The Cat's Meow

11x9.5 watercolor on Strathmore 140 lb cold press paper with Daniel Smith paints; a cat who is busy talking a blue streak to someone, probably about his dinner.  In the photo which was black and white, the cat was actually a grey tabby, but I've used artistic license and made him black using all the darks on my palette except black.  I used quinacridone burnt orange, gold, violet, magenta; midnight blue, manganese blue, thalo green, ultramarine, alizarin crimson, green gold.  Happy Halloween, everybody!!!

David's Head - completion

Today I spent more time rearranging his eyes, mouth, ear, and nose.  The plan was to use Derivan Matisse background acrylic but none of the colors I had seemed suitable, so I opted for India ink and used fairly heavily upper right then more dilute to finish the background.  You can certainly see where the pages are showing although most are covered by gouache.  For now am done with the series on Michelangelo's David.

WIP continued David's Head

Here I have added gouache using 1" sable flat brush and Turner paints on 22x15 Fabriano 140 lb hot press paper.  More work is needed on his eyes but I have the basic skin tones down using white, burnt sienna, cad orange and red.  It is interesting to see the printed pages and the effects underneath paint.  There's a big show next weekend I'd like to enter with him if I get through in time.  It is raining cats and dogs here since Wednesday so lots of indoor time equals painting time! Yay! Any excuse to paint more...stay tuned!

Work in Progress: David's Head in gouache

Beginning charcoal sketch of Michelangelo's statue of King David.  This is over phone book yellow pages adhered to Lanaquarelle 140 lb hot press paper, and is a work in progress.  Yesterday I had finished my watercolor study of David's head in preparation of this I'll do in gouache, using Turner paints.  The phone book pages are laid on top of a 1:1 ratio matte medium to water mixture brushed on, then strips of 1" wide masking tape on top of the pages, let set for 10 minutes and then remove tape and as much of the pages possible.  I let this one set about a minute too long as it did not all peel off.

Head of David

11x7.5 watercolor on Fabriano 140 lb rough, a study of Michelangelo's David done before I get a larger head in charcoal done on a half sheet.  From my photos at Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas, I will visit there again in November and also the flamingos at the Hilton for more references.  This one was done today with a limited palette of quinacridone burnt orange, ultramarine blue, and permanent rose.  I tried to get the granite stone texture as well as lose some edges.

Sunday Morning Rain

15x22 watercolor on WN 140 lb cold press paper, an imaginary Sunday morning rainy walk to church in an imaginary town.  In this composition, autumn has begun with the change of seasons bringing its surprises.

Scarlet Macaw - torn paper collage

10x10 torn paper collage on wrapped canvas, my demo from yesterday's class.  I drew the parrot with black felt tip permanent marker after gessoing the canvas, then began tearing, not cutting, paper from quality magazines and adhering with matte medium.  Today I spent 2 more hours getting him done.  There's a frog, a paintbrush, a butterfly, bracelets, rooster, red jalapeno pepper, steamer pot, trivets, a green colander, apple, chair, etc., within the square composition.  Tomorrow I'll apply varnish medium to seal it and make it shiny.

House of David

15x11 gouache on Saunders 300 lb paper, another version of Michelangelo's sculpture of David he created 1501-1504.  I cut a failed painting in half and applied gouache over the background as well as the figure first.  I'll show the beginning ink sketch below.  A few years ago I bought Susan Boyle's Christmas CD that she'd recorded Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, the story of King David's temptation with Bathsheba.  So the lyrics were dancing in my head throughout this work, hence the significance of the upside down modern day houses.

 In this image, only the figure has been painted using Turner's gouache.  I'd like to keep the house windows and may paint over the rest.

Initial ink sketch using black India ink dropper only over the upside down old dog watercolor.  Total time:  2 hours.

Michelangelo's David

18x12 mixed media and ink on Strathmore 140 lb cold press paper.  I drew an ink outline yesterday of statue of David (sculpted by Michelangelo between 1501-1504), onto dry paper I had collaged phone book pages onto.  I then added gouache to him and background.  After drying, I covered the entire paper with black India ink. When that dried, I ran lukewarm water over the image.  To lose more ink, I should've worked on 300 lb watercolor paper.  It was quite splotchy so I went back in with gouache then painted over background again with ink.  When all was dry I used silver and gold Caran D'Ache wax pastel crayons for linear work.  Today I've drawn David again over a failed work which will post tomorrow.  Here below are the steps for this finished work:

Golden Melon

22x15 watercolor on 140 lb cold press paper with DaVinci/Daniel Smith paints.  A collection of fall gourds cluster together in old iron urn.  I particularly like their twisted stems, leaves, and vines.

Autumn Aspens Wolf

20x16 watercolor on Arches 140 lb cold press paper, DaVinci/Daniel Smith/WN paints.  A friend gave me his wolf photos so using one of those, added aspen grove I photographed in New Mexico years ago plus imaginary rocks to make this fall landscape.

Library Cat

15.5 x 11.5 watercolor I titled Library Cat as this fellow was resting in a room lined with books and plush pillows.  He has a sad look on his mug!

Tulip Talk

11x15 watercolor of orange yellow tulips growing by side of a house.  I know these are fall colors on spring flowers but wanted to paint them really bad! Ref courtesy of Jean on WetCanvas for last weekend's drawing event.

Scarecrows

22x15 watercolor over gessoed matboard; drawn from two of the cute scarecrows I bought at the dollar store.

