Scott 4up

Acrylic on Canvas Panel - 11 x 14 inches

Oh, the series continues.

Scott Three and Three

Acrylic on Canvas Panel - 11 x 14 inches - sold

And so the series continues.

Four and Two

Acrylic on Panel - 11 x 14 inches

For some reason, the two paintings I did of this house and palm trees were a big hit at the show this summer, so I thought I'd do a series of them to see what else I could do with the scene. And I haven't really done a series before, so I'd like to see what that brings up as well.

Blue Bank

Acrylic on Cardstock - 4 x 6 inches

Another fantasy landscape.

Pink Phone

Acrylic on Canvas Panel - 8 x 10 inches (destroyed)
From a photo I took a while ago in Sonoma, I finally got around to painting it. All was smooth sailing, except for the skin tones. Tan skin on a warm day, but in the shadows... is it orange, blue, brown? I had to redo the skin several times and never really arrived at a satisfactory result. I just decided to stop after a while.

Onion Pot

Acrylic on Canvas Panel - 8 x 8 inches  SOLD
I'm a big fan of Carol Marine's and whenever she returns to painting onions it gets me to rethinking my process. Onions are tough, but she always does such a great job.
The last batch she did, she mentioned painting them in using one basic mix for the middle value, and then sculpting the roundness from there. So, that's what I tried to do.
This one looked really awful until the final moments when it all came together.

Quatorze

Acrylic on Panel - 9 x 12 inches - NFS

I'm not entirely sure I painted this one myself. I had a little free time after warming up on another piece, so I thought I'd sketch this one in rather quickly.

It started off terribly. The board was too slick and the paint wouldn't stick, I couldn't get a real dark mix together, and I really should have done a dark base tone to knock things back from the get-go.

For some reason, I just kept plodding along, thinking to myself "This is just a rough start. I can fix all of this tomorrow." I kept dancing around the panel, slapping color into one area, and then darkening another etc. And as an hour flew by, I discovered it was almost done. I was kinda shocked. Everything just fell into place and still managed to stay nice and loose.

There is definitely something to turning off one of your lobes, or just ignoring the parts of the brain that think they know what they're doing versus the parts that actually know. Wish I could do this more often. It does remind me of why I was so attracted to painting in the first place.

San Miguel de Allende

Acrylic on Canvas Panel - 9 x 12 inches

October's Virtual Paintout is in sunny San Miguel de Allende, Mexico!

Using Google Maps to pick a location, is actually harder than you might think, because, basically, you're limited to actual street views – i.e. the view from the camera on top of the Google car. You're basically planting your canvas right in the middle of the street.

That said, it is still fun to go scout around a place I've never actually been to and pick a scene to render. Fun!

Up Tempo

Acrylic on Cardstock

Using left-over palette paint, this combines a few techniques, including dragging and knife application. A recent observer remarked that they liked the vibrant colors in the abstracts I do in this style, and I realized one of the reasons for this is that for the backgrounds, I use a lot of mixed puddles, but for the foreground, I use a lot of colors that have not been mixed. Also, since these are quick and the paint is very wet, I don't do any blending.