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                                                                    Tiny Bubbles                                                                         12"x12"                                                                         Acrylic Yes I am old enough to remember the song.  I hate to admit that I have caught myself humming it as I worked on this picture and probably won't get it out of my head for a while.  Hey whatever needs to be done for inspiration. Anyway, this is acrylic on my hot pressed watercolor paper and was mainly done in a watercolor type style.  I had the best time with this - actually started drawing it during the 30 in 30 challenge but never completed it. Anyway, the stone fountain bowl is watery acrylic with flour in it for texture and then used the toothbrush to splatter. All the rocks were done with really sloppy watercolor and then other colors were floated on top and smeared around.  Oh boy that is going to be my new way to do rock

                                                                    Marlboro Man                                                                        18"x12"                                                                         Pastel This photo captured my attention on several levels.  Wow, isn't this guy a man's man (I almost called it that)  I also wanted to work with lost and found edges, the plaid shirt and the hand. I decided to give myself a break and go with pastels and just got some new colored Mi-Teintes paper.  But I forgot how patterned the one side is and so I got lots of peek aboos where the color skipped.  It's funny I used to love to send with fingers or tortillons but now I am not as enamored with the blended smooth look - at least not on this paper. As usually I struggled with the background, but decided to try to incorporate the plaid pattern - not sure if it works.  What do you think? While this shot by Bobbie Cook at PMP, comes up

                                                                      BugEyed                                                                         8"x10                                                                      Acrylic 3D Some days you just got to cut loose and go for it.  After all it is St. Patrick's Day and the green beer is flowing and we are Irish!! This ode to Spring, BugEyed, reminds me of some of the critters I have seen in the garden this week.  The garden is finally open, plenty of digging, pulling, scraping and sweating has been going on.  But at the end of the day I can sit on the porch with a glass of Chardonnay and enjoy watching nature's show which is developing daily and will be spectacular in a couple of weeks. This guy is on canvas board and is made with acrylics, old screen with glitter glue, washer, bread ties, wood beads and plastic Easter eggs.  I don't have a lot of the 3D paints, but might get myself a couple as they

                                                                            Red Hot                                                                             20"x16"                                                                             Acrylic Well my hubby is sure I have slipped a gear with this one - he always asks why paint this.   But this is what I have been working on for more than a week now.  This is probably the most complex painting I have done to date.  This is another multi-photo fusion piece.  The figure is from one of my favorite portrait photographers at PMP, Alex Lee Johnson and the car from Wetcanvas.  I wanted to create a painting that had a partial story, but gave the viewer options as to how the storyline progresses or finishes or even started. This piece was a challenge in so many ways:  the figure, the mini portrait, handling all the reds, the car, the sheer over the arms and the background of multiple trees/shrubs, grasses, etc.  I did how

While I am wiring on a more complex picture I often need to take a beak and thought I would try these bottles with reflections.  While this looks like a simple straight forward picture, compliments of Viacheslav on PMP, I found it hard to stay with just a few strokes.  I usually want to fill in all the information.  But this accomplished a couple of things for me, I wanted to work on color Artagain paper, as I have used the black in the past and wanted to see if the performance was the same.  And then I wanted to try to do the reflections.  Think I am going to try to do more of Viacheslav's still lives in pastel just for the practice.  He has such dramatic lighting, guess it is that Russian lighting that adds so much mystery and depth. Thanks much for stopping by and have a great week.

DPW had a Turner-style sky challenge and I wanted to try to see if I could capture a fluffy clouded sky in acrylics using a fan brush (didn't enter because I wasn't happy with the results).  Back in the 90s when I started watching PBS artists, they loved the fan brush and got fantastic results.  Over the years, me, not so much.  So one of my goals for 2016 is more plein aire projects and clouds are a bitgpart of that.  Will try again now that I have my interactive acrylics and am anxious to see how that does and if there is improvement..   The pastel sky on the right I did en plein aire in the mountains so I know there really is a lot of color in those white clouds.  The fan brush gave me light strokes, but left a lot of unclean wisps.  Moral of the story I got a lot of work to do on the skies and with the fan brush.  But I know if I keep practicing I will improve and learn to use the darn thing. Thanks for stopping by and hope you have a super weekend.

                                                                             Dryad                                                                             10"x10"                                                                             Acrylic I always used to worry that I wasn't a real artist.  I was pretty much programmed to take a picture and go with what was there.  Worked out well since I did a lot of portraits and had little time to dream - matter of fact I almost forgot how to dream while in the work world.  However one of my goals for 2016 was to actually try to compose pictures out of multiple references and utilize my imagination more and see if I could find the creativity that I thought really makes an artist.  Thank goodness for the blender apps that help you visualize what you are thinking. This started out thinking about and looking at my photos of Driftwood Beach on Jekyll Island, GA.   I then found the woman's photo but none of my shots w