Jeb - young cowboy and his horse

S O L D

Jeb - young cowboy and his horse  16x20   Oils on canvas panel

Here is Jeb taking a breather after a long mornings work doing cowboy stuff.  I haven't a clue what cowboys do except mend fences, herd livestock and ride horses.  No offense, I just don't know what modern cowboys do when they do what it is that they do.

They probably don't know (or care) what it was that I did when I say that I was a programmer.

But these cowboys that I've been painting (and some more coming soon) are friendly to or at least tolerate "dudes" like me who have ridden a horse once in my life. The horse had the most fun in that situation almost 50 years ago! :-)

Billy - cowboy in the snow

work in progress

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Billy - cowboy in the snow  16x20  Oils on panel

Another cowboy with an alias. This is Billy who sometimes hangs out with Bob or vice versa.

This work in progress is pretty much done. A few things need to be worked on - his mouth for one!  I also think that I need to make the white coat fasteners a little less white.  And figure out how to paint a knot in his kerchief (ascot?) :-)

I'm going to let the painting dry then try to make snow happen on the painting.  The method I'll try is to make up a "puddle" of thinned gray and white paint then use a stiff bristled brush to splatter "snow".  I want the painting to be dry because if I mess up the snow I (hopefully) can wipe the painting clean then try again.

Anybody have a better idea for making it snow? I'd like the snow to be falling at an angle from left to right so I suppose that I'll tilt the painting then splatter from above.

NOTE!  How to "paint" snow

I found an excellent piece of advice (for me) in the "YOU ASKED" section of the Art Instruction Blog. Artist Mike Callahan had a good answer for the question of "How to Paint Falling Snow" - I tried it and I'm pleased with his method.

Bob - cowboy posing

work in progress

Bob - cowboy posing  10x16  Oils on panel

Bob isn't this guy's real name, of course. He looks like a "BOB" to me.

His jacket has been around a long time, worn out a long time ago. He would be in BIG trouble if his mother saw him wearing this jacket.

This is a work in progress - I need to do some "fixing" before I'll say this one is done.

A Mouse - the computer kind

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A Mouse - the computer kind  8.5 x 11  Oils on panel

I haven't done a mouse (of any kind) before and I saw a photo of this mouse while surfing the internet.

SO, I made this little painting in a short time. It might show that I didn't take a lot of time, but it was fun and it wasn't a person, an airplane or a landscape. And it certainly isn't a critter! :-)

WW I _ Rhinebeck-Aerodrome-Albatros-DVa

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WW I Albatros-DVa  10x16 Oils on canvas panel

I saw a photo on the internet showing the . A video and photos can be seen here and here.  In 1917 WWI airplanes were made of wood but usually had frames covered with fabric. The Albatross was made of wood but it was formed plywood which needed no internal frames making this airplane lighter thus more maneuverable.

This airplane is very "artsy" and "pretty" in it's design as you can see in the (blurry) top view below. 

RC-130A serial number 57-0512

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RC-130A serial number 57-0512  12 x 16  oils on canvas panel

I spent quite a bit of time flying in this airplane and others like it when I was in the US Air Force in the 1960s. 

My job in the Air Force was keeping the electronic navigation equipment working. Our mission was to fly straight and photograph the ground so that another branch of the US service could make accurate maps. Now satellites provide that information in real time e.g. NOW!

While I was in the AF I traveled to several countries in South America, Africa, the Marshall Islands, Vietnam and Japan. We also went to some other countries in South East Asia.

This airplane was still flying as a "civilian" aircraft in 2009 in Arizona. It's been upgraded over time but it's kind of impressive that a 50+ year-old aircraft is still going!

My display at the Rogers (Arkansas) Public Library - addendum

Here are three more (and the last, I promise) photos of my display of paintings at the Rogers (Arkansas) Public Library

The open doors with my display in the background.

A larger view of my display. The lady and child to the left of the display are reflections of them coming in to the library. Might make a nice painting????  :-)

I installed a folding room divider leaning against the brick wall.

Now all I have to do is go back once in a while to make sure that no picture has jumped off of the wall.  I discovered that two had fallen over night. Must have been gremlins! :-)

My display at the Rogers (Arkansas) Public Library

The Main Entrance of the Rogers (Arkansas) Public Library. The display case is just inside the double doors in the center of the photo

Ken B. - the muscle of the family while installing my paintings.

Melissa - the brains of the family.  I think that I had just whacked  my thumb with the hammer and she is struggling to not laugh out loud.  She's a really thoughtful person!

Left side of the display window

Center of the display window

The right side of the display window. Lots of empty space to the left out of the photo.

