Grandparents Wedding

Well, for what it is, here it is.  The people don't look quite like they are supposed to, but I think I did a lot of things right on this .  You can tell where the suit coats come together, it isn't just one big blob of color.  You can just imaging grandpa standing there in his dress whites.  I'm glad i left some highlight in his hair.

The hair was a real problem for me.   I tried to leave a little highlight and allow you to see the hair texture.  Shading on the faces was really hard.  I knew it would be going into this, but wanted to try anyway.

Well, I'm chalking this one up to experience.  Its a piece I really wanted to do, and I still like it, but I think I fell a bit short of my expectations.  I'll have to use that as motivation to do better on my next one.

Enjoy

blue door

Getting back to the doorway theme I was working on a while ago, here is a blue door.  The proportions aren't quite right, the angles aren't quite right, bars over the door aren't quite straight, but for some reason I like this little picture.

Fishing Hole

Ok, so I heard of a possible fishing hole on campus.  A little pond that was up above the equine unit. I'm always on the lookout for a place to take the kids fishing, and had to check this out.  I decided to take my travel watercolor kit with me (yes,  I keep it at work).  I knew from looking on Google Earth that there might be some great views of San Luis from up there and I might be able to make a nice painting.  Well, I got up there and, yes, there is a nice little pond.  I found some fish in it, and yes, I plan on taking the kids.  Also, I found some horses not too far away and decided to give a try at painting them.  Now, I've never painted horses (or drawn them for that matter) before.  So I know this painting isn't all that great.  But what I really enjoyed was sitting on the side of the pont on a rock at the shore.  I dipped my watercup into the pond and used that for my water.  I was tickled to just be sitting there out side, with seemingly nothing around but a few horses, and painting whatever I thought I could.  It was truly wonderful.  And whats more, I could walk there, paint this picture and be back to my office within an hour.  Im going back tomorrow, perhaps I'll take my camera so you can all see what I am talking about.

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.

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