Mouse and the Berry series

The Dragonfly bringing the mouse a berry.




















Down goes the berry and off goes the dragonfly.




















Mouse eats his fill and takes a nap.

The Knight Family Tree

This is a family tree of the Knight Family. (The picture is a little blurry)

I love these little birds.

4x4, Oil on wood block

Storytime

I painted this picture for my friend Shelly who is having a baby girl in another month. I found how to make little birds and fell in love with painting them. I've done another bird picture which I'll post soon.

I really enjoyed painting a more "cartoon" like picture. It was fun to paint things that were cute.

8x10, Oil on canvas

The Heart of God

I was inspired after hearing the testimony of Brian Welch who was the lead guitarist for Korn ( a heavy metal band). He was mentioning that he got to a point where he reached the end of himself and asked Jesus for help quiting his drug addiction. At that point he felt the love of God wash over him. I really wanted to just paint that; the greatness of God's love and the richness of it.

"The love of Christ is rich and free, fixed on his own eternally" William Gatsby

Dandylion in the Wind

Here is the Dandylion painting. Still have a little bit of work on the background, but for the most part it's done. I learned a couple things while painting this one. I could use Burnt Sienna as a dark shadow for Yellow ochre. I was trying to use the dark brown I have to darken the yellow ochre, but it kept turning grey. I pulled out the Burnt Sienna and it was perfect.

I also learned to smudge and make something look like it's there even though it's not. The white part of the dandylion and the bulb of the stem have this. I had to smudge a lot of little circles and blend them in to create a textured round object.

Cropped Lemon Branch Painting

The painting of this is much bigger and there are two other lemons. My camara made them look like I didn't blend the colors together so I cropped this one.

I really like how my White Rose painting turned out so I thought I'd try something similar with lemons. Black and white with a hint of yellow.

Small Flower Drawings

The Jersey Cow

This is the painting I did today. I painted the whole canvas with burnt sienna so that the undertone would be the red/brown color. This is a 10x10 canvas with oil. It kind of looks like the cow has yellow eyeshadow, but it's just the way the camara takes pictures.

The White Rose

I painted this today. I'm really enjoying this "blended edges" technique. Again, my camara doesn't capture the painting. I was going to make the leaves green, but after I put a black wash on them, I realized how much more the flower would pop if it had black leaves. In the middle of the flower is a pop of pink.

Sfumato

I used a Sfumato technique on this painting of tulips. It's done by blending the edges into the background. I've found it's pretty dificult. You can muddy the colors if you start blending too much.

The Honeybee

This is the Honeybee painting. It's for a friend of mine who loves honeybees. These are facinating creatures. We wouldn't be able to live without them. (can't say enough that my camara does not capture all of the colors. This painting is much brighter and not as white as it appears)

This is the photograph that I rendered my painting from. I wanted to show how I take a picture and paint from it. I decided to make the flower stamens that the bee is standing on more abstract. I didn't want to detract from the detail in the bee.

The Lionfish

This is the Lionfish painting. This was probably the second most time intensive piece of work I've done (1st being the Harnett drawing). I really wanted to get the bright colors of the red and orange to stand out, but it needed to have a darkness to it too in order to have depth. I played a lot with Burnt umber to give shadow to the fins. In person the painting takes on a vibrant lively quality.

Psalm 23

I don't know what it is about being half asleep in the morning, but it seems to be when I get ideas. One morning I saw a picture in my mind of the 23rd Psalm. The painting was 3-d with a mountain range and in the middle was a red line signifying the "Valley of death". As I thought more about it and the actual scripture, I realized it shouldn't be red, but gold. It is within the valley of death that we are called not to fear and know that God is with us. We are not alone during those times. In fact, that's when He is closest to us.

butterfly

Another Tree... I guess I like them

So I made the background first and for about 5 minutes just stared at it to see what picture would pop out of it. It looked like it needed a tree leaning to one side. I was going to do a tree getting blown by the wind, but as I started painting an old tree started forming. I completed this one in about an hour.

I've been drawn to painting trees recently. I've noticed artists like to paint (or photograph) the same thing in different ways. I saw a documentary on this photographer, Sally Mann, after she had done a series on a dog bone. She said that the art critiques kept trying to figure out the deeper meaning behind the use of the dog bone.

Sally said it was because she liked it.

I Dream of Birch Trees

I had the idea for this painting when I was half asleep one morning. I saw white birch trees on a hazy background. I really like how this turned out. Props to Brent for the idea of expanding the trees across the canvas.

I'd like to do more of this type of painting and experiment with different color backgrounds.

Fall Painting

Remember Bob Ross?

When I was younger I used to watch Bob Ross on PBS paint. I was facinated by how he could paint a whole landscape in 30 minutes. Well at Michaels today I saw that he (or whoever has taken his name) has "how to" books. So I bought one and painted this. It takes you though each step so you can learn new techniques of painting landscapes.

So I'm sure you'll see more of these types of paintings soon.

The Beach and the Flowers

So I decided that just because I'm not taking my art class doesn't mean that I can't use my oil paints (even though technically I don't know how to use them). The Flower Pitcher I just did off the top of my head. Did a quick sketch and started painting with lots of red. There is red in every area of the painting (even the blue).

The Beach is from a picture I took while on the Gulf of Florida. I really should have added more red to this painting to warm it up.

Again, my camara makes the colors look a little different and there's a flash, which is why they are at odd angles.

Dawn the Duck

So I've started using a new medium - colored pencils. Painting takes a lot of setup and cleanup to the point that it keeps me from painting more often.

I found this duck in a Dawn Dish Soap ad in a magazine. This is my first colored pencil foray and I really like it. I'll have to experiment with the different softness of pencils to get the right depth of shading.

Making something fuzzy is actually really hard. Too many lines and it can look harsh, not enough lines and there won't be any depth to it. I'm sure there is a technique to creating fuzz with pencils.