"Beach Date #5" (Warm... ...Feathery?)

 

"Beach Date #5" (pastel, 10x10 inches) $475

(Not quite a Warm Fuzzy... but almost!)

I realized I had not officially posted February's Valentine Beach Date Paint-Along result - here it is!

I'm rather happy with it. I've only painted these birds about 5 times (and obviously never thought of a better title, lol.) See the earlier versions on this post!

This one will also be part of my Solo Exhibition, Kindred Spirits, at the ARTS for Rural Texas in Fayetteville, March 27 - May 29, 2021. Opening Reception March 27, 5-7pm. To view the show online, check this page frequently as more images are being loaded all this week!

A percentage of the proceeds from the sale of the paintings will support the free programs provided by Arts for Rural Texas, a 501(C)(3) not for profit organization.

 

A Valentine "Beach Date" Paint-Along! Feb 13

 

A Valentine "Beach Date" Paint-Along with Rita Kirkman

$20

Join us Saturday February 13 at 1pm CST for a “romantic day at the beach!” 

A popular subject from years back, I painted these lovey gulls several times, even once in oils. I thought they'd make a fun Valentine this year as we all like to get outside and enjoy nature!

Register EARLY to have time to prep your drawing! I will send you the Zoom invitation, the reference photo, some surface prep info, some tips that include alternative underpainting methods in case you don't have what I use, and even a line drawing that you can use to transfer to your board or paper in case you don't have time to freehand your drawing.

More info and Register here!

 

Here are screen shots from last month's Happy Moo Year Cow Paint-Along, well-attended and enjoyed! 

 

Skimming the Surface

"Skimming the Surface"  (oil, 6x6 inches)  click here to bid

My last remaining gull oil from 2012. Thought I'd go ahead and give it another shot on auction after all this time, since I managed to part with two other gulls recently that way! ;) We'll see...

This one's also unframed.

Wave Tripping

"Wave Tripping"  (oil, 6x6 inches)  click here to bid

Yay! Two major commissions are done :) but I can't show them off until Christmas :( So I'm on to the other two slightly easier commissions, and meanwhile, here's one more of the gulls I have left from the 2012 series.

Knee Deep

"Knee Deep"  (oil, 6x6 inches)  click here to bid

Since the recent gull painting got a good share of attention, I thought I'd take the opportunity to re-post this one from my original mini-series of gulls in 2012. This one and a couple others are all that's left, and they get tricky to sell at art fairs because they're so different from the rest of my current work (and they're not pastel...)

This one fell out of it's floater frame and I haven't had the time to stick it back, so I've letting it have another shot in the auctions, unframed. :)

Itchy Gull

"Itchy Gull"  (oil, 6x6 inches)  click here to bid

My oil demo from the "Why Paint Small" workshop earlier this month in Valentine, Nebraska. I first did a 'grisaille' underpainting with burnt umber. Starting with a wash of a medium tone, then lifting out the lights and laying in the darks. This dried overnight and I painted the colors the next day. There might have been a video of this one, but I haven't got my hands on it yet. Meanwhile check out this gull post from 2012, showing my process for oil painting.

Itchy Gull is a bit looser but I blame that on it being only my second oil painting in almost 2 years, plus I was trying to talk at the same time, lol!

Beach Date #4 (and the KS Workshop)

"Beach Date #4" (pastel, 6x6 inches, on Art Spectrum Suede)  sold

I snuck this one in between demos last weekend at my pastel workshop in Ulysses, KS. The Main ARTery (I just love that name!) owner, Jeani, bought it on Sunday, so I didn't have time to think up a more unique title.

I've painted this scene 4 times now (hence the #4 title) and maybe this image will never be in official 'retirement'.... It keeps sneaking back into my radar.

Here are the other three...

"Beach Date" (pastel, 6x6 inches, 2011, on Wallis Belgian Mist)

"Beach Date" (oil, 6x6 inches, 2011)

"Beach Date" (#3) (pastel, 8x8 inches, 2011, on Wallis Belgian Mist)

Tomorrow, I'll try to have time to post some photos and notes from the workshop on my Art Journal Blog.

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Dancing on the Edge of Danger

"Dancing on the Edge of Danger"  (oil, 6x6 inches)   click here to bid

OK, I have to admit this one is my favorite. I painted it right along with "Dangerous Gull" a few days ago. I just felt that, at the time, the technique, the lighting, the values, the movement and the meaning of the piece just came together along with having no struggles of any kind with the actual painting process, that I decided to put a higher starting bid on this one, because I know that either it will easily sell for twice as much at an art fair, or, darn it, I'll keep it!!

(BTW: this is the last of this little series of gulls for a while. I'll be sketching portraits at the San Antonio Rodeo for the next 3 weeks...)

I managed to get some progression shots of the painting process, here:

First I started with a drawing on  Ampersand Gessoboard. (You can see "Dangerous Gull" on the left)

Then a wash of burnt umber with a bit of cadmium yellow, gently smoothed with a paper towel.

Here's the start of the 'lifting' off in the highlight areas. This is done with a brush dipped in mineral spirits and lightly swiped on a paper towel.

Here's with all the highlight areas lifted off.

Here the darks have been put in with burnt umber, pure from the tube.

Just a shot to show how I work from my iPad on 2 paintings at a time. For these two, I kept "Danger: Gull!" handy for color reference.

Here are the colors on the bird itself...

...And finished with the sky and sign...

Wave Tripping

"Wave Tripping"  (oil, 6x6 inches)  click here to bid

This one was fun to paint. When I enhanced the colors of the photo in Photoshop, it was surprising how much red came out in the waves. But when I painted them, it somehow worked. Water, after all, is clear, and will reflect any light that surrounds it.

