The wonder of the interwebs has brought me a customer that I most likely will never have the pleasure of meeting in person. Let’s call the customer Mr. J. Mr. J and I have gotten acquainted in the comment section of The Frugal Girl blog, and he asked me to paint the home he used […]
New Oil Commission, Chapter 5
Before I finished layering the background things, I blew off any discipline about painting, ignored conventional wisdom about The Way You Are Supposed to Paint, and I launched into detailing. When I draw, I work from top to bottom, left to right. This way I don’t rest my hand on finished parts, thus not smearing […]
New Oil Commission, Chapter 4
About the mural The threat of rain prevented me from beginning on Friday. More relevant:the powers that be did not offer me a key to their building, which means I can only paint on Fridays. This coming Friday I will be setting up for the Holiday Bazaar, and the following Friday is part of Thanksgiving […]
A New Mural
Three years ago, the county allowed elected supervisors to have a bit of free rein on things like murals in their districts. My supervisor asked me to paint a mural on the Ivanhoe library, the beloved library of my youth. You can read about it here, here, here, and here. If you don’t want to […]
New Oil Commission, Chapter 3
On Monday, you saw this version of the custom oil painting of a Mineral King scene. Next, I put more paint on the sky and worked more carefully on West Florence. (The humanoid is still a mess.) Time to rescue the humanoid from embarrassing me. Wait, time to rescue me from the embarrassment of the […]
New Oil Commission, Chapter 2
Here is my usual collection of thoughts about custom art: This is too hard, I’m a washed-up has-been, why does anyone think I am qualified? And: These people are counting on me and I’d better get started because it is going to be hard and take a very long time. Finally: Just paint, you Goober! […]
New Oil Painting Commission
“Commission” means someone is paying me to paint custom art for him. Them. Her. Shhhh, I think it will be a Christmas present. Let’s call the customer Mister. You can decide if it is a man, a woman, or several humans. Mister decided on 20×20”, a square format. The canvas arrived, and I put a […]
Want to learn to draw?
Check out work by two of my drawing students. The first one is finished, and the second one is in progress. I teach people how to put on paper exactly what they see. It is the beginning of all art, in my opinion. (If a person can only see it in his mind, I cannot […]
Tackling an Unfinished Project
Trail Guy nailed some boards together for me several years ago, and I painted redwood trees on them. We got on a roll, and he pounded a few more of these panels together, but sales slowed and I moved on. We were cleaning out an area in the workshop and 2 of these appeared. I […]
Drawing with Pencils
I guess you could draw with chalk or a paintbrush or your finger on a fogged up window, but drawing with pencils is what I do. Student work It’s also what I teach. A returning drawing student had one month free for lessons before embarking on a new chapter of life. We dove right in, […]