David and His Hat

Acrylic on Cardstock

I guess it's really about the shirt and not the hat.

Panhandle Sketch

Ball Point Pen on Paper

Where have I been? Wish I had some great answer, but I've just been busy. Too busy to paint? No. Just too busy to post.

To get things rolling again, here's the original sketch for the panhandle painting. It's not terribly good or detailed, but I like it as an almost abstract gesture kind of thing.

Painting posts resume tomorrow.

Glass Palm

Acrylic on Canvas Panel

I had just enough time to start another sketch of the Conservatory, so I did. Then I discovered I didn't really have as much time as I thought, so I rushed to just slap paint on in big strokes to just map out the basic shapes. I threw it in the box, packed up and headed home (one of the benefits of acrylics – speedy break-down).

When I looked at it later, I realized that it was already done. Pretty much anything I'd add to this would most likely ruin it.

Glass Haus

Acrylic on Canvas Panel

Yes, it's the Conservatory of Flowers in GGP. What a fantastic day. It's really fun to paint when there's tons of kids riding bikes, slowing down just long enough to ask "whatcha doin'?"

This is a small panel, 5 x 8 inches, that was supposed to be a sketch, but I wound up getting too involved with it. Still, I managed to stay away from the small brushes.

Kaia Larger

Acrylic on Canvas Panel

I had some other shots of Kaia and in the end I think this is a more interesting pose. This is gonna need revisiting, because the skin tones are all wrong and the face just bugs me – neither loose enough, nor tight enough. Maybe I should even eliminate the shoreline, though that might kill what little I've got going on compositionally. Hmmm.

Kaia study

Acrylic on Canvas Panel

This is a small (5 x 8 inch) study for a larger piece I want to try. Even from a photo, the shifting colors in the water are proving tricky. I also need to warm this up a lot without loosing the blue. Hmmm.

Panhandle Promenade

Acrylic on Canvas Panel

I've been neglecting the blog lately. Not that I haven't been painting, but I was away from my desk. As the 1st year of doing a daily painting blog winds down, I'm thinking of trying my hand at some more involved pieces. You know, the ones that take longer than an hour or two. As a result, I may be posting less frequently, or perhaps posting various stages of works in progress.

This is a bigger, more detailed version of the Panhandle photo I did a sketch of the other day. It's OK, but just kinda blah.

I'm not getting the exciting colors in the costume to "pop" and I think it's not only my poor color mixing skills, but also the choice of red I've started with – Alizarin Crimson. I may dig up some other reds and come back to this shortly.

Pan Handle Study

Acrylic on Cardstock

I've still got a ton of great photos from Bay-to-Breakers this year (for non-SF people, it's an annual road race in SF, that has prizes for the fastest runners, and also for costumes. Folks 'round here like dressing up).

This is a quick study for piece I want to do of a woman in a ballerina costume, crossing through the park with her parasol. I think I may switch this to a vertical, so there's more figure and less landscape. I'll keep you posted.

Red Flag Big

Acrylic on Canvas

And here ends "abstraction week in Gringo-land." Well for now, I think.

At the suggestions of a few followers here, I did indeed try to replicate one of the postcards at a larger size. This one is 18x14 inches.

I skipped the palette knife, because it's really not big enough. Instead I used a 3-inch foam brush. I've seen Wyland do this a lot as an underpainting etc. but I gotta say, it's really a lot of fun.

I gave myself a very short window of time to enlarge this image. I think that helped, because it's very hard to go back over areas with a 3-inch brush, and I felt like I was pushing $2 worth of paint every time I made a swipe. "It's just paint, it's just paint, it's just ..."

Fire Water

Acrylic on Cardstock

Loosely based on something I saw on TV about a factory fire as seen across the bay.