Below is the original photo, the first crop, image reversed, and the final composition with color enhancement.

 

A Smooth Landing

"A Smooth Landing"  (oil, 6x6 inches)   click here to bid

This is one of my better cropping results, I believe. I passed over this photo at first, just another gull hopping around on the beach. I was distracted by the beautiful wings and instinctively knew I couldn't fit them well in a 6x6.
But on a second pass through my gull photos, I must have been in the right creative mind, for instead of seeing the wings, I saw the shadow and the concept of 'arrival' or 'landing', which necessitated leaving enough space to the right for the bird to move 'into'. I'm very happy with the result!

Below is the original photo:

Skimming the Surface

"Skimming the Surface"  (oil, 6x6 inches)   click here to bid

Here's another on his way to take-off!

Knee Deep

"Knee Deep"  (oil, 6x6 inches)   click here to bid

One of the two I finished today. I shot the photo reference right before he flew away, but I like how it looks here as if he's wading and trying not to get his wings wet.

Dangerous Gull

"Dangerous Gull"  (oil, 6x6 inches)   click here to bid

Here's yesterday's gull right before taking off. I found his pose to be curiously analogous to the message of the sign.

Danger: Gull!

"Danger: Gull!"  (oil, 6x6 inches)   click here to bid

All right! I've made a breakthrough in this oil painting process. Liking the warmth of the reflected beach sand on the underside of this gull, I decided to start with an umber/yellow base on today's posted painting. Then I took that one step farther and lifted off the lights, and painted in the darks, until I had a complete value painting with the umber (I remembered this from Carol Marine's workshop!) That was late last night and I left it to complete the today, when of course the umber was dry.
I discovered that I really like how colors go on over this warm underpainting, without having to deal with the a wet blending of it into the new colors.

(PLUS: I finally signed up for Pandora with my iPad, hooked up some speakers, and had all my favorite music as I painted today. I don't know, but I certainly felt like that had something to do with my performance. Somehow, grooving to Maroon 5 with a paintbrush honed my concentration... wish I'd done that months ago!)

Below is the umber underpainting. The finished painting above has NO white highlights painted in. The highlights are the lifted areas from the umber, left unpainted. I love this look so much I painted 4 more monochrome umber underpaintings today, in hopes of finishing them all tomorrow with the same palette.

A Walk on the Beach

"A Walk on the Beach"  (oil, 6x6 inches)   click here to bid

This oil painting thing is starting to come back to me after the long Holiday season doing portrait drawings. I decided to take progressive photos this time, to remind myself of how I get to where I'm going in this process...

For this painting I started with a basic pencil drawing on gessoboard, then washed it with a thin blue layer, wiped gently with a paper towel:

The darkest areas first. This was a mixed blackish using a blue, a red and a dab of yellow.

Here's showing how I use my iPad for the reference photo. It hangs on one side of my board.

I stared the colors with some middle blue (..I know, I speak color-speak like a pastelist... I believe this was thalo blue with white)

Then added the other middle and dark-middle tones (ok, don't ask me how I mixed these colors. I go on instinct, not memory - and I still have color-mixing instances that are such nightmares I don't want to remember them! At least I've learned to mix small amounts so as not to waste too much paint.)

Here I've adjusted the color and value of the water and waves:

Then the final highlight colors and white. ...And a bit more attention to the water to pull up the brightness, and make that rear wave recede a little more. And it's finished! Thanks for watching!

(Ignore the slight color shifts in the progression photos, they were taken indoors. The final image shot is most accurate ...aside from the usual my-camera-to-your-monitor variances...)

Goin' Wading

"Goin' Wading"  (oil, 6x6 inches)  click here to bid

I stumbled across some gull photos that I hadn't yet 'reviewed'... Apparently from the last vacation, all my shots got sorted into their file categories, and I hadn't had a good look at these ones from the Carolina beaches. Turns out I now have several excellent new compositions for gulls, as that trip was right after painting "Gull Yoga" and "Running Scared" and I was very conscious of wanting lots of new gull pics.

"Running Scared"

"Running Scared" (oil, 6x6in)    sold

Gulls are fun to chase.  No one gets hurt and everyone gets lots of exercise!  (Just be sure to apologize afterwards by feeding them.)

I love the abstract composition and fluid lines from this shot.

"Beach Date"

"Beach Date" (pastel 8x8in)   sold

I don't normally reuse titles, but this similar image has had so many admirers and was so much fun to paint, that I've done it now 3 times. It has been a bit different each time, first in pastel, 5x5, then in a 5x5 oil for the disappointed client who missed the first one. This one I made a bit larger, shuffled the gulls positions, warmed up the colors and added a wave.

I was originally going to send this one to the silent auction at the IAPS Convention, but eventually made a different painting for that. This "Beach Date" will be at my booth in Kerrville for the Texas State Arts & Crafts Fair, May 28-30. (Unless someone buys it first!)

"Gull Yoga"

"Gull Yoga" (oil, 6x6in)    sold

Lately I keep gravitating back to the vacation photos -- the beach, the sun, (the inevitable gulls!) -- Perhaps I'm ready for the summer sun .. or maybe just my next beach vacation?

Well, I can't think of the beach without thinking of the gulls. This one was amusing in her stretch. (Isn't this a yoga pose?)

"Sunbathers" 6x6 oil

"Sunbathers" 6x6 oil   sold
This was an exercise for me to see if I could paint these brown gulls with no burnt umber. I used 2 reds, 2 blues, yellow and white. I'm liking this oil paint!