Monday Night Art Class: No Improvement.

Here are two versions of the same painting.

I did this first one back in 2001. I overdid the foreground…it was getting too dark and the watercolors were on the verge of becoming mud. I wasn’t happy with it and one day I figured I’d do it again.

Fast forward 13 years. I finished the painting below this week. And once again, I overdid the foreground, and the watercolors were on the verge of becoming mud. .

It’s okay…adequate.

But I don’t feel the love.    Over a decade of painting later, I’m still not not happy with it.

But this time I’m not doing it again.

I”m DONE with this one.

Some paintings are just…meh…..not meant to be. .

Monday Night Art Class: The Winter of my Discontent

For some reason, I find my art is better, when I have some angst in my life.

And this past winter, I had a bit of angst.

Not that I wanted it.   It just turned out this way.

But at least it helped my productivity.

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Two different pens. One combined doodle.

Can you find (?) :

A Beatnik Bandit (google it) .   A shitting unicorn.   A squid.    A femur.   A bearded clam.   A brick.     A brick shithouse.   DNA.   A mug of crud.  A dancing pickle.  A type-T thermocouple.  A nuke.    Many stars.    A tennis ball.   A dumbass retriever-dawg.   “e” twice.   And also pi.     A speckled trout.  A Big Mac.  The letter F.   And U.   And C.   And K.  Grapefruit.   A saguaro cactus.  A curious dog.  A donut with icing. Another (non bearded) clam.   Nil.    A log.  Bacon (of course).  An annoyed rattlesnake.   A dangerous horse.   Saturn.    A Swagelok male connector. Pacman and one ghost.  An atom.  A conical section.  A tesseract.   A rude monkey.  Planck’s Constant.  Bananas.  A wise owl.  A snarky Etch-a-Sketch.    A Mercury-Redstone Rocket.  A coat hanger.  Dairy Queen.     A small sword to stab with.   Pyramid Power.   A barrel of monkeys, sans monkeys.   A grumpy Viking.   The Grapes of Wrath.  And a blender.

Monday Night Art Class: Something Different

I wanted to so something different.   So I though I’d paint this close-up photo of a dandelion, which I took last summer.

 

And then I decided to add geckos.

With Viking helmets.

Monday Night Art Class: A Miserable Day

This was Lake Ontario last month, near Sandbanks.

It was a really miserable day.   There were 5-6 foot waves crashing on shore.   I can only imagine what it must have been like out in the middle of the lake.

Thought I’d paint this and use depressing dark colors to capture the mood.

But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.    The more I tried to mix dark grey,   the more I wanted color.  So I deliberately added some warm yellows to back-light the sky.

 

Artistic license, I guess.

It’s a different painting from the photo.     Not necessarily better or worse.

But just different.

Monday Night Art Class: Mess O’ Leaves

I took a a close-up photo of my tree in my back yard this fall:

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And I decided to paint it.

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Took a while, but I finally finished it.

And that’s it.

I’m done painting leaves.

Until next year. 

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I Finally Finished the #$*%! Thing…!

Sometimes when I take a photo, I know it’s going to be a painting.  I just don’t know when I’ll get around to actually painting it.

It can be days.  Or years.

I took this one a year ago.

I started painting it last May.

And then put it away, and started it again.

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And then put it away and started it again.

And then it was summer, and fishing started,.  So even though it was 95%  done, I  put it away again  for 4 months.

Now, it’s FINALLY finished.

And I am DONE with it.

(Phew!   This was painful).

Next…!!!