The Glow of Brass (16 x 18 watercolor on paper) Reserved

For this painting I used the very same reference photos that I used for Three Horns.   In repainting this image, I’ve made several changes besides the obvious change from canvas to paper.  This time I’ve kept the background quite light and emphasized the shadows and the reflected light from the horns into the the shadows.   I’ve also bumped up the contrast by leaving more white and taking the darks much darker.

Prints available through Fine Art America.

Triumphant Daisies (watercolor 10 x 10) $200

This is the second painting from my mirror and instrument shoot, this time from a more conventional angle.  The color choice is rather more conventional too, a complementary scheme of yellow and purple with a little bit of the neighboring complements, blue and orange.

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Three Choppers (9 x 12 watercolor) $150

A couple of Sundays ago I spotted a group of perhaps a dozen RUBs (Rich Urban Bikers) haveing coffee at Starbucks.    The parked bikes obscured  some but not all of the leather clad men.   The image is grand, but I expect it will be difficult to paint the men, the men seen through the chopper windshields, and choppers all at once and still get it right.   So started with just three of the bikes and Starbuck’s window.

I hardly ever paint real black black black.  I find it makes a dead spot in my paintings so I always use dark blue, purple, maroon, or green instead.  This time I opted for dark purple and dark blue.  Having painted purple bikes, I decided to use the wall to make it a complementary color scheme.

I like it.  My preteen girls hate it.  They hate the subject, the colors, and everything else.  I think they are thinking of the Hell’s Angels and drug gangs, but I’m not sure.

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Jade and Tulips II (watercolor 11 x 14) $250

This is much the same composition and color scheme as  Jade and Tulips I.  I lowered the tulips which causes them to stand out more than in the original version, but makes the upper line of the composition less interesting.  Including more of the jewelry box increased it’s three dimensionality as did opening thing lower drawer.

The palette and work methods are the same as Jade and Tulips I.

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Jade and Tulips (watercolor 11 x 14) $250

Years ago I celebrated a new job by purchasing a jewelry box I had coveted for several years.  I love oriental furniture with it’s brass hinges and inset  jade and soapstone.  I find a whole room full of  such furniture much too heavy.  But the jewelry box was everything I loved about the furniture in miniature.  And despite it’s exoticness, it looks perfectly at home on my plain pine dressers.  And it has the added advantage of actually looking better half open with the jewelry hanging out than it does closed.

It took me some time to compose a picture with my jewelry box at the center.  The problem is that the box’s shape  is really just that,  a vertical rectangular box.  Compositions with the complete box were brought to a complete and boring full stop by the edge of the box.   In the end, I subordinated the box to the tulips and  cropped it along one edge.  The dark open door of the box makes a beautiful foil for the bright tulips.

Once composed, painting the picture was relatively straight forward.  I masked the highlights and then began with the tulips painting them in a various combinations of hansa yellow, hansa gold, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow, and cadmium red.  The leaves are combinations of the same yellows with cobalt and phthalo blue.   I used the same colors for the jade necklace and insets as I did for the foliage.

I went on to painting vase and metal hinges using primarily yellow ochre, raw sienna and burnt sienna dulled with cobalt blue and cerulean blue.  I added the box in combinations of burnt sienna, quinacridone magenta, and dioxazine purple.

The dresser top is layered washes of burnt sienna, raw sienna, and burnt umber.  The wall yellow ochre and dulled with dioxazine purple. Layed the wall on very heavily to allow the tulips to pop.

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