New Artwork

This is my portrait #6 of Jethro, created with gouache paints on a white Claybord™ panel. Each of my nine portraits of Jethro presents a different art medium on a 3.5″ x 3.5″ Claybord™ Tile, created and manufactured by Ampersand Art Supply. Gouache (pronounceed “gwash”) is a water soluable paint, sometimes called opaque watercolor or body color. It is a mixture of pigment, a water soluble binder, and a white pigment or chalk (the ‘body’). The latter is added to … Read More

My 5th Jethro portrait is created with colored pencils on a white Claybord™ panel. Each of my nine portraits of Jethro presents a different art medium on a 3.5″ x 3.5″ Claybord™ Tile, created and manufactured by Ampersand Art Supply. For this painting I used Prismacolor colored pencils, which have a soft core. The Claybord surface is ultra-smooth, unlike many papers made for color pencils which have a “tooth.” The lead in colored pencils holds pigments in a wax base, … Read More

Portrait #4 of cute kitty Jethro illustrates using Black Sumi Ink on a white Claybord™ panel. Each of my nine portraits of Jethro presents a different art medium on a 3.5″ x 3.5″ Claybord™ Tile, created and manufactured by Ampersand Art Supply. For this painting I used Yasutomo liquid Sumi Ink KY12, which is water soluable but dries water-resistant. This ink is made from pure vegetable soot, with no additives. Yasutomo brand’s KF series contains a small amount of shellac … Read More

My third portrait of my sweet cat Jethro illustrates using Golden Fluid Acrylics on a white Claybord™ panel. Each of my nine portraits of Jethro presents a different art medium on a 3.5″ x 3.5″ Claybord™ Tile, created and manufactured by Ampersand Art Supply. For this painting I posterized my reference photo in Photoshop to reduce it down to a handful of values. I used just four colors of acrylic paint, with Paynes Gray as the darkest value. I mixed … Read More

This second portrait of my rescued cat Jethro illustrates using Scratchbord Inks on a white Claybord™ panel. Each of my nine portraits of Jethro presents a different art medium on a 3.5″ x 3.5″ Claybord™ Tile, created and manufactured by Ampersand Art Supply. For this painting I made the Claybord into a black surface, very much like Ampersand’s Scratchbord™.  I did this by applying two coats of “Repair Black,” which is included as one of the inks in the set … Read More

My rescued cat Jethro is full of personality and extremely willing to pose for endless photos (he loves attention!). This is the first of my nine portraits of Jethro, each using a different art medium on a 3.5″ x 3.5″ Claybord™ Tile, created and manufactured by Ampersand Art Supply. For this painting I chose a limited palette of primary colors, letting them mix randomly on the smooth surface to create beautiful hues. Claybord has the unique feature of allowing dried … Read More

I love scratchboarding and I love chocolate, so I decided to combine the two in creating How Sweet It Is. I painted a big watercolor of chocolates years ago, Decadence, and it has always ranked among my personal favorite paintings. Even though this is a very very small artwork – just 4.5″ x 3″ – it took forever! The image was created with tiny marks into the black surface, slowly working my way throughout the panel. To be able to … Read More

Remember the scratchboard “Wee Lad” I last posted about? Well, I messed it all up! Here’s what happened…. I considered this a learning piece, so I decided to continue beyond the black and white stage and add some color. Since I was imagining the little boy as a Scottish lad, I thought it would add to the look to give him blue/green irises. I stratched away a bit more in his eyes to allow the color to show better and … Read More

I’ve just learned a new scratchboard technique for creating smooth transitions between shades of gray. It’s a great improvement over what I was doing. Sheryl Unwin, a fabulous scratchboard artist, was generous to share her methods for both stippling and hatching in a 4-session Zoom workshop. I’ve created “Wee Lad,” a small 5” x 7” Scratchbord™, with her tips. I love my results, but I need more practice to really latch onto this technique. It is rather time consuming … … Read More

“Fishing the Tellico” is the first watercolor painting I’ve completed in months, having spent my “art” time creating scratchboard art, painting a few pet portraits in acrylics, participating in some Zoom art sessions, and creating this new website. Switching media keeps things interesting, but it always takes me a bit of time to readjust. I put together a palette of many transparent colors for this painting and arranged them like a rainbow. To help me see the colors better I … Read More