The library has a locked and lighted display case in the foyer of it's main entrance that people can install a display for no charge.

This is how the display looks after our first day of "setting up" at the Rogers Public Library.  We didn't realize how many paintings could be displayed and although I took many, there is room for more!  Tomorrow I'll take in a folding screen to hold several more paintings and get them off of the floor.  I'll take a count tomorrow to see how many paintings are on display.

Melissa did most of the arranging while I hammered little nails (brads?) into the blue - gray panels.  I have an air powered nailer in my studio and rarely use a hammer except to bang on things. (Bigger the hammer - better the fit).  Anyhow, my left thumb is might tender right now from being whacked by a deficient hammer operator (me).

Young lady with sunglasses

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Young lady with sunglasses  12 x 16  Oils on canvas panel

I know, I know, I know! I said in the last post that I wasn't going to make more paintings with people's faces! yah yah yah.

 :-)

Well I had made this painting BEFORE I had made the painting of the DC-3 airplane painting.

I don't know if this is anybody in real life. If it is, I hope that they like it.  If they don't and they let me know then I'll remove this post.

I've been doing people wearing sunglasses for a while and I think that it's fun.  AND I don't have to paint their eyes! hooray! :-) Not really, though.

DC-3 taking off at dusk

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DC-3 taking off at dusk  14 x 24  Oils on panel

I had a piece of gessoed panel lying around that is 14 x 24 inches. Not many subjects work on a long rectangular format. When I saw a photo of a WWII C-47 I decided to make it a civilian DC-3.  

I've been working on too  many people paintings so I've decided to make some paintings without people being the most obvious part of the painting.  

I'm putting together a sole exhibit at the local library and when I laid out the paintings, almost all were paintings of people!  More on the exhibit later. I do the setup tomorrow (Monday January 17th 2011)

Simon's Face

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Simon's Face   12x16  Oils on canvas panel

Simon, our Boxer looking (trying to) look pitiful. He's a clown who looks at us without moving his head if at all possible. His eyes follow us, though and his face with those eyes is very expressive.

He believes that he's a lap dog but weighing close to 70 pounds, he doesn't get much lap time from us.  Although he does cuddle when Melissa or I sit on the sofa. Being a Boxer he uses his "hands" to poke at us for attention which works most of the time! :-)

Simon Sitting

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Simon Sitting  12x16  oils on canvas panel

This is Simon, our male Boxer looking at birds on our bird feeder. I tried to get a photo of him in a noble Boxer standing show-dog pose but he had other ideas - as usual. :-)

He's definitely a people oriented dog who thinks that he's a lap dog. He's 100% boxer and uses his "hands" to get more attention than he already gets.

His best friend is our Miniature Schnauzer, Bella. I'll be making a painting of her next.  Simon weighs close to 70 pounds while Bella weighs approximately 20 pounds. Nobody can convince Bella that she isn't the "boss dog".

Bella and Simon spend a large part of their day (and sometimes nights) in our backyard chasing our resident Chipmunk who is in NO danger from these two! :-)

This photo is quite fuzzy and I'll work at trying to make a better photo of this painting. SIGH!

Deck The Halls Christmas Carol by Pomplamoose

Lately I have enjoyed watching the Hyundai car commercials (really!) and recently learned that the singing was done by two people in a "group" called Pomplamoose.  Say that really fast several times!  Anyhow, Nataly & Jack do all of the singing and play all of the instrumentals!  I guess they use some electronical musical gadgets - DUHHHHHHH do ya think?

Here's a link to their Hyundai car commercial and a link to their song.  (Use your browser "back" button to come back here!)  At the end of their song they talk about giving away some MP3 tracks of their songs if you buy a book(s) for the Richmond, California schools from Amazon.com.

Here's a link to their rendition of "Up on The Housetop".

Nataly and Jack

THE CROSS GUY - A WORK IN PROGRESS

Work In Progress

THE CROSS GUY  8 x 12  Oils on panel

A WORK IN PROGRESS

12/27/2010: With help from a friend, I renamed this painting from "A Mean Dude" to "The Cross Guy".

I woke up early (4 or 5 AM) and I got this far by 9 AM more or less. It's rather small so it didn't take long. DUH!  :-)

I saw this photo on Jilly Bennett's blog Menton Daily Photo a while back and the fellow was . . . . abrupt(?) and Jilly took his picture so that he would move on.

