New Painting WIP inspired by Quan the Saytr

I've been itching to do another painting lately and decided I really liked the concept of one of my latest Wood Spirits, Quan the Saytr. I decided to go more goat-like in my painting so I mocked up a quick idea in Photoshop to work from.

I'm thinking I will make the bone parts of the skull look more like wood

 but I'm not completely sure yet.

This is the painting as it sits on my easel right now.

To see step by step photos of the work in progress, read on after the break.

To see more of my work be sure to check out my website.

New Woodies

I recently processed several wood images from a trip to Rock Park on the Truckee River into new Woodies. This was a very productive trip, I got quite a few cool woody images.

Here are some of the most recent.

Quan the Satyr

See more of my art and purchase Fine Art Prints on my website.

Check out more woodies from this trip after the break.

Jarheads

I've been doing digital paintings of my Jar Head series until I can can get outside to shoot new portraits. I really like using antique portraits with their stiff poses for these.

I completed two of the ones I mocked up earlier.

Pot Head

"Penelope was managing her pain with pills but then her doctor turned her into a Pothead."

I found the vase at the local Salvation Army and love how it works with this image.

Guido de Punaise

"Guido de Punaise was a computer software debugger until he became buggy himself."

This is a leaded crystal bowl I found in the thrift store as well. 

Since I'm doing the tutorial on digital painting in April it's nice to get some practice in and also get some new artwork for my website. 

Fine Art prints are available of both images on my website. 

Rider of the Purple Sage -Work in Progress 8

The slow drying of the oil is slowing me down a little which I have to think is probably a good thing. Here is the painting as it sits right now.

I think I will just keep plugging along until I get tired of painting and then call it done.

To see the step by step versions read on after the break and remember 

to check  out more of my work on my website.

Rider of the Purple Sage -Work in Progress 7

I got my free Artisan Oil Colors and immediately messed up. I learned not to paint with just water. So I had to go out and buy some medium to use with the paint. I guess it's just water clean up. Still it works pretty well but dries really slow. Almost like painting with linseed oil so I guess I'll have to get some of the fast dry medium as well. Anyway here is the painting as it sits on my easel this afternoon.

I still haven't used the oil on the foreground yet. I'll probably start that later today.

To see step by step how I got to this point read on after the break.

As always feel free to check out my work on my website.

Rider of the Purple Sage -Work in Progress 5

I've been documenting my last few paintings by photographing them step by step as I paint and the process has allowed me to discover some things about my painting process. It seems I focus on defects the entire way through a painting, spotting them and then trying to fix them. So I am looking at the bad parts pretty much continuously, I think this is why it is such a battle of self doubt, sometimes even after the work is done it may take a year before I finally like it. So to help battle this I am going to try to also focus on the things I really like in a painting. By focusing more on the positive I can make more areas like that instead of constantly putting out fires.  

Here are some close ups of the areas I really like in this painting. 

I'm going for an impressionistic style in this painting and in these areas I think I have been pretty successful. Some of the background and sky I'm not as happy with at this point. So now I will transfer the foreground technique to the sky as well. I always want to add a lot more detail but on this painting I want to back off from that more photographic look. We'll see how that goes.Water based oils should be here next week so I'm just looking at the painting and doing my own critique for now.

To see more of my work and order Fine Art Prints check out my website.

Rider of the Purple Sage -Work In Progress 4

I'm making slow progress but got a good bit accomplished this morning. Thanks to free gift card from Jerry's Artarama for $50 I ordered some Artisan Water-Mixable Oil Color that I have been wanting to try out. The gift card was a real surprise, so thank you to the people at Jerry's Artarama! They should be here next week so that is what I will be using for my final layers.

Here is the painting as it sits on my easel right now.

As always to see more of my work check out my website where you can order Fine Art Prints.

To see step by step how I got to this point read on after the break.

Rider of the Purple Sage -Work In Progress 3

This one is going to take a while to get done. I am not in a hurry though as I'm starting to like how it's looking again. Here it is this afternoon on my easel.

I did a few changes to the background and started working on the horse and rider in a little more detail. I think the horse will be done in mostly red, purple, blue and yellow. I'm starting to get the proportions right on the horse and rider and then it will be a lot of pointillism style painting from there. Meanwhile since I had a little time today I made a video of some of my Woodies.

 

 

Check it out and drop by my website to see more of my work. 

