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..