The Mountain

This is a commission I am working on right now. It is a very large mountain scene. The canvas measures 48"X60". You can see the roughing in of the various elements. I do large color blocks over the various spaces and then add detail. Things can look a little scary in the midst of the process, but once the layers are done, it will come together. I've also put a lot of 3D texture in this work. The only items that have been detailed in the last picture are some of the mountain faces and the clouds. I'll post again with more updates on this one. An entire wash of color will be going overtop of the mountain reflection in the water. Once the rock face details are complete, I'll move on to the forest details in the foothills and then the shoreline and finally the reflection.

Fashion pop art

A few more images modified from my sketchbook:

Old Trumpet

I have a small collection of old musical instruments that I've acquired over the years. I sketched my trumpet today and then graphically turned it into a pop-art style piece.

Artemis

This is a sketch I did today of a frieze from the Parthenon (from a different photo reference). I'm continuing my exploration of drawn media, as I have very little experience here outside of doodling on my notebooks back in high school. I tend to find myself doing profiles rather often any time I do people, rather than the more common frontal view. This habit is one I'm working on breaking, but don't have anything completed enough to post here as of yet.

sketch

Today I attempted a sketch of a male head. I didn't have an actual model to look at, but instead used an anatomical image of a musculo-skeletal skull (w/o skin) for my guide. I've been attempting to study anatomy from the perspective of an artist lately and this exercise stretched me a bit.

Image done with white charcoal on paper.

A Few Update Pics

Baby and New Works

I haven't posted here in a while mostly because I'm spending the majority of my time with my daugther and my new lovely baby, Grant, who was born Feb. 13. (Photos by the amazing Pete Bulanow of peterbphoto).

I do have some works in progress to share with you though, as I do eek out bits of time to paint here and there.

A few notes of interest- the painting of the solitary tree is of a 350+ year old oak tree on my parent's farm that I painted in plein aire. The blueberries are a part of a 12 part series on foods (you can see the other 11 prepped canvases in the photo). The set of 3 fields is probably complete but I plan on spending a while longer having it up on my mantle so I can be sure it feels 'done' to me. The piece with 4 fruits is a study using some gels that I've found to be rather tricky to create an effect I'm trying for.

New Piece

This piece is especially large (24"x48" on an extra deep canvas). I am hoping to finish it before I have the baby, but that could really be any day now. I'm posting a progression of the work in progress. It still has a good ways to go, but you can see how it is developing: