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I am done blocking in the light color family. So now I will mix up my dark color family. I will actually only mix up on more color for this. I will use this as a base and modify it with my existing mixes for the different areas of the shadow side of the body. Pus I already have my darkest dark, the black mix form the stripes. If you look at my pallete you can see that I now have five color piles.

I added a pile of Portlasnd grey to use for my dark family colors. this mixed with Ultramarine blue, Alizarin Crimson and a touch of Yellow will be used for the shadow side of the body and as the base for the background.



Next I start to block-in the shadow areas on the right side of Sampson's body. Using the mix I made I aded a little of the red color for the outside of the back leg and blocked in the rest by adding a little white to lighten, or my black mixture to darked.



To finish the block-in I covered the rest of the surface with the cool grey and then wiped it out with a paper towel.

The finshed Block-In:

Here paint in the midtone body color and start a little blending. I also added the white of the face, neck and shoulder. This is still just the block in stage so I have to resist fussing with it to much.

Sampson WIP (work in progress)

I had a few projects a work that kept me over the past few days. As a result Sampson has been sitting on my easel waiting. That work thing sure is inconvenient. I was finally able to get back at it last night.

It is time to start working on the body of the tiger. I start by mixing up all of my "light family" colors. I mixed up a pile of warm orange/red color using Cadnium Orange as the base, adding Alizarin Crimson to deepen the red, Ultramarine Blue and a touch of Cadmium Yellow. Next I mixed the middle tone of the body using Titanium White as a base. I added Cadnium Yellow and a little of the red/orange mixture. For the white of the face and body I used titanium white and a touch of the "black" mix I used for the stripes. My black mix is a cool black that leans towards blue. This will help the white be in harmony with background color which I will mix later.

Here I have painted in what I call the "darkest" of the light family colors. The red/orange mix.

Sampson WIP (work in progress)

This is tonights efforts so far. I blocked in all of the "darkest darks' which in the case of Sampson is the stripes and facial markings. I mix all of my colors basically using a primary pallete ( I think anyway, I'm still learning all of this). I am using Ultramarine Blue, Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Yellow Lemon and Titanium White. To mix the black color note for the stripes I mixed Ultramarine Blue and Alizarin Crimson (60/40) and a touch of Yellow.

Starting to look like a tiger!

Sampson WIP (work in progress)


Normally I premix my major color notes and then begin by covering the entire surface with the different color shapes. For this I am going to apply a ground color and work the painting up from there. I worked the tone on in thin passes to allow the underdrawing to show through. This tone ended up being a mix of Titanium White, Cadnium Yellow Light and a small touch of Ultramarine blue.

Being a graphic designer I use Photoshop a lot. So instead of mixing my best guess as to what color note I should start with, I isolated the color in Photoshop. I opened my image up in Photoshop and using the eyedropper tool, I selected the lightest "yellow" note in Sampson's fur. In a new layer I selected a square with the selection tool and filled it with that color. This made it easy to see the color without the influence of neighboring colors in the fur. This is the first time I have doing this. I was surprised at the result. Had I mixed this color as I normally would, it would have been warmer, leaning more towards red. Although, in the end this would have been fine, I just want to try something new and see how it works.

Seeing the yellow tone in the images above is a good example of how color can be so different on computer monitors. In person my mix is pretty much on with the selected color. You can see how different it is between the digital photo, computer monitor screen capture, actual paint, reference photo and even your computer monitor.


After applying the undertone I went in and "wiped out" the lighter areas of Sampson's head and front leg. Normally this works great as it exposes the white of the canvas and gives you a nice tonal map of the major value changes. Unfortunatly I wasn't thinking. The panel I am working on is one that I made my self. When I primed these I mixed some color into the gesso to help give the panel a neutral tone. So when I wiped out the yellow instead of getting a whiter surface I got the ground exposed, which is almost the same value as the yellow note I applied. Ooops.

Being that the gesso ground and the yellow are about the same value, the exposed underdrawing actually ended up being darker than the surrounding area. Not what I want. So making things up as I go along, I went in and painted a thin passage of Titanium White in those areas to help with value. I dont normally apply white this early on. It can make a big mess blending in further passages of paint. That being the case I will leave this for the night and let the whole thing dry.

