Wicker Porch Furniture-- Evelyn's Porch

This is perhaps my favorite painting from the paintout last weekend. It rained on and off all day Saturday so I sat on a porch near the park and painted an interior. I discovered that wicker furniture is not the easiest thing in the world to paint but I had lots of time.

SOLD

Evelyn's Porch

11" x 14"

1957 Lyman Wooden Boat

I attended the annual Lakeside Wooden Boat Show and Plein Air Art Festival this past weekend. This is an oil sketch of a wooden boat that I completed while I stood on the dock before the art show. It was a wonderful summer day in the seventies with low humidity and no wind. The perfect day to be outside painting.

This boat is a 1957 Lyman and the owner cam along and purchased it after some of his friends told him I had painted it.

SOLD

9" x 12" oil on linen

Original Oil Painting Portrait of Jessica

I couldn't resist doing a full color version of Jessica in her over-the-top costume. If a model is willing to wear long heavy gloves in July I feel it's my duty to paint them in full color. I was going for a Rembrandt look with this- heavy dark background and luminous features.

The jewelry was a lot of fun to paint too. Jessica was going for a vampish look I believe and it really works.

12" x 16" oil on linen

Watercolor pencil portrait

Jessica, our monthly model at the Hyter Group for June, has so many faces and such a great wardrobe. Love her.
This is a new experimental medium for me: watercolor pencils. You block in the basics in pencil, wet a brush and create a wash with the dissolvable graphite. Scary- as there is no going back once you put the water on.

I used two grades for this portrait. HB for the light areas and mid tones and 2B for the very darks.

15" x 20" on Cold press ill. bd.

Sand Engineers 6" x 6"

SOLD

A small 6"x6" painting of four kids playing on the beach. I used a lot of paint and kept the entire painting very wet while I worked on it, blending the edges vertically. I was trying to give it a feeling of action. Not sure if I succeeded but it was fun to experiment.

Garden Path

Garden Path

9" x 12" oil on linen

A small plein air painting with a natural composition that I painted on my trip to the Irish Hills.

Georgia Theatre Oil Painting Marquee

Justin hired me to do a painting  for his fiancee. He proposed to her in front of the historic  Georgia Theatre via the marquee. This is a large painting and I used three different photo references to get the couple in, replace a van with a VW Bug and adjust the angle.

Pretty challenging but fun.

24" x 36" Georgia Theatre

Randy's Roadhouse Bar-B-Cue in the Irish Hills Old Pickup

We saw this rustic truck on Route 12 when we were headed back to the lake house on Thursday and decided to return and paint it the next day. Randy allowed us to set up our easels in the shade of a large maple tree. There were three of us painting today and we all focused on the truck and we all came up with very different paintings. My painting was all about the truck. I really worked hard on minimizing the importance of the painted pig on top of the truck but I couldn't remove it. It adds a lot of character to the scene and the sign supports the reason it is there. The grass was actually mowed and weeded right up to the truck tires but I added a few weeds to give it character.

Randy told us that his family used to own the Wild West attraction on Route 12 but they sold it a few years ago. Apparently Route 12 was a major tourist attraction in the 50's and early 60's, with Mystery Hill, a Dinosaur Adventure, a Go-Cart track and more. Now this area has become known for its picturesque lakes and rolling hills. The tourist traps remain but they are in a sad state of disrepair.

Randy's Roadhouse Barbecue

9" x 12"

Irish Hills Vista 10" x 20" oil painting

10" x 20" oil on canvas

Irish Hills Vista

The second day we drove east on Route 12 and ended up stopping at a fruit and vegetable stand. Strawberries were in season so we bought some and I was eyeing the hilly farm to the north, while my friend was enchanted by the produce stand. I painted this bucolic vista of rolling hills and baled straw, while she concentrated on the truck and stand. A glorious day in the low seventies, sunshine after the fog lifted and NO MOSQUITOES! A great day to paint outdoors.