And now for the watercolors!

During the winter season in Yuma, I teach two watercolor classes and occasionally get some good demo paintings as a result of those classes.  Since prepping for classes is usually the only time I have to paint watercolors during the winter, I want to share these two.  First is Painted Desert, a lovely part of Petrified Forest National Park in Northern Arizona along I-40.  

The second painting is from an very old photo from the distant past.  I lived in Colorado for a very long time and Rocky Mountain National Park was one of my favorite hang outs for scenery, particularly on mountain hikes.  This one is titled Rocky Mountain Stream.

Enjoy!

Last two projects from Sandra Duran Wilson "All That Glows" workshop!

Sunrise Jazz

And Pure Hawaiian

Both acrylic mixed media paintings!

New watercolors

Busy, busy, busy!  Not enough time to work on this blog and put up new artwork I've been doing.   First the watercolors:  Over the summer, I've refined my pouring technique and brushed up on the things I've learned from Lian Zhen, who is a wonderful artist and teacher. 

Palm Canyon, a beautiful area in west central Arizona near Quartzite is the subject of the first painting.  The second paint is Rogue River in Western Oregon done in a workshop with September with Lian in Missoula, Montana.  Both are poured paintings with a lot of negative space work following the pour. 

Red Rock Ruins

A bit more experimentation with an acrylic media called Liquid Pencil.  Red Rock Ruins features cliff dwellings in the red rock formations of Canyon de Chelly in southeast Utah.

On my Morning Stroll

Back to painting my favorite subject:  cactus blooms.  Mid April is amazing in Arizona.  The weather gets warm (sometimes too much so) and all the cacti begin to show off in full splendor.  The best time of the year in Arizona as far as I'm concerned.  Our RV park has all kinds of cactus gardens in it and is a beauty to behold and is the perfect setting for an early morning walk thru the park.  This one, entitled On my Morning Stroll, is a three colored poured watercolor with a bit of black ink thrown in for emphasis.  Enjoy!

Textured acrylic

The last of the acrylic Paint My Photo challenges for 2nd quarter is a textured painting.  I found a fascinating photo posted by Robyn Lovelock, a good friend in Australia, taken by her husband of an interesting canyon area in Oz that has lots of red rocks and an interesting tree called Ghost Gums.  I made this the subject of my textured painting.  I started with a layer of iridescent gold gesso, painted the background with various deep color and dropped rubbing alcohol, which disperses acrylic paint, into the paint before it was dry.  Next was putting molding paste on the foreground knoll and allowing that to dry for 24-48 hours.  From there it was working on the painting itself with various deep reds, purples and oranges for the rocks and finally a pale green and pale gold for the trees.  Here is "Canyon Ghosts."

A Bryce Canyon success

Ever since I visited Bryce Canyon about 6 years ago,  I've been trying unsuccessfully to paint the place.  
This winter, I invited Lian Zhen to come down to Yuma and do a workshop (referred to earlier on the blog) and specifically asked him to do part of the workshop on desert landscapes.  The painting that I did in that workshop is shown earlier on here and it sold almost immediately at an art show in Yuma two weeks after I painted it.  I decided I'd try another desert landscape and hauled out all my Bryce Canyon photos to find a good reference.  The result is Bryce Hoodoo, shown here:

This is another 3 color painting.  Only Prussian Blue, Azo Yellow and Anthraquinoid Scarlet were used to get all of the delicious colors here.