Hummingbird Feeder Glow

"Hummingbird Feeder"

5" X 7"

I hoped to capture the hummingbirds quick movements, but what I was most excited to paint was the light hitting the right side and all the secondary reflected light. This was painted very quickly in around 30 minutes.


The light around the bird is the toned board showing through. My most successful paintings seem to be the ones that the natural glow of the board still shows in places. Once that glow is gone, it is difficult to paint back in.

Not Much, But It's Home

"Not Much, But It's Home"

8" x 16"

I 'm happy with this one and I have plans on painting it twice as big. This is not a small painting, but a lot of the scratched in branches and foliage tricks I did won't work on the larger size. The trick will be painting more detail, but keep all the looseness.

Wish me luck!

Rescue Me

"Rescue Me"

5"x 7"

This was a real quick sketch from my recent Ouray, Colorado trip. I saw this tucked away up next to a mountain waiting for a call. Thankfully nobody needed it's help.

Rest in Peace, Tractor

"Ready for Work" 

8" x 10"

Sometimes, a painting sits around for a few days and you find something you are not totally satisfied so you grab the brushes and go about reworking the places that bothered you and hopefully improve the painting. Sometimes you grab those brushes and no matter what you do things just get worse and worse.  I tried to rework the foreground and background on this painting and I'm sad to say, completely wrecked it. The photo above was prior to the new work. Seeing it again at this size, things don't look so bad and I wish I had left it alone.  After three attempts this painting is dark, dead and near lifeless. A hard lesson learned.

I won't give up because it had promise and is oil. I should be able to cover anything up, but I think it's best to put it aside and let us both rest for awhile.  

KEEP OUT

 "Hay Stacks"

9' x 12"

Went out with a couple of my painting buddies for some more punishment. You can just feel the heat radiating out of these photos and it was only 9 am! I did get some nice shadows and despite the heat had a lot of fun. We meet a man named Mannie that was working for real that day driving a forklift. He spoke only broken English, but was very excited to see our paintings. We found out Mannie was an artist himself after he showed us a large rock that he had decorated with a sharpie drawing various cowboy related doodles. I encouraged him to drop the sharpie and pick up some brushes. Hopefully Mannie will be starting his own Blog soon.

Glimpse of my palette

Wow, I'm dedicated!