Christmas Ornament with Eggs 11"x14" oil painting ckm 2012 |
Friday, December 7, 2012
Christmas Ornament with Eggs
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Christmas Holly
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Christmas Poinsettias Oil Painting
Christmas Poinsettias 2012 12" x 12" oil on canvas |
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Paintings Overview
Poinsettias Oil Painting
Here is the poinsettia painting from Christmas 2011, it is 12" x 12" oil on canvas.
The video shows the time lapse of it being made:
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Hoover Tower - Stanford
Hoover Tower, Stanford 12"x16" oil on canvas |
Monday, September 17, 2012
Watercooler Chat - Marbled Godwits
"Watercooler Chat" Marbled Godwits at Ulloa St. Beach, San Francisco 12"x12" oil on canvas |
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Coast at Wilder Ranch
"Solid Coast" at Wilder Ranch 12"x16" oil on canvas |
This size canvas is a little different to work with, and it gets exaggerated with the high horizon line. That made a pretty neat area for all the water colors on the left. I hope to be out when it's later in the day to see the sunset lighting the rocks and see how that turns out.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Blazing Vineyard, Napa Valley
Blazing Vineyard, Napa Valley 12"x16" oil on canvas
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Rows of Organic Flours of several types for sale $5 |
working grind stones |
working water wheel |
work bench, nice lighting! |
This mill was in Napa Valley long before it became wine making country and the farmers would bring their grist to have it milled into flour. The mill has been kept very nicely with a lot of hand sawn and scraped timbers. They still grind flour, corn, and buckwheat, powered by the water wheel during the tour, explain how the whole thing works, and the history of the valley is also shared. Flour sacks ground at this mill are available to purchase for $5 a bag. We have been enjoying the buckwheat and whole wheat flour in pancakes.
This nifty crank machine will take a dried ear of corn and scrape off the kernels and drops the cob into the bucket below. The dried kernels then get ground into polenta or corn meal. |
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Halloween Paintings and Ideas
I was shocked to read Halloween is just 8 weeks away, because it will slip by so fast and I have a pile of ideas left over from last year. HGTV posted some cute and pretty fast decorating ideas, and if you want to paint a Halloween painting I am sharing the ones I posted last fall which have some how-to information. I am planning to make a nice Halloween still life with my trusty plastic skull, that will be coming in a few weeks.
This is a painting demo of two pumpkins backlit outdoors. It is a nice fall painting because it hints strongly of Halloween but they are not Jack-o-Lanterns yet. This is 12" x 16" oil on canvas.
This is our yard from last year, the ghosts were a last minute idea to make a backdrop.
They grow an enormous amount of pumpkins in Half Moon Bay, CA and this is a view looking into a bin of them on a foggy fall day. This is a 12"x12" oil on canvas.
Piper's Sunflowers Drying
Piper's Sunflowers Drying |
One of the things I worked with is the use of a really dark purple, then deadening it with raw umber to make the shape roll back to appear rounded and going over the top of that to indicate the sunflower. The round one in the center nearer the bottom of the painting illustrates this. Then the interesting negative spaces needed amping up because the leaf colors were too close in value to the sky. It is such a scattering of sunflowers that the composition is pretty irregular which is the way they grew.
Little birds came and feasted on these seed heads, quite a nice treat!
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
The Piper's Sunflower
The Piper's Sunflower |
This painting had a different approach than usual. It is 11" x 14" oil on canvas and the subject is the popular sunflower. This one I would sit and look at waiting at my son's bagpipe lesson and just love this oversized drooping seed head with side lighting late in the day. What was different was the raw sienna underpainting and then the rub-out with the cloth. The video link below shows the process. I did use real turpentine, hence the gloves, plus the window was open and fans running to avoid the fumes. The underpainting was quite nice, especially where the rubbed out portions were because the pigment gets caught in the canvas texture. For medium I used Liquin's Impasto for fun which gets the paint fluffy like butter and sugar when you're making chocolate chip cookie dough, and adds some final texture. The blue background is the thickest I've made in quite a while.
Seems everyone has to make a sunflower painting at least once.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Roses
Roses |
These are most of the second bloom from the Jackson and Perkins roses I planted this spring. The white roses are "Moondance" and the pink ones are "April in Paris" which are much more rose perfumed. In referencing old rose paintings from Franz Bischoff, it looks like he planted different curling varieties, some looked like David Austen roses, others were shaped like "Pope John Paul" where the petals make an angular fold. Bischoff's ceramics (must see these!) are drippingly gorgeous and brought back memories of my mother's china dish painting and kiln, which she had been taught to do years ago in the South.
Here is
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Golden Gate Bridge
I'm going to let this one sit and dry for a bit. This is a 16"x20" oil on canvas. I was out in the fog this past weekend both Saturday and Sunday watching a soccer tournament. It was quite windy and I really could not stay long and wait for the fog to lift, so I ended up climbing over a strange building which the Presidio probably used to store ammo in and looked to have the footprint of a large cannon with all the bolts still sticking up in a circle. The roof was made of concrete and since there wasn't a sign indicating it was condemned, I climbed over it and got this view. Thinking how marvelous to have such a close view, I didn't stop to think how really bad my reference photos would turn out or that the bridge's struts would require the loathesome liner brush and a maul stick to paint. And everything is dried out and dead, so all the foreground foliage had to be imagined alive and green in spring. There are two paintings here: the 'International Orange' bridge against the mauve and peachy hills with the cool water and the foreground painting of the cool gray-blue and red (pickle weed it looks like) scrub brush in the foreground. Together it's a lot to take in, but I suppose that reflects the dynamism of San Francisco! Imagine a clanging trolley car, or the fog horn, and crowds of people walking and driving across this icon.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
White Lily and Bright Lily
Bright Lily |
White Lily |
Lilies
A couple of years ago I tried planting Oriental lily bulbs in my garden and had pretty good (meaning easy to grow) success with them. I have about 5 varieties now which bloom over a three month period and I regularly go out to photograph them at different times of the day. The "White Lily" had a nice back lighting effect in the later afternoon and the "Bright Lily" really has the bold color notched up with a vibrant background.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Green Wave
My reference photos of this beach area leave out the pretty drift wood fire one couple had lit to sit by and the other little groups out to watch the sun go down and the high tide and waves roll in. In the evening there are sometimes foggy sections which cover the beaches and then some open sections with good light and sunset, these move from day to day so it is almost like finding a good fishing spot to find a good sunset and lighting.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Quiet Cove South of Davenport, CA
A Quiet Cove South of Davenport, CA
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Taro and Koi Painting
I had just a little time going through the Kula Botanical garden and snapped this picture of these beautiful leaves. I believe they are taro plants from which the taro root comes from. They really are in the colors shown: both blue with purple and plain green leaves. The koi fish was added in by imagination from another series of photographs of the koi pond. Luckily a mom and a little boy had fish food so there were many poses of the koi fish to take photographs from. Enjoy!
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
King Protea Oil Study
This is an oil study of a King Protea flower from the Kula Botanical Gardens in Kula, Maui. These are terrific and unusual flowers, they do grow in California (some are at UC Santa Cruz in Northern California) and are South African in origin.
Monday, January 16, 2012
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