Out to Pasture

This is an old farm tractor painted on a heavily gessoed canvas. It still needs to be refined but I'm thinking that I shouldn't over do the refining. It almost looks good as it is. Ahh . . . to refine or not refine . . . that is the question!

Wet-On-Wet Watercolor

These are some aquatic creatures I water colored last spring of 2012. Parts of them were painted wet-on-wet to give an extra sense of depth of surface smoothness. Wet-on-wet can be a scary way to paint, but with practice, less so and oh so, so worth it! If you belong to a water color group, and would like to hire me to teach a wet-on-wet water color workshop, please let me know. I am booking for the summer of 2013 and 2014. My studio phone is 916-737-2311 in California, USA. By-the-way --- HAPPY NEW 2013!

D Oldham Neath - a watercolor portrait

This is a 16 by 22 inch watercolor I just completed of D Oldham Neath, a prominent art gallery owner here in Sacramento. She commissioned me to do her portrait, and I will be doing another one of her tomorrow during an interview and video shoot with Rob Stewart, a PBS (Public Broadcasting System) television personality.  The interview will be part of a series about local and national artists. I'll get more details on all this tomorrow after the shoot and will be getting another post out on this blog and my Facebook page soon. I am interested, dear readers, what you think about this first watercolor. Thank you!

Comparison

Two posts ago, I showed the progress of an urban street scene that I was painting with another art teacher that was taking private lessons from me in order to paint in a losser style. Here is his painting (top) and mine (bottom). It is always interesting in seeing how painters doing the same scene differ in their approach. I'd love to get your take on these two renditions, dear readers.

Next year during the Spring semester at Sacramento City College, I will be teaching a pen and ink drawing class. This has never been a medium I work in, but I do like to teaching it. I'm not sure why! This is a self portrait I did in india ink in my pen and ink drawing class, circa 2006.

Early Morning Street Corner

This is an acrylic on stretched canvas painted mostly with flat brushes over a five day period. It was a great exercise on how to take a rather prosaic scene and turn it into an engaging painting. I started the painting with an art instructor at The Art Institute, Sacramento who is taking lessons from me to loosen up his painting style. We worked from a reference photo I snapped about two years ago. I played with light, color, added graffiti and telephone lines to help engage the viewer. This was a challenging exercise for the both of us!

I followed my nose.

Yep, I followed my nose. A few posts ago (in October) I was at the stage in this watercolor when it was a relatively simple portrait of a young Hmong girl from Vietnam. I had no idea where to go with it next except to keep going and as my father used to say when he didn't want to look at a road map (remember those?), "I'll follow my nose". I followed my nose my working on it throughout October and this month . . . just a little bit each day or so.  My nose lead me to this final stage. Hope you like it dear readers.