New Artwork

My reference photo I finished this newest scratchboard painting a few weeks ago but I’ve been too busy to blog about it until now. This wild Lady’s Slipper blossom, which I photographed in my forest late last April, was my chosen subject as a deadline neared; I had to deliver 8 original paintings for a solo show of my work as 2019 Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage Artist of the Year. Generally, I don’t cram at the last minute, but I thought … Read More

My love of spring wildflowers may be genetic. When my maternal grandmother was a high school senior in 1912 she wrote “We hail the approach of spring… our pulses are stirring as the odor of the arbutus and the violet is wafted on the gentle breeze….” I hope my new acrylic painting “Showy Orchis” celebrates the glory of spring visually as elegantly as young Emma Fox did verbally. My usual step-by-step progress is shown below, but I will divert for … Read More

I’ve wanted improve my skills with “character” paintings, since that’s a subject which challenges me greatly. I had signed up for a 3-day watercolor portrait workshop last year, taught by an artist whose work I love and admire. I bought the supplies and was all excited about the learning opportunity, but sadly the workshop was cancelled at the last minute. The artist had described her method of painting with a limited palette of the 3 primary colors, which I often … Read More

After recently creating a few paintings of fury and feathered creatures on Scratchbord®, I decided to feature some other favorite subjects in my newest scratchboard painting: wildflowers and weathered barnwood. The black background and the process of scratching down to a white surface favor subjects with light values and strong textures; with this in mind, I’ve learned that I need to select my subjects and plan my compositions differently than I do when painting on white paper or canvas. Wild … Read More

 Art is a constant learning process for me. I painted “Scarlett – Red-Tailed Hawk” in a similar manner as I painted “Hair of the Dog,” using transparent fluid acrylic paints on a small 6″x6″ black scratchboard panel, but this time depicting feathers vs. fur. The photos of my work in process highlight some of the steps in capturing this majestic bird. The technical info in the second half of this post may be of particular interest to other artists who … Read More

  Continuing my current MO of experimenting with new art materials and methods in my paintings, I’ve completed another scratchboard, this time with a new set of watercolors. I’ve Got Sunshine is my first painting with QoR® (pronounced ‘core’) watercolors from Golden Artist Colors (read more about the paints at the end of this post). As with my painting “Jasper,” I’ve painted this on Aquabord®, a white-surfaced scratchboard panel. When seed drops from our bird feeders into the gravel below the … Read More

Cows have been very very good to me – the ones I’ve painted anyway. When I initially got notice of my painting Eat Chicken being considered to hang in a children’s hospital, it was the first time I ever thought about kids as an audience for my art. I had been toying with the idea of doing another cow painting, and the old nursery rhyme “Little Boy Blue” inspired the idea for my newest work, “Cow’s In The Corn.” So … Read More

For my newest painting I had two goals in mind: (1) to use acrylic paints in a highly transparent way, and (2) to use an odd shaped canvas I’ve had among my art supplies for too long. The canvas is three feet wide and a little over a foot tall, so I decided to use it horizontally and create a painting of a big backlit red poppy from my garden. To begin, I reviewed many poppy reference photos in my … Read More

  Searching through my big file of reference photos, I came upon shots I took a few years ago when we brought our Florida visitors Dee and Len to experience some of our friends’ farms. These cows were some I photographed at Susan and Dave’s, where they raise males, born on a dairy farm so of little use for the milking operation. Susan bottle feeds the newest arrivals, then raises them in a lovely open pasture, with her chickens ranging … Read More

I passed this bizarre decaying building on a little-travelled rural backroad and was happy to have my camera. It was a sunny morning and the front of the building was bathed in light. If only this place could tell me its story, sitting close to the road in the middle of nowhere, with bars over the windows. Had it served as a small community jail? I loved its quirks – the weathered siding, the red stains at the top of … Read More