Water shed... a plein air inspiration.

water shed 6x8 oil on linen

   I had the pleasure of painting in Marion's garden a little while ago during a plein air event I co-facilitate for Peninsula Arts League. Incredible garden really but I was most drawn to a sweet little collection of water pitchers outside a small outbuilding... perhaps enough to do a full fledged painting as I will discover when I return this week for another visit... "if the good Lord willin' and the bees don't sting".

Lil' companion piece- "Bird seeds"

"Birdseeds"- 6x6 acrylic, felt marker, seeds

   In follow up to the previous multi-medium piece on texture, I created this 6"x 6" companion piece on white board. In this challenge instead of using a bold sharpie, colored pastels and acrylic paints on the brown of the board, I narrowed it down to pen, acrylic paints and seeds. Although this image does not do justice to the dimension of the seeds worked into the owl's feathers and beak, the mix is intriguing. Now I contemplate whether to finish the piece in acrylic mediums to play with matte for the  tree and gloss for the bird seeds. Hmmnnnnn...

Work in progress-texture

sharpie marker on cardboard

     I don't normally show the progression of a piece unless I find the journey worth sharing. So I am in a "share project" and developing a criteria based exercise. The theme is "Texture times three". The challenge is to use 3 mediums, specifying a foreground middle ground and background, and use the 3 primary colors in a split-complimentary piece.
   On a 12"x12" piece of cardboard (Because if you mix the 3 colors you get brown) I used white to sketch out the big shapes. Then I dropped in sharpie marker to mark some darks and begin to establish texture feel to remind me to keep thinking texture... texture... texture!

adding in arcylic wash and pastels

    Then I mixed a thin blue acrylic paint wash to color the tree intermediately with medium and soft edges for the texture as I gradually roughed in the white of the trunk allowing the blush (brown of the paper to peak through. I did the same with orange (complement to blue) for the inner bark gashes before working to the bold solid orange of the eyes. Finally I broke up the background with blue and white pastels mainly in soft edged mass.

rendering the owl with acrylic and sharpie

   The remaining mass efforts were to drop in the range of oranges to blues in the body of the owl with acrylic paint. Meanwhile I adjusted the values and edges of the remaining sky and tree with pastels and washes. Although I could work the piece more to relieve the contrast, I believe that the mission has been accomplished and the criteria met.
 

They growing out so fast!

sunflower #7 2014 6x8 oil on linen

   Amazing what a few days will do to a flower. Nearly unrecognizable from the last entry, the petals have fully opened and the center almost fully bloomed to hide the green center.

Good company

sunflower #6 2014 11x14 oil on canvas

The sunflowers paint on with this 5 pack in the new green vase. Early in their bloom the centers lay a nice directional green pattern within the straw colored texture surrounded by the raising buff colored outer circle. There is much to learn about these flowers.