White Cat Siesta

22.25 x 19.25 watercolor, painted on 140 lb hot press paper.  This white kitty was taking a siesta until he was awakened to pose for the camera.

Belize Umbrellas

15x11 watercolor on 140 lb cold press Saunders paper, with Daniel Smith paints.  Using a marketplace photo from our trip to Belize several years ago, I painted this townscape rapidly using only bright colors at the center of interest.

Stillness - wolf in snow

11x15 watercolor painted today on Kilimanjaro 140 lb cold press paper with Daniel Smith paints:  Ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, raw sienna, burnt sienna, quinacridone burnt orange, sepia, carbazole violet, quinacridone gold. Background trees are all negatively painted. Total time 2 hours. I made up the snow and trees and the wolf photo is courtesy WetCanvas! Weekend Drawing Event Sept. 14-16, host Jean of Canada.  Her photo was a wolf in warmer weather so I changed the season.

Black Tie hollyhock

30x22 watercolor on Kilimanjaro 140 lb cold press paper with Daniel Smith paints.  I grew several black hollyhocks outside my studio door but no blooms this year thanks to the drought.  In my photo the bloom is more dark blood red, but with this one I've gone to the dark side and have pushed color, exaggerating where necessary.

Amarillo Sunflowers

12x9 pastel, charcoal, and Caran D'Ache wax crayons on pastel paper from some fake sunflowers where I was teaching a workshop at the Amarillo Art Institute.  I love their organic shapes and twisted leaves.

Gorgeous Gourds

10x14 fall harvest pumpkins and gourds in an old bucket, a still life I set up a few years ago.  Look closely and you can see where negative painting was done in the background.  Love the colors of autumn!

Hearts Afire

30x22 acrylic, wax crayon, and ink on 140 lb cold press watercolor paper, a heart abstracted first then defined with more detail inside later.  This painting has been SOLD.

Oriental Garden

4.5x7 watercolor and ink line painting done this afternoon during my class.  The red Chinese pagoda style gazebo was especially charming in the mostly green landscaped garden.

Flaming Flamingo

22x30 watercolor on light weight Yupo synthetic paper, painted from another lovely bird photographed in my travels.  The slick surface of Yupo lets pigments sit on top as there is no tooth for the paint to sink into, thus they're more vibrant.  Fixative is sprayed to keep the work intact.

Aspen Run

14.5x10.5 watercolor on gessoed matboard done this afternoon from one of my New Mexico photos of a row of aspens glistening gold in the morning sun.  I've exaggerated the background adding more darks as if there were green foliage behind.  A highway was in between that and the trees so I have made that more blue as if it was water.  Not as many red leaves were there in real life either.

Country Life (house)

22x30 watercolor on 140 lb cold press Saunders; DaVinci and Daniel Smith paints.  Several years ago I painted this from a photo image I'd taken and cut into an odd number of vertical strips.  I mixed them up then drew each section as its own little painting, all parts of the whole.  I loved this old white wood frame house, its porch, bench, laundry, and garden.  This work is SOLD.

Trunk Show (elephants) WIP

 Here is the FINISHED work in progress, 15x22 India ink and watercolor on Italia 140 lb cold press paper done today.  Colors used:
raw umber violet, raw sienna, sepia, and cobalt teal blue.

 

This view is the first one where I drew in the larger bull elephant using ink dropper.  I had spritzed my paper with water sprayer at random, then sporadically misted it over wet ink spots.  Once the ink is dry it is permanent.

I felt the composition needed one more guy to round out the trunk show, similar to show and tell only these beasts are comparing trunks at the local savannah club.  Actually the work could stand on its own either with or without the third fellow who appears to be laughing.

Backlit Kitten

8.75 x 5.75 watercolor pet portrait on Strathmore 140 lb cold press paper; Daniel Smith paints, a daily painting completed this afternoon.  This weekend I shot lots of photos of my cats in windows backlit by the morning sun.  No masking was used to highlight white hair or whiskers.

Blood Red Hollyhocks

6 x 10.5 watercolor on 140 lb cold press paper, Daniel Smith/DaVinci paints, done from one of my dark red studio hollyhocks.  I'm having to use photos from a few years back due to no rain this year in spring to cause them to grow and bloom.  I did have one pale yellow plant and one medium pink hollyhock, though, but the roses really suffered.  This work is now SOLD.

Sunflowers and Tulips

14x11 watercolor on Ampersand Aquabord, brush only, no predrawing, done today.  Prompted by the wild weeds that resemble sunflowers and a few other yellow wildflowers, I added the red orange tulips, although you wouldn't see them growing together. It is my first time to work on Aquabord and really did like its clay surface; it has a 2" cradle around its edges, so frame and glass unnecessary.

Mollie's Chickens

5.25x7.5 watercolor on Strathmore 140 lb cold press paper done this afternoon.  These are Mollie Jones' poultry and she has them in all shapes, sizes, colors, breeds, etc. on her farm in East Texas.  After yesterday's mixed media collage intense concentration I felt like painting these barnyard babes.

Trashy Poppies collage

                                                                             12x12 watercolor collage with ink

This view is showing the applied cocktail napkin over Crescent matboard, adhered with half matte medium/half water ratio, with phone book yellow pages added on top of the napkin.  Finished version (top image) flowers were drawn with pencil and heavy watercolor added.  When dry I added touches of black India ink and let portions of the napkin show.  Total time a bit over 3 hours today.  Since all items used were destined for the trashbin I named it Trashy Poppies; just wanted to see if I could make something from nothing.  This work has now been SOLD.