ruined castle in Scotland

I've painted other things in and around this castle near Killin in Scotland. This view is from the outside. I used watercolor and then some ink in this painting.

House in Maine

This house was painted on Yupo, a synthetic paper which doesn't absorb any paint so that the paint sits on the surface and creates interesting textures. The house is across the road . . . and the creek . . . from our B&B in Maine. My camera emphasizes blue; the actual painting doesn't have those bright blue splotches.

Passing the Time of Day

This pastel of Fran's is another from our photos taken in Italy.

Montepulciano

We took the reference photo for this painting of Fran's while we were in Italy. She painted an underpainting with watercolor then added pastel.

Primeval Forest

Fran did this mixed media painting. She is hoping to evoke a sense of a magical place.

Maine again

When we went to Maine we had some beautiful sunshine and hence some sunny photos. In these dark winter days it's great to paint from those pictures and try to capture that light. Here are two more paintings done this week. The top one is from our B&B and the bottom one is in Acadia National Park.

Foggy Morning

I did this painting soon after we came home from Scotland. I'm posting it today so I can report that it was accepted into a show at our local art center titled "Still: An Artist's Interpretation of the Adjective 'Still'". The show isn't open yet, so I don't know what else got in but I do know that a number of my friends, all good painters, didn't get in. The black on the sides of the painting are masking to bring the painting to the right size for making a slide. They're neither matting nor part of the painting, if you wondered.

Maine Woods

I decided to go to Maine today after being in Scotland so long. I blocked in the color loosely and without any drawing (but close looking at the photo), then indicated with pencil where I wanted to save the whites for the rocks. After that there was lots of putting more dark here and more color there and shaping the trees and the rocks. I'm not totally convinced that it's a very good composition but I like it, especially from a distance. Close up it is hard to read.

Ruined Castle Wall

Another painting from my Scotland photos. Ruins are always fascinating to me and this fern growing right out of the masonry wall makes me think, yet again, of the tenacity of life.

Flowers

I've been trying to figure out what exactly it is that I do when I splash color across the paper and then make a decent painting out of it. Bad paintings that way are super easy but good ones are more illusive. Today I decided that flowers might make a good subject for experimentation and I did these three. They're each a quarter sheet (11x15 or so). Three at a time makes sense because I have to let the underpainting dry before I can go on and I'm usually not patient enough for one. You see them in the order I painted them.