Blog

March 31, 2021

Hello again.  On Sunday I attended Lancaster County Art Association's Reception for the Spring Members' Show.  I received an Honorable Mention for a work I did last year entitled, "Through It All".  It is of a rusty tow truck that I found at an antique shop up along 222 north of Reading, PA.  I cropped it to make the headlight the focal point.  I had fun painting the paint drips and peeling paint and various shades of rust.  I can identify with feeling a bit rusty lately as I spent a couple of days weeding and cleaning out flower beds. I wasn't crazy about putting the headlight almost in the center, but I didn't want to include the windshield and have that compete with the headlight.  And the rest of the composition has leading lines taking you around the rest of the work.  The headlight is the lightest light and works with the darkest darks in the shadows under it.  
I spent most of the day figuring how to do this blog thing.  My impetus was to check out the charge to my credit card for this blog site and I verified that it all was legitimate.  If I'm paying I need to get my act together.  So on this rainy day, I finally quit procrastinating and started on the first, well, second step.  I had the first post written a while ago, but couldn't figure how to get it posted.  It may not be perfect, but hey, you got something to read now, at least.  I rewarded myself with several cups of tea, some peanuts, and malted mini milk balls.  Does anyone else love malted milk balls?  Those and jelly beans are 2 of my Easter candy favorites.  I also have a headache, but I expected that, not a big deal.  And speaking of Easter, I'll post the Easter work I did a few year's back, just for your enjoyment.

Enjoy your Easter this weekend! No rain in the forecast. Yea. Jake has a special day planned for Good Friday. I might have a few photos to share. And he has off on Sunday, so we might get outside some more.

Hello world!

Welcome to my new blog.  At least I hope I got this right and get it up and running.  I have had a Facebook page a while and Instagram for a few months.  I’m still getting my feet wet there.  I have a Pinterest page with all kinds of folders of stuff I’ve pinned.   Someone listed my watercolor folder on Pinterest as one of the top 1000+ Watercolor Art Images.  It was in another language so I’m not sure I understood it completely. Eventually, I hope to get my art onto Pinterest.

Anyway,  I hope to post my work and works in progress and my inspiration for why I paint what I do.  I’ll also include a bit about my life as it relates to my art.  I’m leaving politics and religion mostly on my personal page.  So no drama here about that.

That said, here is my latest project.  It started out as an idea from a song, “Rock of Ages”, sung at a good friend’s funeral.  My friend passed away unexpectedly at age 53.  I wanted to do a mountain scene with large rocks in her memory.  We used to go to the cabin together and hiked together.  Also, I was out in the woods taking photos of rocks the day before she passed.  I also saw another artist’s, Rykie Garip’s,  paintings of mountain stream reflections and wanted to emulate her work a bit.  I had about 6 photo references and tried to do a little study to get an idea of how it would work out, the lights and darks.  I had a horrible study attempt of this idea while I was at the Heart of Lancaster Spring Show.  Usually, I discard the idea when that happens.  It just motivated me to work out the details with a better sketch first.  I want to honor my friend so my motivation is greater.  I realized what mistakes were made and got a few more references and fixed the problems.  I will not show the “fail.”  I just want you to know that life is not perfect.  It takes failures to know what not to do. 

It looks like a paint by number painting without the numbers now.  I started on the sky and some blue washes on some of the rocks.  I did not sketch the water since it was blurred out on my reference photo.  I used a grid for just a part of the painting.  I will go back and reprint my reference photo to be able to see the water details.  I do not completely copy the photo.  It is a reference, a guide.  I use the basic shapes, but let some be more blurry or soft.  Or I will add textures that approximate reality.  Photos get the mid-tones, but have trouble showing the lights and the darks.  And I place the trees and objects to hold interest.  Things got moved around a lot on this work.

Heron In the Woods

I changed the title to reflect the change in the focal point. So what started out as a rock emphasis changed to the heron subject. I’ll have to save Rock of Ages title for later, some day.