Rooftops

11" x 14" Oil on mounted linen.

$100 - Shipping to US included.

This is for the current Different Strokes challenge. My procrastination is in full force with this completed on the last day possible! The thing I liked the most about this painting was leaving out the M in Macys.

A Street of San Francisco

(Click for a larger view.)

11" x 14" Oil on mounted linen.

$100 - shipping to US included.

My mom loved The Streets of San Francisco starring Karl Malden. Here is just one street of San Francisco painted from a Different Strokes image. I am tempted to go back into this painting and add the white car from Bullit or am I confused with Vanishing Point? Oh, it all blurs together into the image of a car catching air over a San Francisco cross street.

Rowboat

(Click for a larger image.)
14" x 11" Oil on mounted linen.

This painting is from a Different Strokes reference. I struggled with this one, scraping off that little face about 7 times. Working on the boat and reflection was fun and the result looks better in person even though I have updated the photo for the blog.

Pennsylvania Farmland

14" x 11" Oil on mounted linen.

$100 - Shipping to US included.

This painting is from the current Different Strokes challenge. It is some prime Pennsylvania farmland. The image was black and white so all of the color here is imagined. The original is here.

New York City

11" x 14" Oil on mounted linen.

$100 - shipping to US included.

I had been working on(struggling with) another cityscape of Seattle. Thank goodness the Different Strokes challenge gets me to post on a schedule. This is another of Karin's reference shots from New York City.

Statue of Diana

11" x 14" Oil on mounted linen.

$100 - Shipping to US included.

The current Different Stokes challenge done at the last minute, as usual. I'm such a procrastinator. I was tempted to push the color, but I guess I overcame the temptation somewhere along the way.

Beach Family Triptych

Oil on linen triptych.
4 1/2" x 11" each.

$150 - Shipping to US included.

This family at the beach is the current Different Strokes Challenge. I was glad to get some time after a trip to complete these. The poses seemed to isolate the individuals, so I decided to separate them into a triptych. They are together at the beach, yet isolated. I also really enjoyed how elongated the reflections were in the reference.

Sushi

8" x 6" Oil on mounted canvas.

The latest Karin Jurick challenge is a picture of Sushi. Yum. This makes me think of Jeff Hayes painting Sushi. The source picture was fun to paint. The three objects and their overlap makes a nice strong composition.

Jefferson Memorial at Night

14" x 11" Oil on linen.
Sold.

This is a nighttime scene painted from a Different Strokes challenge photo from Karin Jurick. I really enjoyed the various colored grays that I saw in the reference. I also liked the photo's composition so I didn't crop it much except to move the building edge over to about one third from the right. Click the image above to see a larger version.

Different Folks Portrait

8" x 10" Oil on mounted linen.

Well, the 12 days of Christmas are over, so time to post my assignment for Different Strokes. I would not call myself a portrait artist, so this really was a challenge. Did I get the likeness? Are the colors okay? Did I make her look too fat or too thin? What's "wrong with the mouth"?

Another great quote from Sargent sums up my feelings, "Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend." It's probably just some healthy self-doubt.

I did take a peek at what Sheila did with my photo. She got the likeness. (I think I have had enough of that snow now.) Of course, she has some more experience with faces. Check out her blog post with my portrait.

So, this is my part of the "group self portrait".

Karin's Boots

10" x 8" Oil on mounted linen.

$100 - Shipping to US included.

These boots are painted from Karin Jurick's weekly challenge. I painted them from both her picture and looking at the color from Van Gogh's Boots. I really like how this one turned out even though it is pretty dark and moody. I'm really on a Van Gogh kick lately. :p

Morning Hydrangeas

10" x 8" Oil on mounted linen.

$ 100 - Shipping to US included.

This is another painting from a Different Strokes image. I don't do Budda, so the he is edited out and replaced with sunbeams forming a cross. The flower pedals really pop out from the blue gray surrounding on this one when viewed in person.

Walker (painted upside down)

10" x 8" Oil on mounted canvas.

$100 - Shipping to US included.

This painting was painted upside down as requested for Different Stokes. The idea is to concentrate on shapes without thinking about the subject. It is a good idea for checking proportions and spotting errors in drawing. That said, I haven't ever painting the whole painting upside down. It didn't really feel that different. I did still find an error that I had to fix after I had my first photo taken. That's another trick (along with using a mirror) that finds errors. Seeing the painting on screen is often when I find those little mistakes I want to fix. Like the white bit on the mouth of the nutcracker from my last post. I've fixed it now, too.

One thing that struck me about the photo Karin presented was that the woman looks like she has a heat ray coming out of her eyes like one of the Fantastic Four!

Shadows

I painted from the Different Strokes from Different Folks image again. This time I decided to take a "different" approach with my underpainting. Here is a progress photo where you can see the contrasting underpainting I used. It almost looks patriotic at this point.



The finished painting is closer to the reality of the photo Karin provided. I wanted the bright sunlight areas to have a blinding feel from the white over blue. I am happy with how that effect came out.


10" x 8" Oil on mounted linen.

US Capitol

10" x 8" Oil on mounted canvas.

Thanks to Karin Jurick's Different Strokes challenge, I was painting the US Capitol on election night. We didn't watch the returns at Sky Valley Studio, but did catch the montage at the end of the CBS coverage. It was well done.

New York Stock Exchange

8" x 8" Oil on mounted canvas.

This is another image from Karin Jurick's Different Strokes challenge. There is a lot of red on those screens at the NYSE, lately.

White Pumpkin

8" x 8" Oil on mounted linen.

Yikes, a week has passed. Here is another Different Strokes painting. I was most interested in the shape of the stem's shadow and the reflected light on the sides of the pumpkin. So, I yet again cropped the original image down quite a bit.

The News

10" x 8" Oil on mounted linen.

$100 shipping to US included.

I painted from Karin Jurick's different strokes picture again this week. I cropped the photo down considerably. Instead of the movies section, I gave him the financial page in honor of this week's news.

Sand Fencing

10" x 8" Oil on Linen mounted on board.

$100 - Shipping to US included.

Karin Jurick, who holds a place on my favorite daily painters list, is hosting a new blog where she invites people to paint from the same photo that she uses for one of her works. Here is my painting of this weeks photo. I cropped my view a little closer and tried to capture the high contrast of a bright day at the beach. I also slanted the fence slats to lead into the painting on the left. See the original photo here.

My camera is back in town so I can share what is going on in my studio again!