One Blue Door Painting Done

I have finally finished the first one of the Blue Door paintings.  There was a LOT of tiny detail on this painting and it took me what seemed like forever to finish it.

It is oil on canvas, approx. size is:  30 x 40 cm. or about 12 x 15 inches.

Comments/criticisms welcome as always.



The full painting.

Lantern detail.

The other lantern detail.

Door detail.

Mural WIP

I finally remembered to take a photo of the mural, or as far as I have gotten so far.  I have done a bit of work on it since these photos; but it is a LONG way from finished still.  It is getting warm here so I have only been working on it for a while some mornings when I haven't had other stuff going on.  So considering how slowly I work this could take until next year to finish.

Here are a couple of photos of it as it was a couple of days ago.

Mural -- Background Is In

Ok, I have been working outside on the mural.  Not lots of hours as remember it is pretty warm here right now; although the humidity isn't bad yet.  Today it is 35 Celsius right now, which is more or less 95 F..  I try to start in the morning after the patio has some shade and then work for a while at it.

At this point it basically looks like a big mess, as this is just the background colour, about the only thing that is almost done is the seagull in the top left hand corner, so lots of work to do yet.  I am hoping to beat the humidity; but not sure if I will or not.

I am not liking working with the acrylic house paint, it is so different from oil paint.  It dries soooo fast that I have exactly ZERO time to do any shading so that is going to be a big problem when it comes to the finishing work.  Not sure how I am going to get around that one.  Anyone have any ideas???

Ok here are some photos of it in progress, as I want to keep track of how it is going.

This is where it is situated on the wall, basically between the propane tank and the electrical breaker box.  The door to the apartment is on the right hand side of the breaker box.

The seagull, the only thing almost finished in the whole painting.

The whole mural.

The dark line close to the bottom is the seawall and in front of it is the bay, Guaymas Bay.  A lovely place to relax in the evenings.

Painting A Mural

As if I don't have enough paintings in the works at the moment, (3 in oils, 1 more drawn and ready to be put on the canvas).  I decided to start something new to me, a small mural
We have white walls on our patio, (brick construction with a smooth layer of concrete over it), and I have been thinking about doing this for quite a while; but I hadn't found a photo I wanted to do, until the other day.

I wanted the photo to represent Guaymas and I think this one does.
It is of the malecon, walkway along the bay, in centro and depending on how it turns out people should recognize it as a view of our city.

I blocked it out and starting drawing a few days ago in between doing other things, painting, naturally not housework lol.  I decided to keep it fairly small, (for a mural), so it is going to be about 60 inches x 40 inches or about 150 cm. x 100 cm..

As usual I think I picked something that is way beyond my abilities, (lots of details); but am going to give it a try.  If I don't like it, I will just paint over it and pretend it didn't exist.

I am not sure how well I am going to do working with acrylic paint either, I am worried that it is going to dry way to fast for me to blend it as I want.  I guess I will find out tomorrow when I start slapping on paint.

Here are some pictures of the drawing, as it is done in pencil and fairly lightly I edited the pictures to make the lines show up, so the photos look pretty weird; but you can make out the drawing lines.



The whole thing.

                                                                                     

















The left side.

Sort of the middle.

The right side.

The whole view from the right.

The whole view from the left.

Wish me luck as I am going to need lots of it.

Still Here And Still Painting

I am still here and also am still painting; although I am not finishing too much, works in progress.

In between working on the 2 in oils at home and 1 oil at class, I have been playing around with the pastels at home also.

Here are some photos of the "in progress" at work.  I haven't taken my camera to class and taken a photo there and probably won't.  The one in class is coming along quite well I think and the ones at home, well maybe not so much, not sure yet.


This is a pastel painting.  I belong to an amateur photo group here in Guaymas and one of the ladies posted a lovely photo of a sunset sky with the cactus looking black in the setting sun.  I am not happy with it at this point; but am unsure of how to fix the sky, so I am just looking at it for the moment, it may end up in the garbage, its fate is uncertain at this point.

This one is just a fast little seascape that I made up in my head.  I need to darken the water a bit by the mountain reflections and perhaps tone down the mountain in the middle distance.  It is sitting here and I am just looking at it also.  It may get thrown in the garbage can yet too, its fate is uncertain also.

This is the oil I am working on at home.  It is one of the 3 paintings I am doing of Blue Doors.  It still needs some of the shading on the door, the door handle, the tree branches that are on one side of it and some of the highlights added, so lots to do on it yet.

So that is what I have been up to.  If anyone has some ideas of how to fix or do something on any of these, please leave me a comment.

Finished Pastels

I have been busy, unfortunately not with the Blue Doors oil paintings.

Both my sons have a birthday coming up and I wanted to do something for them.  It is difficult and costly to try shipping framed artwork as I am worried about glass breakage and also worry that a canvas could get punctured during shipping so I have been limiting my gift sending to pastels, which I then have to spray with fixative, which slightly changes the painting.

Oh well, sometime I will try shipping a canvas and protect it really well and just see what it would cost to ship.

Anyway I decided to do a picture of my dads old 1953 Chevrolet 3/4 ton truck for my oldest son.  When he was little he always used to say that this truck was going to be his when he got his drivers license.  When my parents sold their farm stuff at an auction sale when they decided to retire, this truck was sold, so my son never got to drive it.  I should qualify that by saying, to my knowledge anyway, you never know what grandpa and kids get up to when mom is not looking lol.

The only picture that I have of the old truck is a very old black and white one and very blurry.  Not good; but I tried anyway.

Here is the photo of the truck that I have:

Here is the chalk pastel painting that I did for my oldest son:

I was in a quandary about what to do for my youngest sons birthday which is 3 weeks after the oldest ones birthday.
He has been teaching himself to play guitar, so I finally decided to do a chalk pastel of a guitar for him.

Here it is:

Entitled:  WAITING

My sister, who also has many memories of dads old truck, liked the photo I posted of the one that I had done for my son, so I decided to do another one for her birthday which is coming up in June.
So here is 1953 Chevrolet 3/4 ton pickup once again:

Let me know what you think of these.

NOW I have to get back to working on the Blue Doors oils that are staring at me accusingly.

Have a good weekend.

Chad Framed

I had posted about doing a pastel painting of my friends cat Chad.  I had just done it for practice so I gave it to her as a gift.
Well she ran out of time before she left for Canada and wanted it framed as I had not sprayed it with fixative.  She was worried that the humidity here in the summer might damage it without a frame.
We went to get it framed one day; but misjudged the stores siesta hours and they were closed.
She left it with me and I have been meaning to get it framed and decided I better get it done before it gets hot and humid; although our place with the A/C on might be OK for it.
Anyway to make a long story short he is now framed.
Frame, mat, mounting, anti glare glass total cost 375 pesos or about $29.00 dollars CAD.  Finished size is approx: 17 inches x 21 inches.