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                                                                 First Impression                                                                        Acrylic                                                                        11"x14" I want to thank Li Newton for this stunning photo that I just knew I had to try when I saw it.  She called it Watching.  Again I wanted try to infuse this photo with some feeling and I hope my thought came through.  Here's what I thought, that as he boldly looked back at me, that we were evaluating each other, creating a first impression.  They say you make a decision on a person within 7 seconds - but many times the first impression isn't the correct one (yep I have learned that one the hard way).  As I look at this man he could be ages old or a current day person you would pass on the street.  He cold be everything from a professor, preacher or unemployed.  Initially I thought about calling this Warrior because I can see tha

                                                            Metamorphosis - Avery                                                                     24"x19"                                                                      Pastel Avery is the daughter of a friend of mine.  Many thanks to Carey and her friend, the photographer who took several wonderful shots of Avery.  Carey was kind enough to allow me to try to capture her.  I changed up the photo a bit by reversing the image and changed out the background and hat to lighter colors. I kind of think of this as the culmination of my 30 day challenge work with the mugshots and feel pretty good about catching her.  I did try a quick sketch of her on Day 5 and didn't think I caught her at all.  I have to say that for one time the picture is so much better than this shot indicates. You might ask why the title?  Well Avery is 14 and has quite an athletic personality.  I feel that these shots caught her as she is m

                                                                       Tied Up                                                                        18"x12"                                                                         Pastel Well had a bit of a let down I think after finishing my last picture and have gone several days without the desire or energy to get back to work.  Pretty back when I'd rather clean or do garden closing work.  I do have a portrait in process, but want to be sure I have enthusiasm and energy when I work on it. So today I finally got geared up to try a real landscape with sky and water, the double whammy.  I like the sky, the bottom part of the picture is suspect at best.  Anyway, it is a start and I will continue to try and try again. This is on Artagain paper.  Thought I'd try to do paper until I get my feel back a bit and then try out some of the Pastel board that I got.  I am surprised at how many layers the Artagain will tak

                                                            Rue de Petite Champlain                                                                        Acrylic                                                                        18"x18" Think I am going to call this one finished.  Been fussing on it so that must mean it is time to stop.   If it was looser don't think I would be so darn worrying about details.  Of course it will stay out for a bit and I still have some of the sides that I have to finish, but this is it. Think  will pair it with the Auberge du Tresor painting and put them up together.  Have a few more Canada shots to try as well, but time to switch subjects for a bit. Lots of stuff going on in this picture and hope that it all works.  Some of it is per the reference and others I took a little literary license.  Think that my blobs turned out ok for people.  Not sure if I diminished them in size too quickly, will have to do some more studying on

Well going to post this early because we are having some really nice weather and it is time to get out onto the porch and just enjoy it.  Thankfully, we were too far from the hurricane to have any rain or big winds, mainly just clouds and smaller consistent wind.  However, the hurricane, they fascinate me, since we lived so many years in Florida, each was different.  Today, it is crystalline blue skies and her to believe there ever was a monster storm a couple hundred miles to our east.  But we have 30-40 mpg winds and gusts because we are on the back side of the hurricane.  So strange. I got to work on this for a few hours this morning and am now am finishing adding in the rest of the base coats.   Also started to add in the secondary coats and putting in some of the details.  Once all the colors are down and canvas covered then I will have to rework the shadows.  I am most afraid of trying to do the crowd, which is in the center of picture, so you can kind of see I am working

I have been busy this week shutting down the garden, yessss!!  I always look forward to it when it begins in the Spring, but by Fall, I am tired of weeding, trimming, cutting plants, did I say cutting plants, cutting plants??  This year I cheated and had it done by someone else one time to get it back to down levels that I could work on, not having to climb a ladder as I value my old limbs.  Going to do that at least once or twice a year as it makes it so much easier.  I sure enjoy it when I can sit with my glass of wine on the porch, but have a hate relationship when I am sweating my derriere off (sigh I wish I could sweat it off) Why I went into the above is usually after a couple of hours I am feeling the manual labor so not in the mood to paint.  But something about this picture is spurring me forward and I feel like it is coming together - at least at the base coat level. I don't know what exactly, but something has changed in my mind and it is reflected in my painting.

  OK, I am at it again and am working on a cityscape, the reference picture I took back in 2003 - that was before digital cameras in my world.  So I scanned in the print into my computer using my printer and am taking it from there.  This was taken in early Fall in old town Quebec City and as you can see no cars allowed on this street.  It just looked so European.  I knew when I was coming down the Breakneck stairs that one day I wanted to paint this scene.  I remember the brisk air, the noisy crowd, all the activity, color and sign pollution - and I just loved it.  But it is a pretty intimidating picture, so just keep telling myself to do one layer at a time and trying to keep it loose - yeah right!!  Technically I guess you can paint a building loose and certainly the windows will be looser and of course the people and other things as we move back into the planes will get more abstract and hopefully single strokes.  I underpainted with a light yellow ochre to enhance

Auberge du Tresor 16"x12" Acrylic Well finally I am going to call it done,  unless someone has some suggestion for improvement.  I am pretty happy with this as I said before as I think I caught the essence without trying to put in all the details (something that is a challenge for me).  I put up the original reference photo - how do you think I did at capturing the scene.  I always love your feedback as it usually makes me stop and think. I always do a bit more studying when I am working on challenges and some of interesting the things I came across is that you should try to work in a series.  So I am going to give that a try and have selected a couple more of my photos from our Canadian trips that I am going to try to paint.  I want to go ahead and try to stay in this looser style and definitely experiment with the underpainting colors.  Again I came across some pastel advice where you should put 3 different yellows and blues as the block in colors.   I do li