big peach tree, New Orleans

Painted from a photo I took of a side yard near Audobon Park. I was struck by the abstract color pattern of the spring grass, magenta blossoms and sky. I'm happy with the looseness of the tree and the shade it casts. 20" x 16" Private collection.

Oak Creek, Sedona AZ

Painted from a friend's Instagram. I enjoyed developing a long, shadowed view that focused to a sunlit patch in the distance. 32" x 43"

crossing the Frio

The top photo is a preliminary stage of painting, and the bottom is quite a bit later when I stopped. I like the early stage better, and feel that I lost some of the freshness and personal color feel as I worked it to a more naturalistic finish. Live and learn.. 30" x 40"

fall flowers

I started with a careful contour drawing of the main value boundaries of the mass of flowers. That made it much easier to freehand in color shapes. I worked from dark to light. The main problem I had was that the tablecloth was originally a single, flat violet which looked totally wrong. I had to pay the price and work in color gradation around the painted bouquet. Also, next time I do a still life, I'll work the background in sections while the subject is wet. That way I can get softened edges throughout, like those of the submerged leaves in the vase. 20" x 20"

goat pen, New Mexico

Based on a dramatic friend-of-a-friend photo on Facebook. I used my Scene Sketcher app to simply the field of tall grass and brush into a patchwork and tried to stay responsive to the color logic of the stormy sunset. 36" x 27".

Enchanted Rock #2

This is kind of a breakthrough piece for me. It's a sizeable painting that went start to finish in under two days. I limited the palette and used large brushes. I made a fairly careful drawing followed by a burnt sienna underpainting in four values. For each of the values, I premixed about three colors and loaded separate brushes with each color. This way I can rapidly shape, or even sculpt each value band. Working dark to light it goes remarkably fast. My inspiration for this technique is Belgian artist Jan DeVliegher. However, I would need a personality transplant to work like this!

Jan De Vliegher paint pots

Also, now I am working on a firmly mounted, rigid panel. Heretofor this year, I have been working on unmounted, floppy plastic panels. In retrospect, I don't know what I was thinking! 32" x 27".

at the Garden Cafe

I was showing someone how my Scene Sketcher app worked and I needed a photo. I turned around and by chance saw that the folks at the next table made an interesting composition. It was tricky to try to maintain a consistent level of abstraction because the image spans a lot of depth. 32" x 21"

patio at Brain Dead Brewing

This was developed from a pretty detailed underpainting. I was happy from the start with the composition, which seemed amenable to working the image in sections. I tried to be  pretty careful about putting in a touch of detail here and there, while leaving some areas completely abstract. 

21.5" x 30"

last biker bar in Deep Ellum

Kind of silly painting from a snapshot. I thought the graffiti would be enough focus to overcome the lack of composition, but the layout is just too awkward. Oh well, a painting of a wall of green cyclopes can't be all bad..

watertower at Continental Gin

Gantry and watertower by the entrance to my studio. I think I'm starting to get the hang of uing my Scene Sketcher app to paint a simplified image with a clear value structure. This was a pretty quick painting with no big problems.  71 cm x 40 cm.

Enchanted Rock

I learned quite a bit doing this. For one thing, I didn't realize that a painting of mostly saturated color was going to be so visually fatiguing. Also simple shapes and decisive paint handling helps with strong color. I ended up using larger brushes as I got further along, which is a sign I misjudged how this was going to develop. 30" x 40"

sliced apples

Small, easy painting I made while preparing a big panel for a landscape. 14 " x 17.5"

Subway sandwich

This was my pay for helping a friend with a condo renovation. 24" x 32".

Central Grocery, New Orleans

Based on a photo of my nephew in an old grocery near Jackson Square. He didn't want his picture taken, so the face is minimal. As much as possible, I'm painting abstract color masses rather than objects. I'm pretty happy with the way the shelves of bottles dissolve in the light. 100 cm x 56 cm.

lunch

From a photo of a sandwich I ordered at a coffee shop a couple of blocks from my studio. I went a little overboard with color saturation and with detail on the peeled orange. I prefer the sandwich to the orange because it's looser and more abstract. The greens started warmer, but I came to prefer cool pthalo greens. 18" x 18"

Paluxy River, Opossum Branch

Painted from a photo I took a few years ago near Glen Rose, Tx. I used my Scene
Sketcher app to simplify the image. Otherwise, I would have lost my mind struggling
with minutiae. 60 cm x 80 cm.

new studio

About a six weeks ago, I leased a studio on the 3rd floor of the Continental Gin Company Building in Deep Ellum (Dallas) Tx. The decision to look for a studio kind of bubbled up out of nowhere, and I'm really glad I acted on it. I'm in a beautiful old cotton gin factory that has been converted to artist studios. My studio is spacious and north-lit. I'm fortunate to share the building with a great collection of artists in a vibrant, redeveloping area. Working here has completely changed the scale, time frame, and je ne sais quoi of what I paint.

This is a work-in-progress shot of my current painting of a local beer garden with food trucks around a junked sedan. I use my Scene Sketcher Android app to abstract the photo source. It's still pretty rough and needs further balancing of value and atmospheric saturation, but i'm enjoying working on it. 100 cm x 45 cm.

no model

I had some drawing problems getting started and only finished about half the panel during the posing session. So quite a bit of this was made up and not observed. 13" x 17".

too much glass

Since glass blasting beads under gesso worked so well, naturally I had to try mixing glass into the gesso. I quickly found I was painting on sparkling sandpaper, which isn't so wonderful. Actually, it probably helped the painting since I had to scrub in about twice as much paint as usual. 17.5" x 13.5" - 3 hours.

glass beads

I added 40/70 grit glass abrasive blasting beads to the primer I used on this panel. Even through two topcoats of gesso, this made a huge improvement in the way the surface holds paint. It is much closer to good oil-primed linen. The extra surface area from the slight additional texture completely changes the 'grab' of the surface.

The painting was a bit of a challenge because the model made two pose changes after I started. 16.5" x 14" - 3 hours.

more free

The drawing is still too tentative, but at least some of the paint handling was more bold. 17.5" x 13.5" - 3 hours.

strong light

There was a bright single light on the model,  so I made that the theme. Also finally got a couple of props in one of these portrait sessions! Since I didn't have a lot of time for them, the flowers and table were just flung on unconsciously. The face and hair looked ok after just two values, so I quit them while I was ahead. 14" x 16.5" - 3 hours.

rotisserie chicken

The studio had blazing lights everywhere and was incredibly hot, so I just tried to do the minimum to survive and get this done. Also I realized that backgrounds can and should be telling their own story. So just chasing around lights in the background, somehow seems to make an emotive commentary on the subject. 16.5" x 14.5" - 3 hrs.

fast figure

Worked quickly in the correct order of quick linear under paint to main darks of setting and figure. I've settled into something of a formula for flesh tones so I don't need to keep hunting around for modeling tones. I'm gravitating to an aesthetic of equal development of the whole image. 13.5" x 18" - 3 hours + touchup time.

back to 3 hr. stuff

I think I must be gradually getting a little better, because managing a full figure sketch in one session used to be more than I could handle.

local workshop

This was a 2 week session. Models held poses all day in a crowded studio at a nearby community college. These are 3 ft. paintings, so it was a chance to loosen up with big brushes.