Captain Chris Sets Sail

Captain Chris Oil on Canvas 16" x 12"

You may have seen earlier versions of this painting from previous posts. It is a portrait I have been working on of a very creative young man that lives down the street from me. He adapted a video game called "Escape from Monkey Island" into a play. He wrote the script, directed and starred in a performace put on at the high school up the street. It was quite wonderful.

His name is Chris Heady and he keeps a blog as well. You can find him here:
Chris Heady

He's departing for college next week. This painting is his graduation gift, so I thought I better finish it so it has time to dry before he leaves. You have to have something to hang on your dorm room wall, right?

I know he will do well.

Ah Ha! I am done!

I don't care if this is any good or not. I AM DONE!

After all, how long can one man spend on a little 4 x 6 sketch?

According to my calculations... Exactly 5 days!

For what it's worth folks, here you go. I have to move on. Wally, I only hope to twist your mind for a week the way you have twisted mine. :-)

Bless all of you for your "encouragement" throughout the week.

Seriously, it has been a lot of fun. :-)

You guys are the best.

A bit more color....

A few more washes. But I fear this may be going the way of Wally's fortune. (see comments below) It is so easy to over paint a water color. It is only 4" x 6" and I think I am trying to cram 9" x 12" detail into it.

Still haven't toched the water. :-)

A little cool color...

I had time for one quick wash before I left for work this morning. Time to start adding cool colors to round out the color temps.

I hope to have another post tomight with more progress.

Linville Falls, Step Three

OK,one more wash before I hit the hey. But I really do have to go to bed now. Children start waking up at 6:00 am around here now that school has started. More tomorrow...

Linville Falls, Step Two

Just adding a wash before I go to bed. I couldn't sleep until I had distinguished the water from the stone in some small way.

More tomorrow I hope.

OK, patince now...

Linville Falls - Step one

Ok, you guys know me well enought by now to expect more. And more will come. This is the beginning of a WC of a beautiful place I had the opportunity to visit recently in North Carolina.

This will hopefully become a decent water color sketch over the next day or so. It is only 4" x 6" but I am amazed at how much detail I m trying trying to cram into it. I just need to LOOSEN UP! But what have you. It is what it is...

More anon....

Another oldie but goodie...

King Lear grieves over Cordelia Oil on canvas 30" x 36"

I hate to do this, but it has been an extremely busy week leaving me no time to produce any new artwork. One of my sons suggested I keep an "Oldy-But-Goody" file handy for such occasions.

So I give you the second part to my King Lear series.

Ah... at last...I'm done...

Peppers on the Cutting Board Water Color 9" x 12"

Well, it's 12:45. But I think I have finished this one. Now I really do have to go to bed. Tomorrow will come earlier than I think.

See you then.

Mmmm.... Red peppers...

Well, I got the red peppers in here. Now all I have to do is the knife.

Here's the question. It's almost midnight. I have to get up at 6:00 am. Do I go for it or finish it tomorrow?

Another blog cliffhabger, huh?

Tune in tomorrow...

No more green

This is the last of the green peppers. I'm working on the red ones now. Be back later...

One more pepper tonight...

It's getting late, but I got another pepper in. Gotta go to bed now though. There's always work tomorrow.

Man, this is going slow...

Only one pepper tonight so far.

I don't know why I thought I could just come home from work and knock this out. Sometimes I under estimate the amount of concentration this takes to do a good job. It's the whole struggling to paint thing again...

I find it much easier to do artwork in the morning when I have a fresh brain. In the evening, after a day at the office, it's difficult to focus.

Bla, bla, bla. What a whiner, huh?

Don't worry, I'll finish it.

Peppers on the cutting block - step one

The other night my daughter was helping my wife cook. We were having fajitas and she was cutting up peppers to put into the mix. I looked down and saw how beautiful the veggies were on the cutting board. Had to paint this...

So. I came home from work tonight and I thought, "no problem, I can knock this out in one session.

Right....

Well, it took me about 2 and a half hours to get the background where I wanted it. That's what you're seeing now.

I will follow up with the completion of this painting in the next few days. But I thought I would go ahead and post what I have.

Anyway.. Here's step one. If all goes well, I'll finish this tomorrow night.

Ouuu... does that make this a blog cliffhanger????!!!

Tune in next time....

Illustration Friday: Wisdom

King Lear Oil on canvas 36" X 48"

This is an oldy but a goody. This is a portrait of Laurence Oliver as he played the title role in Shakespear's "King Lear". With a face like that how can you not be wise?

My apologies for the glare on the upper left. I didn't shoot this under the best lighting conditions.

It's Not Art... Yet!

This is slightly off topic, but not really. My wife was at the beach with two of our kids for about 4 days. My oldest son was home with me. We have been remodeling parts of house and the kitchen is on the list. About 2 months ago I took all the doors of of one set of cabinets so we could paint them. We'll eventually do this to all the kitchen cabinets.

