Sparrow

I don't think I'll ever be able to get all the way away from painting birds, and I don't think I want to.  Like most areas of the country, I've got plenty of sparrows flying around my house.  I thought it might be nice to paint one.  I think I did one years ago, but they are nice birds and I always enjoy watching them at the feeder and flitting about too and fro.

This isn't any particular sparrow, but one of many that could be around my house.  He's just sitting there on a little branch looking for his friends to play with.

He was great fun to paint.  If you want to see a video of how I did it, check out the video below.

Great Blue Heron

Back again with another bird painting.  This one is a great blue heron.  These prehistoric birds are all over the place where I live, and I hope you have them where you live too.  Here they stalk the tide pools and seashore looking for small fish to eat.  I've even seen them in the fields and on the golf course looking for mice or moles.  A big one can stand in excess of 4 feet tall.  I don't know what its wingspan is, but its big.  They will stand motionless for quite a while waiting for a tasty morsel to come into range.  As soon as it does,... Whammo!  Thats is.  Feeding time.

I've got a nice heron her for you to view.  He is in a classic standing stance.  Just surveying his surroundings, waiting, biding his time.   I've used a healthy dose of cerulean blue in this painting.  Used it both in the bird and on the background.  The bird itself is tempered with a little mix of my own grey too.

For those of you interested in seeing how I painted it, you can view the action below.  Even if you don't give a view to the video, thanks for taking the time to read a bit about this bird.  Enjoy the video.

Red Head

Still not quite done with this but I suppose it is near enough.  All I have to do is throw on some king of mottled background and voila.

Faces seem to be really hard, and I don't know why.  Scratch that, I do know why.  We all know what faces should look like.  We all know where eyes go, and noses and mouths, ears, etc.  And we also know exactly how they should be positioned on the head.  We see faces every day, and so, if one object that makes up a face isn't quite right, it makes the whole face entirely wrong.  

Well, I got this afce probably as close as any other face I've painted.  I think I got a bit stripey with the dark in the hair, but I needed to do something to it.  With just strands of red, there wasn't enough depth to it.  the stripes really help bring it out.  Well, it is practice.

King Me

Last week I was a little frustrated with my painting and a friend of mine suggested I look at things a bit differently and use different colors or different paints to paint my pictures.  Well, I've got some old paints that were made in West Germany.  I don't know what West Germans knew about paint or anything.  I do know that the colors in this set are kind of different and mostly opaque.  When I say they are kind of different, what I mean is that 7 different blues, none of which match with my existing french ultramarine, pthalo blue, cerulean blue deep or cerulean blue.  It's the same thing with the 6 greens, 7 reds and 5 yellows.  

I had used this set for about a week when I first started painting  but couldn't get used to the colors.  They are just weird.  But for this painting I mixed and mixed and came out with colors that I think are pretty good.  In fact, I made a deal with myself.  If Im gonna paint with a wide swath of colors, I can't mix a big pool of one color and keep dipping it in.  I have to make a small pool of it, and add too it or change it each time I dip into it.  You can see in the body of the bird there are reds oranges and yellows all throughout.  And the blue of the bird is at least 4 different shades throughout.  

The log the bird is sitting on started as a really pale grey, like it was really bleached out.  then it got a bit darker grey, blue, yellow, green and finally it is what it is.  I don't think I'm done with this one, you might see hime make a return on this sit in a finalized form, but for now, I'm back and having fun with some new paints.  Trying to mix any kind of a normal color with these crazy paints is fun in itself.  Thanks for the nudge Kelly Murphy.

Portrait of a Friend of Mine

I've been trying to work back slowly into this watercolor thing, and I like painting birds but.....I guess I just needed to do something a bit more.  

In addition to posting my artwork here, on my art blog site, I post to G+.  Somewhere on G+ I ran into a fellow artist and contributor named Kelly.  I didn't really wanna paint a picture of myself (tried it, bad subject matter that turned into a bad portrait), but I wanted to paint a portrait.  Kelly was gracious enough to allow me to paint a picture of her.  Two days later and this is what I came up with.

BTW, if you are interested in some good artwork and an uplifting look at life, check out her blog site.

So, I think I'm getting a little better with hair, though its a long slow process.  And I guess I can say the same about portraits in general.  Looking back at the first portraits I've done, I see some really rudimentary work.  This one, while not a Rembrandt by any stretch is miles ahead of what that one was.

I feel like I am not nearly as afraid to leave a hard edge on the paper.  I used to be afraid to do that and had to smooth all the edges before I could move on.  It made it an extremely long process to do anything.  Like probably 2 or 3 times as along to paint any given picture.  Yes, on this I did smooth a few edges out.  I didn't feel as though I should leave all hard edges, but a few weren't too bad.  It's a little unfortunate that I used the mixed media paper instead of watercolor paper because the water kept pooling and made it harder than I think it had to be.  But I just thought that with as hot as its been here, the watercolor paper would dry too fast.

Here is the picture I used as a reference.  I had a little trouble with the shadows in her hair on the right hand side of her head.  If I were to do this one agian, I would try to get that a bit better, but I'm happy with it.  I think the representation of Kelly is pretty good.  And what is more important is that when I sent this picture to her, she liked it.  In the end, I think that is more important than producing a great work of art.  I got the enjoyment of painting it, and she got the enjoyment of seeing it.  For me that's enough.

Hope you all enjoyed this as much as I did.  Enjoy.

Quick weekend sketches

Some quick weekend sketching fun.  Ill be honest ins saying most of what I did was pick through garage sales, and watch the kids, but I did find a little time to  paint.  Not much mind you, but a little.  This first picture is of a stone statue that sits on my front porch.  I'm trying to paint more quickly and more intuitively, rather than trying to exactly replicate what I see.  So here it the cat in all its glory, just sitting there staring at traffic as it goes past.

This picture is one I'd previously drawn. It was just sitting there in my sketch pad begging for me to do something with ti.  So here it is.

Finally, the thing everyone wants.  A picture of an old cat tree.  LOL.  Well, I know one member of the family that couldn't get by without it.  (mostly because the dog can't climb.)

A light hearted posting today.  Enjoy, and thank you.

Check out these Hooters!

Ahhhhhh, the old bait and switch.  There is only one hooter.  Having a little success with human eyes, I thought I would give a a try to an animal that has perhaps the best eyes.  My thought was to have the eyes crystal clear and sharp, then as you moved further away from the eyes, the painting became fuzzier, so that your eye would focus in on the eyes of the owl.  I'm visualizing this owl sitting in a tree staring out through the night.  If I were to come across an owl on the golf course, this is what, in my mind I would see. (btw, I run into them on the course all the time.  I give them a wide berth knowing that owls can be really mean.

This one turned from another eye exercise to a looseness exercise.  Trying to get that etherial look around the edges.

Hope you enjoy it.

Oh and if I give post a title like this one, I'll get 3 times the amount of hits that I normally get.  Funny how that works.

Fireflies Again!?

This painting currently for sale.   - 9 1/2 x 12 1/2 - $15
Contact Michael for more details

Here is my entry for the June watercolor challenge: "Images of Summer."  As you can see, the sandals are now gone, the eye and eyebrow look better and there is more shading on the picture.  I think this one is miles ahead of the previous post.

I still reserve the right to go back and monkey with this one a bit.  I may put eyelashes on her, and I may put some more shading on her shorts (or skirt, or skorts, or whatever they are) and perhaps the front of her shirt.  I'm still debating, and won't touch it for a week or so to be sure.