Work in progress 4

(wip 1 / wip 2 / wip 3)

Here's the river! I layered a glossy gel on top of the paint and followed that up with a matte gel wash to soften the gloss a bit - but it still gives off a shimmery effect underneath the matte wash. The yellowish paint has more of that fun iridescent gold paint mixed in, too. The river looks a bit goofy at the moment because I still need to paint the bank in the foreground and an isthmus in the middle.

Chick-a-dees!

We brought home 6 baby chicks a few weeks ago, and I wanted to share some pictures of them with everyone! They've been way too much fun. We have to keep them in a box in the house at night, but now that they're bigger, we're able to put them outside in a moveable coop. These pictures were taken when the chicks were still fluffy and adorable...they've now entered into the awkward adolescent stage, which is a particularly awkward time for chickens. They're very dinosaur-like.

Work in progress 3

(backtrack to: wip 1 / wip 2)

The cliffs are no longer bald! I've added trees and shrubs, some of which are still floating out in the ether, but they'll be grounded soon. I painted some of the shrubs by loading a palette knife with paint and scraping it against the textured "rock" - the texture broke the green paint up into natural-looking foliage.

I also brightened the cliff faces with more color washes. The subtle iridescent gold paint that I mixed in with the other colors doesn't want to show up in photos - but in the right light, it gives a little bit of glimmer to the sandstone cliffs.

In other news, I've started a Facebook business page for my art...if you're a member of Facebook, you should join as a fan to follow updates! :)

Work in progress 2

This is an unfortunately blurry photo taken after applying the impasto base layer of the cliffs with palette knives...

...and here are the cliffs after several color washes and some detail brushwork. The detail work, for the most part, consists of emphasizing ridges and crevices that were already sort of "sculpted" in the impasto layer. I'm doing a lot of color washes with this one since I want the cliffs to glow (the color in this photo turned out muted, but it still has a ways to go anyway). I'm even trying out a shimmery metallic gold paint from Golden, which I'm mixing in small amounts with my regular heavy-bodied acrylics for washes.

I decided to try documenting the progress of a painting in preparation for a demonstration in May. An art club in Sumner, WA has asked me to demonstrate my technique for them, so I figured that these "work in progress" posts would be helpful practice. I think I'll have to bring several pieces at various stages of completion in order to show all the stages I go through...kind of like on a cooking show.

P.S. Click on the photos for larger versions...the texture shows up much better in the bigger pictures.

Work in progress

I thought it would be fun to show a work in progress. I should have taken a photo before I softened up the impasto sky with a brush, but oh well.

On a completely random note, I now prefer the UK Office series to the US one...the recent US seasons, which are mostly full of bit jokes and one-liners, are actually starting to tarnish the series for me. The UK one may make me squirm more, but it seems to tell a full story much better.

Muddy Pasture

Muddy Pasture

acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas

22" x 28"

$685 + $33 shipping (contact)

This little forgotten building overlooks a muddy, well-worn pasture after a hard rain in Shepherd, MT.

I have quite an affinity for broken-down buildings, and I guess I'm not the only one - the Yellowstone Historic Preservation Board is working to protect and preserve historic buildings of Yellowstone County, however big or small or seemingly insignificant they may be. They keep an online status list of structures in need of T.L.C., and it's sad to see some of the charming little buildings and farmhouses that have disappeared.

Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me. Where I lived was as far off as many a region viewed nightly by astronomers. We are wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remote and more celestial corner of the system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia's Chair, far from noise and disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the universe. If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which I had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him.

-Thoreau, from Walden

Running With Ancestors

Running With Ancestors

acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas

14" x 18"

Available at Proctor Art Gallery, Tacoma, WA

(contact)

This has been sitting in my studio for over a month, waiting to be photographed. I used the same fluffy molding paste with this painting as I did with the buffalo.

David felt that the white horse looked like a ghost and came up with the name for this one.

When we are praising Plato, it seems we are praising quotations from Solon and Sophron and Philolaus. Be it so. Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors. And this grasping inventor puts all nations under contribution.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Representative Men