Rider of the Purple Sage -Work In Progress 2

This one is fun to paint. Here it is as it sits on my easel right now.

It's at that "I don't like it right now" stage but I'm getting used to that. It's just part of the process, I think all artists struggle with self-doubt in the process of creating art. I'm trying to keep this one more impressionistic in style and it is the perfect subject for that.

To see more of my work check out my website, to see step by step how I got to this point,

 read on after the break.

Rider of the Purple Sage -Work In Progress 1

It will be a while before I have anything on the Jarhead series so I started another painting today. On this one I decided to do the early coats with acrylic and then oil for the final coats. I haven't tried this technique yet and was curious how it would work. 

Last night I did my drawing and this morning I started painting. First I painted out the cowboy with maskoid so I could be very loose while painting the early coats on the back ground.

After the maskoid dried I did a wet in wet wash on the sky and the distant mountains. I'm using a slower drying glazing medium and blending color as I go.

Washing in the medium distance using the same technique with warmer colors.

Here it is as it sits on the easel now. I sketched in the middle distance trees and painted the dark foreground color in.  I will probably work in most of the detail work before removing the maskoid and painting the cowboy. 

Feel free to check out more of my work on my website.

New Wood Art and a Few Ramblings

After completing "Joie de Vivre" I am trying to think what I want to do next artistically and haven't come up with one idea I really want to pursue yet. 

However I have been getting quite a bit of inspiration.

Joelcy Kay from Edge of Humanity Magazine  contacted me by email saying she was interested in featuring 10 of my Woodies in the magazine. I sent her the ones she was interested in and she said they would be published in the next 60 days, so stay tuned and I will post a link when it happens. 

As I was browsing the magazine I loved the work of Kevin Grass. 

He has a style I am very much interested in pursuing with my painting. Check out his site, he does beautiful work. There are many other artists and photographers featured in the magazine and I plan on checking them out as well. 

Since I can't seem to sit still when I'm not working on a painting, I created a couple new Woodies. Digital art is so convenient to work on and I have all the parts for woodies ready on the computer since I shoot trees and people whenever I have the chance. I am also amazed at how different the same wood source picture can inspire me on different days.

Woody 221

 This is Woody 221 and the source wood image was captured in Fernley, NV a while back.   It has my cat Noels' nose, my eyes and some car parts I photographed at Pick and Pull for brains.

Woody 222

This is Woody 222 and has a definite "Wood Wizard" look to it. The wood source image was also captured the same day in Fernley, NV. Maybe it belongs in the Wood Spirits section instead. 

If you have some free time check out more of my work on my website 

where you can purchase Fine Art prints with a money back guarantee.

Joie de Vivre: COMPLETE!

It's finished! I posted a digital copy on FAA today for sale. I will be framing the original later today and will put that up for sale as well. I'm pleased with the final painting and I'm already trying to decide what I want to do next. Here is the final painting.

To order Fine Art prints of this painting it is available on my website. 

To follow the step by step process of creating this painting here is a link to the first post.

The life of a Photograph

Each of my photographs are like a child to me. I cherish each one and the potential for art that it brings. Several of my favorite captures have appeared in different works. Jesse is a good example. Originally captured in Jan 2011 for 30 day challenge on Worth 1000. 

Sketching and Thinking Stage

I want to do some paintings from my new series of Wood Spirits so that begins with some sketching and idea mining on Google. I already have a photo I want to use as a source in one of the paintings.

Here is a sketch I did yesterday using that as a reference.

I was thinking of using him with Johnny Oldtimber who lives in the forests of Eastern Pennsylvania.

Johnny is a friendly tree spirit, called the Ghillie Dhu who helps lost children find their way home.
I was thinking of having a dancing child with Johnny watching him in the forest. I like that he is dancing with a flower in his hand to show an affinity with nature.

Dreams are getting closer

It has been a fabulous week. I have ordered new business cards from Moo, some new hard wood spindle blanks to make wands with and a sparkling new Epson Artisan wide format printer. Now I will be able to do my own fine art prints at home. I'm as excited as you can get for someone my age. Now the process begins of waiting for things to arrive, I hate that! I always want it RIGHT NOW, I guess I will be getting a lesson in patience. 

 I also ordered a couple rolls of art paper and a sample pack of art paper as well. Now I will have to learn about ICC printer profiles.