Monday Night Art Class: Repeating Apsens

I did this painting of some Colorado aspen a while back.

Normally, when I finish a painting, I look at it for a while, and then it goes into a box with all the others.

But I liked this one enough to frame and hang in my living room.

Last year, I was asked to display some paintings in a local gallery and  I needed enough fresh material.

So I decided to put this one up up for sale.

Though I kind of liked my aspens, so I deliberately jacked up the price, in the hopes that it wouldn’t sell.

But sure enough, it DID sell, and I always kind of regretted it.

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But my house is running out of room, and I can’t afford to keep framing everything I paint.

Sooner or later, I’ve got to let stuff go.

If a painting is unique, and if it’s something that I’ll never do again in a million years, there’s no way I’d sell it, not for any money.

But if a painting is something I know I can do again,  then I’m more likely to part with it.

And I suspected I could do this one again.

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Which I did tonight.   Six years later.

t’s smaller:   a 6″ x 4″ sketch with a $5.00 Walmart frame.

For 90 minutes of effort,  I’m happy with how it turned out.   It’s reasonably close to the original.

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So now I have my aspens again.

Which I can hold onto for a while.

Or maybe sell again.

I haven’t decided yet.

But at least I know I can always make more whenever I want.

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Monday Night Art Class: Something’s Fishy

I love to paint landscapes, but every now and then I get bored and need to do something different.

So today I did something I never did before:  I painted a fish.

This was a 27 inch pike I caught last summer.

I could have painted the entire fish, but I chose to focus on  just on the head, because that’s the most interesting part.

I love pike.   They’re awesome.

They look like gators.   They have razor sharp teeth.  And they don’t give a rats’ ass…they’re not afraid to attack anything.

They put up a great fight when you hook them, and they’re quite tasty (despite what the walleye snobs might tell you).

They’re also beautiful fish and fun subjects to paint.

I was surprised at the pallete I used to capture this image:   red, purple, yellow ochre, sap green, greys, browns, and yellows.

It turned out okay.   I’m not displeased.

I think I’ll do more fish.

Next time, it will be speckled trout.

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Monday Night Art Class: WHAT…are you DOING?

A few months ago, I was babysitting my neighbors’ dog.

One evening, while I was at my computer, I found things were quiet…TOO quiet.

So I went into the next room and found guess who lying on the couch?

I pretended to be mad, and demanded:   “WHAT….are you DOING? “

Poor dog!  He looked so sheepish and pathetic, I just had to snap this photo.

It cracks me up every time I see it.  Especially the tail, which is out of focus, on account of his wagging it.

Tonight, I decided to do a quick portrait.

Watercolor is so unforgiving when it comes to animals and people.   A few wrong strokes, and you can ruin the whole thing.

A tricky part was the dog’s shape in the photo is was mostly a black blob.   But I couldn’t paint it that way, or it would look two-dimensional.

So I lifted out some of the areas and lightened them with the brown, to hint at the dog’s muscles and shoulders.

I used a knife blade to scrape the shape of the dog chain around his neck, as well as make the white dots of the reflected light in his eyes.  And I opted for a monochrome background (there was no way I was going to paint every stripe on that blanket!)

I”m reasonably please how it turned out.

Though I think I made the dog look happier in the painting than he was in the photo.

PS.  In case you’re worried about the poor critter being traumatized, not to worry.

Uncle Friar is a BIG sucker when it comes to dogs.

So of course I let him stay on the couch.

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Christmas-Themed Doodles

I did this one months ago, with no thought of Christmas.

But I like the red and green colors.

So it goes with the season.

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I can see where my mood changed as I drew this.   I had started in the upper-right, with mostly rectangular shapes.

Then, as I went lower, I started drawing repetitive patterns.

I can’t tell you what all the shapes mean.

But I do know towards the bottom, I was going for a Lucky Charms and a Pac-Man theme.   Plus some Christmas trees.

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I like this one.   It totally surprised me.

It started out as a total random blob of shapes.  But then I discovered it kind of looked like a train locomotive.

So I finished drawing it that way.

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A Productive Day

More scribbling.

I know it’s a good one when I cover the entire page.

 

This is why I hate watercolors.

Just finished off a painting tonight of Neys Provincial Park (on the North Shore of Lake Superior).   I spent a lot of careful time on this.

I was feeling reasonably happy with this my work, until it was time to go home, and I noticed a bright blue smudge on the left.

God Dammit.

Some blue pigment from one of my tubes tube had inadvertently gotten onto the paper.

I tried lifting it, but it was too late.    The damage was done.

Well, at least the stain wasn’t smack in the middle of the painting, or two entire evenings would have been completely written off.

But if I crop off 1/2 an inch,  the painting is still salvageable.  I got off lucky this time.

But still…it’s not quite the same.   I”m bothered by this.

This is why I HATE watercolors sometimes.

It’s so damned unforgiving.