I'll work on this tomorrow - probably. Or I might work on the painting with the boys running. Maybe not.  :-)

UPDATED December 21, 2010.  I still need to do something more - or maybe something less.  Anyhow the photo of the painting is "shiny" and I'll work on that as well!  :-)

Boys Running In The Countryside - WORK IN PROGRESS

WORK IN PROGRESS

Boys Running In The Countryside   16 x 20  Oils on canvas panel

WORK IN PROGRESS

This is a combination of four (4) reference photos:

The background ground, trees and sky are a photo of the neighborhood where we live.  The boys are two photos from Jilly Bennett's blog Menton Daily Photo.  The dog is patterned after a photo from the internet.

Lady With Sunglasses

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Lady With Sunglasses  8 x 10   Oils on canvas panel

UPDATED - December 20, 2010.  I glazed some blue and violet on the sunglasses.

This started off as a "landscape" (orientation and subject) experiment and when that went bad, I made it a portrait (orientation and subject) painting of a lady with fancy sunglasses.  You can imagine the landscape if you look at the painting in landscape orientation. There's a blue sky on the right with snow flakes, a brown shoreline in the middle and blue water on the left side - or that's what I was trying to do.  When I put paint thinner on the "landscape" the paint sort of shmeared, dribbled and ran from top to bottom.  I thought that it looked sort of nice then I left it and went inside our house for the night.

The next day I decided to make a portrait and ta-da! There was the canvas panel already "prepped" for an off-beat portrait of a lady wearing "fancy" sunglasses.

I'm going to leave it alone for now. Maybe it's finished, maybe NOT! :-)

The Rogers Art Guild Holiday Party

December 13, 2010.

Each year our art guild has a Christmas Party then we visit a local Assisted Living home. The members exchange gifts and we have gifts for the residents at the assisted living home. 

This year we ate at a restaurant instead of having a pot-luck lunch at our regular meeting-place.  Our wrapped gifts for each other in the Guild were placed on a table then each member could choose a gift from the table OR "steal" a gift that another member had chosen. It's a lot of fun with some "serious" (wink wink) threats of retribution if the gift is "stolen"!

After our luncheon party we went to the nearby assisted living home where one of members and two of his friends played and sang some Christmas music.  The band played almost an hour and we were all sorry when it was time to leave and go home.  One of the band (Dave) is an artist and a member of our guild - he makes really good paintings as well as singing & playing guitar very well!

Please excuse my translated wishes for a Merry Christmas. I used a free online translation program and I meant well! :-}  I hope that you all have a:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! 

Feliz Navidad  y  Feliz Año Nuevo  para  todos! 

圣诞快乐，新年快乐给大家！ 

Prettige Kerstdagen en Gelukkig Nieuwjaar voor iedereen! 

Joyeux Noël et Bonne année à tous!

Fröhliches Weihnachten und Gutes Neues Jahr zu allen!

Buon Natale e Felice Anno Nuovo a tutti! 

С Рождеством Христовым и С новым годом все!

Some photos of our holiday day are posted below. 

Most of our members and guests before the party started

The band (Joe, Dave and Roger) playing at the assisted living home.

A view of some of the residents and staff

Another view of some of the residents and staff

Cat - (Fantasy painting)

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Cat - (Fantasy painting)  8.5 x 11  Oils on panel

This is the second in what is apparently going to be a series. The first "fantasy" cat painting was posted on Wednesday, October 20, 2010.  You can see it here.  I used the same drawing as the first painting.  I changed the color scheme - a lttle! (In case you're wondering)

As usual, my camera and I couldn't agree on focus and blah blah blah whine whine whine. So this is the photo I chose to post. Not the best but definitely NOT the worst, either!  :-)

Merry Christmas - Happy Holidays to all!

I have to share a sad, sad story with you.  Yesterday I baked  about two dozen bread rolls and put them on our kitchen counter to cool before storing them in a bag. A VERY BIG MISTAKE on my part as it turned out!  :-)

Our Boxer, Simon, sneaked into the kitchen and ate most of them off of the counter!  When I confronted him about it he totally denied eating the rolls. He blamed the missing rolls on the boogey critter (a chipmunk) that lives under our back yard deck!  I know it wasn't the chipmunk because Bella, our Miniature Schnauzer, pointed her paw at Simon and told me that Simon was the culprit. 

As it turns out, those rolls weren't all that good anyhow.  I made another batch today and these are much better tasting and they are SAFELY put away so that neither Simon nor the chipmunk can get them.  Simon finally apologized this afternoon - too late though!

You can see the guilt in his eyes!

Cowboy

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Cowboy  14x24  Oils on canvas panel

I liked the thought of doing a cowboy and I have done painting of a cowboys on horses but I wanted to do a "portrait" of a cowboy.

SO, I came up with this cropped "portrait" of a rootin' tootin' cowboy. No attempt at a time period. It could be now or in two centuries ago.  Who knows?  Who cares?  :-)