Before she left my wife made the observation that we have stuff everywhere because of the remodeling we're doing. It is driving us both crazy. So I thought if I could get these cabinets painted, we could get the dishes off the dining room table and put away the way they should be. I thought it would make us both feel better.

She had mentioned she would like an antique crackle finish to give the kitchen a "French Country" look. So I thought, I'll go one step further and turn this into an art project as well. So bear with me while explain how, over the next few weeeks (months) there will be some art on this blog worth looking at.


Step One: My oldest son was a great help and painted the frame of the cabinets.


Step two: I painted each door with two coats of oil primer on each side. No fun to work with at all. I also masked off the inside panel. That's going to be mny "canvas" later on.


Step three: I applied the base coat to the outside edge of each door. There is a total of 12. After that dried, I applied the clear "crakle" finish and let it dry until tacky.


Step four: Then I applied the top color (a sage green) and like a miracle, it splits into this really cool antique finish all by itself.


Step five: OK, this is where the art comes in. I have faked it in photoshop to give you an idea of what the finished product will look like, but I plan on doing a still life in oil of various fruits and vegitables on each door.

Below are the reference photos I have taken so far to work from:







And I must give credit where it is due. Duane Kaiser's work gave me the idea. I am so inspired by the work on his site, "A Painting a Day"

Star Wars at the Beach

Jango Fet

On one rainy night at the beach I was drawing with my nephew. He's a real Star Wars fan and loves Jango Fet(the bounty hunter). He had this really cheap pad of newsprint that was fun to paint on. It was very absorbent so you had to paint quickly.

I have been very busy this week. Harry's recent "Help Wanted" post reminded me that I had this one sitting around.

Big-guy Beach Challenge

The Round Family

Click here for larger image

Ok. Harry started this. I saw his post this morning of the big, harry (no pun intended) guy on the beach. Seeing that we both recently returned from the same area, I had to post my sketch of a big-guy too. But I got lucky. I got a whole family of big-beach-people!

The beach fun never ends!

Illustration Friday, Aging

Mom at her 50th Wedding anniversary luncheon

This week's IF (Illustration Friday) topic is Aging. I thought about lots of ways to participate. I've been feeling rather aged lately myself. I thought maybe a self portrait. I just grew a go-tee. It came in almost all gray.

But I have been thinking about my Mom a lot lately too. She passed away a few years ago and it occurred to me I had done only one sketch of here my whole life (so far). It was from a picture I took of her at her 50th wedding anniversary celebration to my father. I wish I had done so much more.

So here's the lesson on aging: Draw pictures of the ones you love now. You never know when they may not be available to model.

Another beach house. Well... cloud really.

Beach House No. 2 - 4"x6" Watercolor

I found these really cool watercolor pads the other day. They are only 4" x 6", but they have 15 sheets bound with adhesive on all 4 sides. It's like painting on paper that has been stretched on a block. By the time I finished the sketch the water in the paper made it pop off the block. I thought it was really handy and just wanted to share, here are some pics...

Every Day Matters Challenge #18

Draw the view from a window of your house, apartment, office, etc.

Click here for an animated play-by-play


This is another rainy-day sketch from our recent trip to the beach. I was sitting at a table that looked out over the deck, the dunes and on out to the ocean. The next set of beach houses directly to our south is what I see when I look out the window.

We have a saying at the beach: "A rainy day in Duck is better than a sunny day anywhere else." Well, OK. Maybe Aruba.

Illustration Friday: Tranquility

Twins Sleeping Oil on canvas 24 x 20

This is an old work but I thought it fit the topic so well, I pulled it out of storage for another run. Only Vit and julie oakly commented before so I hope this is new for most of you.

These are my twins when they were younger. They were about five, and had separate rooms. But occasionally we would find them asleep together like when they were babies and shared a crib. I saw them like this one night and thought it would make a nice portrait.

Portrait of the artist as a young man

Click for a larger image

A quick oil sketch of the younger artist in this house. This is the young man responsible for "The Angry Boss" below. We both thought I made him look like a Vulcan from Star Trek.

I'm sharing my blog with my son again...

The Angry Boss

I am especially proud of my son's entry today. This is the first colored pencil drawing that he's done where he used a layering technique to achieve a final color. He worked lightly and built up the color slowly. Without any prompting from me he learned about optical mixing of color.

This is supposed to be a drawing of my boss. My son hasn't seen my boss very often, so I love that he thinks all bosses smoke cigars and are angry all the time. He knows it's not really that way, but who can blame him? After all, remember Mr. Spacely from the Jetsons? J. Jonah Jamison from Spiderman? Lu Grant from the Mary Tyler Moore Show?

It's amazing what the right paper will do for you...

