Beautiful

The birds are back today. Hungry little dears. It is so cold here I just couldn't bring myself to tiptoe out on the deck barefoot and I am not quite ready to get all ready for my day so i scattered seed all over the deck. Not the diner they are used to but they seem not to care today. I have chickadees, juncos, a nuthatch. All just waiting for a morsel. You see mother earth is sleeping. and she is frozen against the Arctic blast. It was -12 yesterday and in some parts -17. It is beautiful when it is that cold. Quiet. No birds, no clouds, the air sparkles.Today it's warmed only -2. so the birds are back and the clouds are here and it's snowing very lightly.

golf courses

And a Mural of Augusta National for a client. Here's a before shot and now a middle shot and then a tadah!
Here's the here's how...
First I spend a bit of time researching golf courses and explaining the aspects of a good mural to a client. The final shot had to have a focal point. It neded color and something to help with the perspective. Many golf course pictures are just alot of green. We reviewed the local course and they just didn't hold as much interest as this very famous one.


So we looked at a tone of pictures and decided on the 12th hole. I put a couple veiws up on a transparency with a projector so they could see what a final version may look like. The projector is a great tool to get scale and proportion down easily.

I sketch in the main landmarks in this case the sand pits, the bridges and the main trees. I go over the entire sketch with raw umber to makesure I don't loose any important lines during the painting process. I use artist grade acrlyics and a variety of brushes.


I then blocked in the main colors and started giving depth to the background by softly laying in glazes and texture. Colors used are; raw umber, yellow ocher, raw sienna, burnt umber and burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and a bit of cerulean blue in the sky. My lightening agent is titan buff.

Next is adding in the water which is a mixture of raw umber, ultramarine blue and rawumber with varing amount of raw sienna. It needed to reflect the background behind it.

I then add in my shadows and highlights and all of a sudden it pops. I haven't gotten pictures of the finished project yet. The clients love it. Now on to their dining room a three color metallic plaster and a specialty cabinet finish for the built in cabinets.

Another angel I am working on

This is the angel I am working for a class I am teaching at SALI in San Francisco. I have been working on her dress. Then I will add some dimension to the slip. I started with the under painting of raw sienna and white. Then added deeper tones to get the folds to appear 3D.

I am now going to begin the wings. Then on her face...
She is so different then the ones I painted for my client. She wanted her angels to be childlike, not majestic. So I am off to California for a painting retreat.... # full days of just painting....Oh and a girlie day in there too.
I am starting my ripple along blanket over while I am on the plane because it started becoming a circle


and that was not right, not right at all.
This is what it is suppose to look like....
I just love it...Not mine but the one in the other picture....Looks just happy.