to push the truck back into the painting.  I think it turned out great. I couldn't be happier with it.  I hope you all like it too.

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

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

A Pair of Knockers

I thought these would be a bit easier than they turned out to be.  I don't know what happened to the blue knocker on top.  up close, its a bit much to behold, but actually if you look from afar, its not too bad.  I started with an old rusty door knocker on what was a grey/blue door.  As I drew it, i thought i did a pretty good job of it, but as the paint went on, it got a little more odd with each color.  If you are wondering if it is a man or a lion, so am I.  The picture I took it from was a weird amalgam of the two.

The second one is a Lion head holding a ring in its mouth.  I think that is much easier to see.  I think I did a much better job on this one.  I am even kind of proud of the chipped away paint on the door which exposes the wood behind.

Hope you enjoy them.