Coleus Color Sketch No. 1

This was so much fun to do. I couldn't wait to get to it after dinner last night. My wife is great. She doesn't mind me doing my thing in the evening.

Anyway, I didn't want to do the water color in the molskine. As much as Jim's technique of wetting the paper first works well, I needed the control that WC paper could provide. So I scanned the drawing from the moleskine and printed it out on WC paper in my ink jet printer. (yea, that 'ol trick) And then did water color washes, pastel and finally colored pencil.

I'm getting closer to the final vision of what I want this to do, but it's not giving me the same results that oil will. I want something looks very rich and more simplified. Hopefully, I figure it out soon.

More fun on my deck

Coleus Sketch No. 1

I have a new facination. My wife planted these wonderful things called Coleus in the flower box on our deck. I discovered that at around 4:30 in the afternoon on a sunny day, the most wonderful light is created around these little gems. I have a very heavily wooded back yard, which tends to make the background very dark, almost like night time. But then the sunlight breaks through at very interesting angles and makes the tiny purple pedals on the bud seem luminescent.

I want to explore a series of these in oil. Before I do that, however, I wanted to slow down and do some studies before I commit to canvas. I discovered in this sketch that the plant was much more complicated than I thought. And it was harder to convey the range of values than I thought. Perhaps that is do to the use of a pen, but I wanted to do this as quickly as possible, and not get bogged down in trying to do 'finished' art. So the good thing is I learned a lot about the structure of the plant better.

Next, I'll do some color studies. Small ones like 4 x 6 inches. This will force me to really boil the composition and color down to their most important parts. I will do these in either water color (NOT in my moleskine) or in oil. I bought some little 4 x 6 canvas boards this morning so I think think I am leaning that way. Then I will do some full size oils.

I do feel as I made my way to the lower right portion of the drawing, I was starting to loose my concentration and started making stuff up instead of drawing what was there.

Let me know what you think.

Back to the bird feeder...

I thought it would be fun to look at this one step-by-step. Click on any image to view a larger version.

Step one: The focal point



Step two: Add second bird



Step three: Add third bird (I'm detecting a patteren here)



Step four: You guessed it - Add fourth bird



Step five: I'm out of birds so I start to go over the drawing with a Pilot G2 pen. Building up bold lines to emphasise focal points



Step six: Finished pen drawing



Step seven: Just add water(color) I should have stopped at step six!


Dinner time
I am taking a detour from the beach for a moment. These finches were going to town on the bird feeder last night. I thought they made a nice subject.

I'm doing this in my new Moleskine. I got to the point where I had to decide if I were going to add color to this. I really want to color it, but it's on this really weird moleskiine paper that makes the pen work look great, but the watercolor sucks.

What the Hell.... I went for it. Maybe I'll find a way to get a unique look out of the awful paper.

More silly stuff from the beach

Group Doodle

It may have been on the same rainy day, but at some point various members of the family - cousins, adults, kids - we sitting around the dining room table. Just shooting the breeze. The 3-year-olds had these wonderful tablets of really cheap newsprint paper. The kind that almost still has wood chips in it.

Without even really talking about it it got passed around the table between some of the kids and myself. My son C did the day-glow Bart Simpson. I did the strange old man. ( I was told I doodle those a lot. Hmmm....) Little neices and a nephew did the feet at the top. A 10 year old nephew did the eagle/human figure in the lower right. We had a good time.

Black & White beach fun

Phillip doing the "Creepy Man" face

One night at the beach it was raining and we were all inside playing Trivial Pursuit, the 90s edition. Phillip is a young man that accompanied my niece this year on our family vacation. He's actually a very nice guy. The family adopted him almost immediately. During the game we discovered one of his hidden talents is to make what he calls the "Creepy Man" face. It cracked me up so much I had to put it in my moleskine. It was a very fast sketch, but fun, so I thought I would post it.

This is what his 'normal' face looks like:

The next installment from the beach

Three Shells

I did this on our first rainy day at the beach. I put the shells on a piece of water color paper by the window. The soft light of the drizzly day made for a very nice effect.

Illustration Friday Challenge: Sport

It was fitting to come back from my vacation at the beach to this topic. I thought this sketch would fit in pretty well. I don't know who the lady is, but she, may son and our dog were just about the only ones on the beach early in the morning when I did this. The early morning light was great.

Back from the beach....

Dusty on the Beach

We returned this evening from a week in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. An annual trip we take with my wife's family. As usual, it was a relaxing time with days filled with time at the beach and evenings having large meals with a large family. We had a few rainy days, so I tried to sketch as much as I could. Here's a sketch of one of my favorite models. You all have seen him before.

This trip is one of Dusty's favorites every year. He is such a water dog. The first day he actually jumped the gate on the deck of our beach house to get down to the ocean. He pulled a muscle and limped the rest of the day, but I know he would do it again in a heartbeat.