Zebras

Cut Paper - 7 x 7 inches

Carol Marine post quite a photo for this week's Daily Paintworks "Crazy Making Challenge." (to see her source photo, follow the link).

Before getting into the paint, I took her advice and did a few quick sketches and then a detailed one the size I wanted to paint. The final sketch looked so much like stencil art to me that I decided not to paint the scene at all, and just construct it with paper. The blue sky is from a photo detail of another painting.

If I have time this week, I'll do a painting as well. We'll see.

Red Truck Revisited

Original (top image)

Update (bottom image)

Acrylic on Panel - 8 x 10 inches - sold

Here's another before/after post. I found this in the discard pile and thought I'd warm up the sunlight areas and fix a few other things. Again, like the last time I did something like this, I thought I was making big changes, and in the end it really didn't wind up looking all that different, but it is an improvement nonetheless.

Dairy Princesses

Acrylic on Panel - 8 x 10 inches - SOLD

I snapped this photo last year at the end of the 4th of July Parade in Sonoma. The dairy princesses vehicle had pulled off the road to cool off a bit. Damsels in distress for sure.

I dug up this reference photo to use for my submission to this week's Paint It White Challenge at Daily Paintworks. There's really a great crop of submission for this one, so be sure to check 'em out.

I rushed this one on purpose, to keep the paint a little wet and to try to not get bogged down in little details. Only the princess face gave me a bit of trouble and had to be touched up this morning.

In case it's not obvious, the red on their dresses is their official parade ribbons.

Corner Market

Acrylic on Cardstock - 4 x 6 inches - SOLD

This is a quick rendering of a building in the neighborhood. I started with a completely black background and tried to let it peek through in places. 

Sachi

Acrylic on Panel - 9 x 12 inches - NFS

This is a friend of mine from the neighborhood, though this picture was taken in the park a while ago. I thought it would be an easy loose one to do for the Daily Paintorks' Paint Your Friend Challenge.

Well, the initial blocking in was easy enough, but I wasn't getting the face right. It was a nice loose image of "a girl" but it wasn't looking like Sachi. I could have left it at that, but I really wanted to figure out why it wasn't working.

You see, if been going to figure drawing classes lately, and I'm learning so much about the figure that I really should know better.

In any case I kept at it. I took pictures in progress, brought them into Photoshop and compared them and kept reworking the face. The really weird part was, if I made an adjustment to the lips, it wound up looking more like her sister. If I changed the eye, it would look like her mother.

Finally, after much hair pulling (mine, obviously) I got as close as I'm gonna get, and it looks like her. I really didn't mind all the tricks I had to pull out to make this work, because I learned A LOT in the process.

Landscapes are so much easier than portraiture, but then you knew that.

Market

Acrylic on Panel - 8 x 10 inches - SOLD

Carol Marine's concept of a sunny farmer's market intrigued me, but last Sunday when I went to our farmer's market, yes, in San Francisco, it was far from sunny. Fortunately, it was still purdy.

This is my submission for the Daily Paintworks' Farmer's Market Challenge. I will endeavor to paint a sunnier version soon. It's only April in SF, and our real sunny Summer isn't until September.

Field House

Acrylic on Panel - 8 x 10 inches - Click Here to Bid

It's been pretty wet and yucky here this week, but I managed to get out and go to the Marina during a dry spell. This is one of the many military buildings that dot the Presidio and the Marina, and I chose this scene for the Daily Paintworks "Plein Air" Challenge.

I took lots of photos, so I'll probably be doing a bunch more of these.