I have had so much going on in the studio lately I have not been able to keep up with my computing! I'm posting a little encaustic work I did awhile ago to keep things moving until I can post more of my process-oriented articles. I have two new large-scale sepia toned pastels I am in the process of finishing right now, as well as a brand spanking new don't-brush-up-against ...
Read MoreHello there: here are a couple of pics from my new work titled "Stillwater." In retrospect as I title this blog posting, "Marina at Stillwater" would have been a better title, but so it goes. It's easier to keep the current name than to scrape the painting down in order to re-name it!This is from my trip to Minnesota last summer; it was a very hot July day and the ...
Read MoreI don't have a title for this painting yet, but I think "Dark and Stormy Night" is taken, by Snoopy. The painting is from a day we were up on the Grand Mesa when a major summer thunderstorm moved in. It rained so hard so fast that on the way back I had to get out of the car and walk across an area of the dirt road that had ...
Read MoreThis is a new watercolor, titled at least for now "December, Eagle County." I started this piece as a demo painting for my watercolor class at the Western Colorado Center for the Arts--amazingly enough I did not completely destroy the painting as I usually do with demo pieces! It is 19x25 on 300# Canson 100, my favorite heavier weight watercolor paper. (It has a great dual surface--rough and smooth, is ...
Read MoreAnd finally we have some new work posted. This is "Hiawatha;" the subject matter is a big old grain warehouse on Hiawatha Ave in Minneapolis MN. Some of these images look like they were uploaded incorrectly but I actually laid this one out upside-down. I'd like to say it was for some great artistic purpose, like working on the right side of the mind by utilizing non-traditional compositional techniques, but ...
Read MoreTwo new encaustic paintings: these are exciting to me as they are the first pieces I have finished successfully using this new-to-me media. The black & white is titled "Mesa Feed," it's an old feed mill (still in operation) in Grand Junction. This piece is 16x20. The other one is, as yet, untitled. It is small, 8x10 in size. I am going to try to make my ...
Read MoreYea--the final step! I think, anyway. As you can see I killed some of the highlights and generally brought the tone of the entire piece down a notch (it was too light in hue overall.) I may need to bring it down another notch but at this point I'm going to leave it be, live with it for awhile, then see if anything is still bugging me about the final ...
Read MoreThe next step: I have finished filling out the main forms of the piece. Right now it has a lot going on; I need to think about it for a bit because something will have to be sacrificed in order to pull it off as a successful composition. I think there are way too many highlights, for one, and the light source seems a little harsh. We ...
Read MoreSo now we're starting to get somewhere! Here I'm starting to flesh out the rest of the painting. I'm still underpainting this image, trying to build it up layer by layer while constantly pushing the values where they need to go. This kind of image with all its linear structure is very intriguing to me; I like to lay down lines then make them disappear then find ...
Read MoreOkay, here's the second major step in the art piece. The initial layout has a lot going on: lots of lines and grid marks. I decided to lay in the sky first to give me a sense of atmosphere and help define my negative space. Sometimes the best way to begin a work is by painting the spaces you are not trying to define; "painting what isn't" as someone once ...
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