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Day 30 Day 1 Finally it is Day 30 and it is over.  Apologize for the long post, but it is a bit of a recap. I must say that I am glad that I participated and as always I think I learned a lot and certainly had some fun doing this.   I said never again, but like childbirth, I am already thinking about doing it in September, but in a different way.   Maybe not so many pictures, not the full 30, or taking longer with each one to get higher quality pieces.  But it is really fun to see what others are producing and you can't help but get inspired.   Sorry, blogger is having some formatting issues here because I put these two pictures together. I didn't intend to do a lot of domestic cats this time, but ended up doing 7 and found them to be very interesting subjects.  I posted the first and the last days work of the challenge, maybe not fair to compare as they are two different media, but I think I...

Half way there!!   Yep Day 15 is upon us. Well darn I got a little too efficient and erased what I started with off the camera before I uploaded it. Anyway suffice it to say this was my try with the acrylic mono print.  Ellen tells me that you can work over them.  So I started out with a very ghostly blob, you could barely see any lines to paint with - it all kind of smeared together.  Then I just tried to overwork it with more acrylic that was similar colors to what I had and where I wanted to go and this is what I ended up with.  I guess I have to say I am not sure it was with all the effort to do the mono print as most of it is covered up again. I think if it would have transferred more paint on the print portion I could have added less paint.  So it is back to the drawing board.  But the good news is that I at least didn't totally waste the couple of days that I played with this. Thanks much for stopping by and taking a look.  Oh yeah!...

Well here is another quick sketch with the idea coming from Lee Hammond's book Darwing Realistic Pets.  That of course is all done in graphite and I went ahead and gave it some color.  This is another little one and I like how he is about to spring on something that has caught his attention.  This again is on stock paper and done with pan pastels. Thanks for stopping by.

                                                                           Walter                                                                            11"x8"                                                                            Pastel Well this hasn't happened in a while, Friday, the 13th, but no ladders or black cats for us today..... Instead  we get Walter, I think.  My friend Laurie has two Hima...

Well I have clicked off a few days wasting time, where I was ahead, while I was fooling around trying to make some mono prints.  Also I think I got a little too complex so I am going to have a few days here where I do smaller projects.  I have to take exception with myself and give this definition of studies -  Studies are footprints in the sand of the journey of an artist.   What a superb thought. Ellen at PMP posted a mono print and a YouTube video of the process and it sure looked intriguing so I just had to try it. This is painted all in one layer on glass with watercolors.  I then misted over the top of the watercolors to get them wet again and then pressed the damp paper on top to see what image you got.      I didn't have all the equipment so it was a pretty elementary process.  Hate to tell you this, but this is the best I got and it is still pretty ghostly.  Ellen tells me that I should work over it, and maybe I will. ...

Watching 4"x5" Acrylic Yep am here again with another cat, but they make great subjects as they have so many moods.  I haven't painted many house cats, usually only the big boys.  There have been some articles recently that state cats now are causing issues in many parts of the world because they are hunters with no predators, and are destroying certain other species. This cat certainly is intent on watching something.  Trying to get the multi-color fur was a bit of a challenge.  I still don't have the technique with the right brush together, but it is coming and am sure the answer is practice.  I keep experimenting trying to get the different layers, groupings, shadows and hair lengths.  I had a lot of fun trying to put in the different colors in the eyes, simply put in blotches and then did several layers of glazing of yellows and my green mixture.  The background is made with ochre, very little white and phathlo blue - surprising myse...

HAPPY NEW YEAR                   2017!! Yes, it's HERE again, the 30 paintings in 30 days challenge.  I always debate now whether or not to do it, but usually end up going forward because there are always things I learn and the benefits of doing back to back paintings is usually huge.  It's a mini capsule to see your work improve before your eyes in 30 days.  I have learned to that if I don't do 30 the world doesn't end and I have taken pressure off of myself to just have more fun. For this challenge I decided to work on animals and try to see if I can get a better fur/feather/scale technique as I am not sure what animal might appear as we go through the month.  I am also working out of a book (Anne DeMille Flood's Realistic Pet Portraits, I have that is about color pencil, but I want to try the color layering/receipes in color pencil in other media to see how it turns out, might come up with some new color re...

                                                                     BFFs                                                                     11"x14"                             ...

    Pretty Boy Harry 7"x5" Pastel/Velour Paper I don't know why but I haven't done many regular cats, only cats have been of the big African variety.  So I am remedying that situation with Pretty Boy Harry.    This is from PMP and the photographer is Neil Cartwright.  Harry just looked so peaceful and I loved the soft long silky hairs and the subtle color blends in his dark fur.    Thanks for stopping by and enjoy today.

The other day I suggested you might check out wetcanvas.com, I was going to do that to check out info on drawing feathers and didn't find much that would help me with Pink.   Well I took my own advice and ended up finding a thread on drawing wildlife with charcoal and chalk, check Drawing and Sketching/The Classroom/Basic 102: Wildlife in charcoal ad chalk.  Well after 17 pages of conversation and people posting pictures, I got charged up and came up and drew up this sketch in about an hour and a half.  What I wanted to accomplish with this sketch: 1)  Measure, since this is a portrait I measured, using my handy dandy ruler to get not only spacing, but size and angles.  This part probably took me about 30 minutes, but felt comfortable with my base 2)  Limited palette of:  vine charcoal, General white charcoal pencil, orange-ish light dark pastel (all my pastels are arranged by values) and 2H and 9XXB graphite pencils (seems like I...

Well I should have waited until tomorrow to post this since I just put up something yesterday, but got in the art room today, zoned in and got this, I think, pretty finished.  I will let it sit on the board and probably play a bit with it, but think overall I am pretty happy with it. Another new technique that I tried was to use on the mice graphite powder (simply shavings from sharpening my pencils) and applied it to the surface with a patting motion onto the heads and body of the mice and then drew in their hairs.  I think my experiment with the trompe l'oeil turned out too as I do think the mice look in front of the cat and that they are coming forward outside the frame.  Later in the week think I will spray it to hold the graphite in check (workable fixative) and then go to Binders to get a frame.  Also gives me a reason to see my picture in the show and all the other pieces again.  Also will look to see if there is anything else I have completed tha...

Ok, you can see I that I have added the base tones for the chair cushion.  This was done in circularism, hundreds of small o's with a very sharp pencil.  Then as I did in the upper left hand quadrant I will go over it with a piece of chamois (got it at the $ store) and gently smooth it down so there is still texture and makes it look kind of velvety.  Also got more precise with the paws and hind quarters of the cat. Usually when I have done graphite it has been with 2B pencil and erasers.  This time I am using different levels of pencils, F, 3B, 5B and a 2B mechanical pencil to try to let the different softness of the leads do the work for me. Taking a break now as it was darn tedious to do the circularism, but know that the fun part is coming!! Thanks for stopping by and hope you are having a great week.

Hope this will bring you a little smile as I work through the painting as I feel in a humorous mood for whatever reason. For the August show my art group wanted you to work in squares.  So I decided to do a 12"x12" size overall picture (cause you have to frame this piece and I'm cheap), breaking it into 4 squares of 5" each and putting my lazy cat and friends into it.  Going back to one of my loves, and that is graphite.  By the way there is an excellent tutorial for the last two months by Peter Williams at PMP's magazine - http://issuu.com/paintmyphoto , and look for Peter's article as he is quite spectacular.  I have been trying for a while to learn and then actually use GIMP.  My main thrust was to learn how to put together two different pictures and make a new reference (thankyouYouTube, only had to watch it 27 times!!!).  Finally think I was successful (see below).  Found a wonderful reference for both cat and mice on...