one more on the city streets: "one way" (19"X15")

first washes and beginning details

i managed to get a few shots of this as it was developed, but not the way the way that i would have liked. i painted it from an amalgam of 2 city photos and a bit from my imagination.

the large background shapes and indeed all the large washes were painted with a #6 princeton neptune quill brush. it holds a tremendous amount of water and allows a very juicy mix of colors to readily flow down the paper leaving a good size bead at the bottom....where the life of a wash resides. the board is at a 45 degree angle which is much less upright than i usually paint for my figures and portraits, but i found that 75-80 degrees of tilt made the wash unmanageable and it cascaded downward out of control.

a few more figures and a tree

the detail stuff was painted with my trusty #16 round and #8 round for really small stuff. the colors were mainly a variety of blues, burnt sienna, raw sienna, alizarin crimson, mineral violet, turquoise blue, vermillion, and cadmium yellow light. i have gone to a pretty much all transparent palette for the figure work but am finding that some of the more opaque colors like the cadmiums (red and yellow) often right out of the tube can be useful for last minute details and calligraphy.

darkened the foreground (i know it doesn't
look like it)

i can't say this is prize worthy but i do feel that these land/cityscapes are getting better. for that i am grateful.

what's a city sans pigeons? et voila: "one way" (19"X15")

"a final glimpse of benita wire": next painting

"a final glimpse of benita wire" (22"X12")

sorry about the lack of technique narrative with this one. i got carried away with a description on an art forum (painting friends) as a work-in-progress. those interested can probably see it in the watercolor forum under wip's.

additionally this painting comes with a tragic story (hence the title) that can be read on my facebook page.

i enjoyed painting this and looking up the history of my great aunt in the cortland register on google.

"little ball of fur": the grand finale

"little ball of fur" 11"X15"

here is the end result of the tiger painting. all in all i think it came out alright. i played around with the techniques for getting the stripes in and finally felt that a (nearly) dry on wet technique worked best. in terms of paint, the sepia seemed to stay anchored better than combinations that relied on ultramarine blue/burnt umber when overglazed. stephie butler paints beautiful tigers (and other exotic animals) and uses acrylic ink for the stripes which at this time seems like a good idea. i might try that next time.

another landscape (cityscape?): seattle sunshine morning

"seattle sunshine morning" (14"X18")

it seems i have been skipping around a lot since we arrived home from borrego springs about 10 days ago now. i have 3-4 paintings in the works and although i paint on each one each day sometimes there isn't enough change to  make it worthwhile to post. this one i finished in about two days. it isn't perfect (no s**t, sherlock), but i think i am starting to understand how i want to paint these and i learned a tremendous amount by the attempt. taken from a photo outside of our daughter's abode in seattle about 7-8 years ago. i have wanted to attempt it before but didn't think i had the chops to do it well. so, here is the first attempt and i am pretty sure i will have another go of soon to see if i can make a better painting of it.

back in the saddle......

we are now home and ready to start painting again in an atmosphere bereft of flying dirt, high winds, and zero humidity..........should make things a bit easier.

i have been working a little on the "party girls" painting, started a painting of my great aunt from a photo when she was about 16, and am trying my hand at an animal portrait....in this case a tiger.

i will post the steps for the great aunt painting later today or tomorrow after i finish a little more. however, here is the tiger at the stage that i moved on to something else to give it a rest . its a little tight which i find often happens when i tackle a new subject and experiment with ways of getting the effects that i want. all in all i am happy with where this is at the present time. i will have some comments on what i think i learned when i get closer to the finish. for now i will just post the photos of the various stages i have gone through to the present.