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Things my Brain Felt Like Drawing Today

A water tap.   A duck   Saguaro cactii.   Saturn.   An ice cream cone.   Stars.   Tau.   A gear.   A heart.  A potted lily.

A hockey skate.   A resting dog.    Clouds.   A light bulb.   A bell.  DNA.   A donut.   A foot.   A pipe wrench.

A mitochondria.   A pine tree.  A bone.  Jupiter.  A tetrahedral model of the methane molecule.   A frowny face.

The sun and it’s corona.    A greek column.  The letter F.   A snail.    A toilet.  Building blocks.   The sun partially obscured by clouds.

An “up” arrow.    A curved arrow.  A right arrow.  A left arrow.  A ladder.  A bush with flowers.   The letter Q.  A tennis ball.

And a whole bunch of random shapes that make no sense to me whatsoever

Monday Night Art Class: Attridge Snow Ghosts

Okay….I’m good for ONE MORE winter painting.

That will probably be it for the season.

I promise.

Monday Night Art Class: The North Bowl of Revelstoke

Having just come back from vacation, I’m still in ski mode, and decided to paint one of my favorite photos from my trip:

Here’s what I ended up with tonight:

The first thing I did was the sky.   A wet wash of cadmium yellow, violet (phtalo purple) and cerulean blue.

Then I did the mountains, starting with the dark shadows of snow.   Again, with violet, cerulean blue, and maybe a touch of ultramarine and/or Paynes grey.

Then I started the rocks, starting with the larger ones as frames of reference, and painting the smaller ones around them.   They’re almost all the same dark shade.   I get my “black” from a mix of Van Dyke brown and Payne’s Grey.   I deliberately mixed up the rocks so they have random dark brown/black shades.

Whenever I got bored with the rocks, I worked on the foreground, adding layers of purple/blue and gradually making it darker.

Then I would add the final dark snow shadows on the mountain, and then lift some of the foreground out to lighten the color and add some texture to it.

I did a lot of lifting and re-painting the foreground.  If you want to do this, it’s important to have a rugged strong sheet of watercolor paper that can take kind of treatment.

I recommend the 300-lb Arches.   It’s “bullet-proof”, you can use it and abuse it, and it doesn’t buckle or degrade.   Not like the cheap watercolor paper I see a lot of beginners use.

Of course, it’s 12 bucks a sheet and when I tell this to people they say  ”Oooh, that’s expensive!“.

(Oh, for crying out loud.)    You can cut a sheet into four, and make four paintings like the one I did here.

That’s 3 bucks for an evenings’ worth of entertainment.  I think most people can afford that.

Boggles my mind, why people will invest so much time into a hobby like watercolors, but they’ll scrimp and save a few bucks on sub-par art supplies that will only frustrate them.    But I digress here.

As a final touch to my painting,  I added a hint of cadmium yellow/yellow ochre to the white highlights to warm up the paining.    Using artist licence, I added a skier (a small blob) to the foreground in the middle/right, to give a sense of depth.

The one thing I’m not crazy about is the bottom right hand corner.   In the photo, this section is featureless.   I tried to make it interesting by lifting some of the paint and adding some shadows.  But I’m not sure if I like what I’ve done here.

If you notice, the painting is a lot more “warmer” (i.e. purple/yellow) than the original.    Part of the reason for this, is that I did the painting based on a print-out from a laser printer on plain Xerox paper.   The true winter white/bluish colors weren’t accurately reproduced, and this is all I had to go by.

Next time, I’ll print this out on photo paper instead.

Overall, I give myself a B-Plus on this one.

I’m not displeased, but I know I can do better.

Call this one a “study”.

I want to re-do it in the near future.

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Monday Night Art Class: Apocalyptic Squirrel

Some days when you paint,  you can’t do any wrong.

The pigments and water seem to literally dance on the sheet.

The brilliant colors blend and merge exactly as you want them to…it’s a magical feeling.

And at the end of the day, you have a satisfied feeling,  like a cat that’s caught the canary, that you’ve pulled off another great painting.

Today wasn’t one of those days.

My first attempt was to paint this scene:

I started the sky, and then had to go to the car to look for something.

When I came back, I found something had inadvertently touched the still-wet sky and had left some marks.

Godammit.

This is beyond repair.   You can’t fix this.

Some people might say “Oh, Friar, that’s nothing.  Nobody will notice that.”

But the point is…I’LL KNOW.

And anyone looking at the painting, will zoom on on these white blemishes, and that’s the only thing they’ll notice.

So I decide to cut my losses, and quit while I’m ahead.

But not without adding some editorial comments of my own.

 

There was still an hour left to the class, so I decided to start another “easy’ painting.

Unfortunately, I messed up the full moon.   The masking compound didn’t cover the area properly, and the moon was lopsided.

And, again, there was  nothing I could do to fix this.

So I added some more editorial comments.

And for good measure, I include a giant mutant squirrel wreaking havoc in the woods.

I call him “Chuk-Tor”.