watercolor

I started doing art as a kid and never stopped! As a fine art painter, my learning curve has often been accelerated by tips and hints I’ve learned from other artists. Sometimes ideas come from workshops or demos, not only from the instructor but from other attendees. Other times they come from creative friends in art groups or other gallery exhibitors. Blogs, newsletters, social media groups and old-fashioned magazines are loaded with good art info. Often a fellow artist simply … 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

  When I opened a new package of three little Aquabord™ panels, I thought I was trying a new painting surface… a thin layer of fine white kaolin clay on a hardboard with a pebbly texture, heralded as ideal for use with watercolors. The surface absorbs watercolor pigment similarly to cold-pressed (textured) watercolor paper, but the paint can be easily removed. It’s sometimes known as scratchboard, and when I was a kid we created our own by covering heavy paper … Read More

  I have many passions; my newest painting combines two: watercolor and wildflowers. It’s of one of my favorite springtime woodland flowers, Bloodroot. The  3″ flowers are among the earliest bloomers in March in my Tennessee woods, unfurling their pure white petals in striking contrast with the dark, wintry forest floor. Bloodroot was traditionally used as a medicinal plant by Native Americans, as well as a natural dye. The red roots and the stems release a blood-color sap when cut, … 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

  All my paintings in the past year were done in acrylics, and now I’m trying to ease back into watercolors. Over the years I’ve done many watercolor paintings using a limited palette – basically just red, yellow and blue – such as Jerry Van Music Man and Grandpa’s Fiddle Break. In those cases, I mixed the pigments on the palette to create new colors, then brushed the mixed colors on the paper. Now I’m trying another method: letting the … Read More

I was flattered recently when my friend Charles said that my artwork reminds him of the work of Andrew Wyeth – wow, one of the artists I most admire! If you are not familiar with the three generations of the Wyeth family of painters, they are foremost among American artists. N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), father of Andrew, was a highly successful artist and illustrator, creating over 3000 paintings, illustrating 112 books, painting historical murals for noted public buildings, and supporting his … Read More

I recently tried something new – entering a painting in an Online Art Exhibit. It’s an interesting concept… entries are sent in as digital images (according to what is defined in the rules as acceptable) and the show is judged in the same way as a conventional ‘hang-in-a-gallery’ type of art exhibition. With an online show, the nice part for the selected artists is that you don’t need to ship your painting, the digital image just gets posted to a … Read More

My painting theme this month is “sweet” and here are four of my paintings, with a variety of subjects, which I think fit this category. Of course, February is always sweet for me, since Valentine’s Day is the day I married my forever sweetheart! “Decadence” features a super sweet display of yummy chocolates. This painting was a real departure from my usual subject matter. I purposely aimed at creating a strong and unusual image, since my intention was to enter … Read More