Fat Tire Friday

5" x 7" Oil on panel

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Friday night is a great night for beer. Here is a yummy fat tire ale for you. It has a really nice glow in a classic pint glass. The cap is in that recognizable New Belgium color scheme. This was a fun still life to get me going again. My constant cough is still pretty annoying, but the beer may help that. Cheers!

Sake Vase with Dried Flowers

10" x 8" Oil on canvas on panel.

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These dried flowers have been in another vase for years in our house. Tonight some of them used our Sake pitcher for a vase. I think this painting came out nice and moody. I hope the photo does it justice.

I will be posting again early next week.

Pepper Jar and Grinder

10" x 8" Oil on canvas on panel

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For today's painting I wanted to stay inside (it was actively snowing today) and paint a still life with some reflections. I chose this peppercorn jar with a nice classic shape. To keep it company in the composition, I added our everyday wood pepper grinder. Some pepper corns added a little "spice" on the marble surface I used for the setup. This one looks even better (and a little warmer) in person!

Plein Cold Creek

10" x 8" Oil on panel

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Today I walked down to the creek and painted this plein air piece. It was cold (for western Washington), I figure it was in the mid twenties. Snow was falling off of the trees above me and I fought the ice crystals and thick paint. I used more medium than usual just to keep the paint from freezing in lumps. I am glad to be in the warm house tonight.

I used a split complementary palette with a green primary. Purple and orange became my other base colors. Here is a picture of my palette.


I started the painting by sketching the darks with a red undertone.


After a couple of hours of work, including breathing hot air on the paint to soften it, I got to my stopping point. Of course, I spent some time packing up and looking for the cap to my painting medium that I had dropped during my painting process. Argh!


I am happy to say I found that cap for the tube of medium in my backpack when I got back to the house. Yea! Maybe tomorrow I will paint inside to give my cold toes a break.

Mulling Spices

7" x 5" Oil on GessoBord

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Over Christmas vacation, we had several nice pots of mulled apple cider and other juices. Apple juice alone or mixed with CranRaspberry works great. We even tried grape juice mixed with the apple this year. The spices are what really makes the drink delicious, along with the boiling time. You can't rush the process of combining all of that good spice taste with the juices.

My choice of spices for today's painting are cloves, allspice, whole nutmeg, and stick cinnamon. They all go in whole except for the nutmeg which needs some coarse grating. The nutmeg is the big nut with the side shaved off. I can smell them now; of course, I have them right here...

Vacation Ends

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The photo above is me working on a daily wood sculpture for the blog -- just kidding.

I am finished with my Christmas vacation and will get back to regular painting tomorrow. I won't pull off long periods of daily painting this year due to an already filling travel schedule, but I hope to produce enough to keep you coming back. I had a refreshing vacation celebrating Christmas, my wife's birthday, and my son's leave at home before he deploys to Iraq again this spring. It is that time for Chinese new year resolutions and I have mine that I am taking to heart. My beard is even gone now!

The interesting story from the last week came during the tree cutting. A tree had fallen from its load of snow on our garage, causing some damage, so we were clearing out some of the other candidates. I was looking to cut a sickly pine, but my wife was thinking about another of the problem Alders. She said, "No, that one." So I even as I took my first step toward it... CRACK! It falls harmlessly; so does my jaw. I take it as a sign of God in our lives rather than a crazy coincidence. We have had a few others during our home building here.