Friday, August 27, 2010

Progress...


Making progress on the Mount Rushmore painting - or "the Guys" as I've been referring to it. Its slow work, but its coming along...

Friday, August 13, 2010

New work in Progress


I've been enjoying painting western landscapes, but have been feeling a hankering to paint some faces again (always seem to come back to that)... so decided it might be fun while I'm out west to try a painting of the faces of Mount Rushmore. Then I thought of my Pride and Prejudice painting in which I painted the face over a collage of the pages of the book. I'm gonna paint the faces over the writings of the presidents depicted.

Once I came up with the idea, I've been having all sorts of fun researching the writings and searching for archives of the actual handwriting of the presidents (Washington, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson). I found a wealth of info at the Library of Congress, including the image above which was in a letter to Roosevelt as a child from his father. I also found the Gettysburg address in Lincoln's handwriting. Way cool... Now to collage it all together coherently and then paint the faces... stay tuned.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Oakwood "studio"



Here's a shot of my "studio" at the Oakwood State Park. There were several lakes there formed by glaciers, and this nice picnic table on the top of the hill next to one. I started work on a long narrow canvas, 12 x 48 inches. Still needs work!

Catching up...


I've been hearing from several friends and family that I need to get back to my blog - Gee, its nice to know that someone's reading it!

After returning from the Rockport trip with my mom (see below), I took care of some business and then Max started calling to me again. I just love being on the road. Since I have painted a number of western scenes on my travels, I decided to apply to a couple western shows and see what happens. I'll be doing the Sioux Falls show in mid-September and a show at Custer State Park at the end of September... so I decided to head on back out and visit friends and get some more paintings done. Why not?

Here's a shot of Theo staying cool in Max at the Oakwood State Park where we camped a few days...

High tide in Rockport...


See the post below...

On the road again...



I've truly been bitten by the travel bug... my mom has decided that I must have some gypsy blood in me - perhaps! After my return from the grand canyon trip, I loaded up the camper van Max with my mom and Theo and we headed up to Massachusetts for a family reunion. Stayed in the funky cabin where my mom went as a kid, right on the rocks by the water. Here's a view from Max where Theo and I stayed right out front. This is low tide, next I'll post high tide. When high, there was a fun (but cold!) spot to jump in that's called "the bathtub."

Worked on a couple watercolors, but nothing to show for it yet...