Cookies and Milk

Well, one advantage of painting food is that you can eat it when you are done. Several of my "models" disappeared during the execution of this painting. Are Oreos really black or just very dark brown? With the light on them, the brown in the cookies stood out so I painting them with multiple layers of brown with black shadows. I wasn't very happy with how the glass of milk reads as a painting, but white highlights on white milk in glass provides a lot of light colors. I tried to darken some shadows on the far left of the glass to give it depth.

Rock Island Line at Lasalle Station, Chicago

This painting is from a dramatic photo of the Rock Island Line at Lasalle Station in Chicagotaken by Bruce Fingerhood. The light comes down through the overhead superstructure and makes for an interesting play of light across the train and ground. I like the white star on the front of the train and the sky reflecting off the engine windows. I didn't use any color for the ground instead letting the white paper show through giving the painting greater contrast.

Going Outside the Lines

One more crayon painting. I started all the crayons with a light wash and then gradually built up, over four or five layers, the colors. After the first layer I used my finger to take off some color right down the middle of each crayon. Finally I added some color from the adjoining crayons. For the coloring book character I first thought about using crayons for the color but changed my mind and used watercolors. I took the white crayon and made small dashes in the area that I wanted to paint. The white resisted the blue, red and brown paint giving it, I hope, a crayon look.

The Garden Hose: My new favorite painting tool

I took the picture for this painting in San Francisco. I rearranged the Golden Gate Bridge so it was closer and added a sea gull and a sunset. I masked off the ship, seagull and bridge and then soaked the entire paper with water. I dropped in some watery yellow, red and blue paint and tilted the paper left, right, up and down to create an awesome sunset background. The problems started right away as the paint, when it hit the masked portions of the painting, took an abrupt left turn. This created not an awesome sunset but an awful mess.
When the paint and paper were dry, I took the painting outside and turned the garden hose on it. The hose washed a bit of the paint off but, more importantly, blended the colors. So, after almost throwing the painting away, I was back in business. My goal was to create at least something I'd keep, if not show someone. I'm not sure how successful I was, but I did keep it.

Bicyles on 13th Street

This painting was from a picture I took in front of a bike shop near the University of Oregon. It was such a complex composition that I traced it onto the watercolor paper instead of drawing. It took me about 90 minutes to mask off all the spokes and white parts of the tires. I like the brightness of the front bike, the shadows and the bricks in the lower left.