Sampson WIP (work in progress)

I decided to post a WIP of this painting of Sampson. Sampson is from a local (about 40 minutes away) big cat santuary. The Western Pennsylvania National Wild Animal Orphanage cares for wounded and rescued big cats. I pulled this image from their website. I hope to contact Dr. Sheperd to see if he would grant me access to the orphanage to paint/sketch the cats. I am fortunate to have a facility like this so close to home. Well, if you consider 40 minute away close. Which I do considering my commute to work is 60 minutes each way.

I would like to find a way to create a mutually beneficial releationship with the orphanage. Being that I am broke most of the time I don't have much money to offer in exchange for excess to the cats. Perhaps I could offer my time/labor or even proceeds from sales of paintings. I would prefer to offer proceeds, but I would feel a bit of a fraud if we agreed to that and I didn't sale many, if any, paintings. This is a topic I will have to pose to the members of Wetcanvas. I am sure I could get some feedback regarding this. Certainly someone out there has dealt with this kind of situation.

Anyway, I am getting off topic.. on with the painting. I am posting this WIP to help with my thought process. THe daily paintings are created on instinct more than anything and I want to have a developed conscious plan for my larger works. By posting and talking myself through the process I hope to learn a bit about my approach and learn what does/doesn't work.

This is 9"x16" and will be painted in oil on hardboard panel. This is my underdrawing which will be my roadmap. I used a grid method to scale up my drawing so that the marking on Sampson are as accurate as possible. I sketched this out using a mechanical pencil and then sprayed it with fixative to keep the drawing from smearing when I begin to apply the paint.

This is a shot showing my reference image with the panel. I print out reference images to have at my easel, but mostly I will use the image displayed on my computer, which is across the room to my right, to work from. I do this in the beginning stages because it helps me to see the larger shapes and keeps me from getting into the details right away.

Crow and Waits, 9"x16" oil on panel



Portraiture is something I fear but have benn wanting to tackle for some time now. This was done as a gift for a freind of mine who is a huge Tom Waits fan. He introduced to Tom Waits and I have been a fan of his(Waits) ever since.
The crow is on of Jay's favorite animals and he collects crow stuff. Blending the too into a paintings was an idea I had for awhile and I finally decided to tackle it.
I am pleased with the final result and it gives me courage to do some more figure/porttraiture woerk in the future. I already some references for my next attempt.

Another Year Past.

It has been almost two years since I made my first blog entry. Having been a member of the Wetcanvas community for a short while, I noticed that alot of artists kept blogs and I found them to be educational, inspiring, and sometimes down right entertaining. At the time when I started my blog it was simply a means of keeping me inspired as I began to sketch and draw again. A way to help keep me motivated to do so(sketch). I had no idea what a catalyst it would be in propelling me forward with my art. By the fall of 2006 my desire to paint again was growing and I enrolled in a workshop at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. It was a "plein air" workshop with Ron Donogue that turned everything around for me. I have not stopped painting since.

2007 was a good year for painting. I continued the plain air work through the summer, entered my first juried art show(and placed third!), plus started doing daily paintings that have helped my skill and color theory tremendously, and I have streamlined my pallete and studio setup. It has been a good year of study.

Looking forward to 2008

This year I have few goals and plans in place.

1)First I hope to continue my daily paintings. They have really helped me to "stretch" my painting muscle and have been a good source of practice, and a great way to warm up before tackling larger projects.

2) Enter some more competitions/shows.

3) Make my art worth something good. Being that wildlife is the avenue I will be pursuing I want to get involved with a charitible organization that helps wildlife and donate work as a means to help raise money.

4) Start working on larger works. The time has come to take everything I have learned thus far and put it all together. I need to produce some paintings that not only depict animals, but thier enviroments as well.

5) Set aside more time to dedicate to painting.

6) Let it flow. I need to just let it go sometimes and begin to explore the more abstract ideas I have.

7)Make money. I need to make some money through sales of my art. For me, that would be an indicator of success as an artist.

Another question I am tackling is the option of moving my studio to the basement. We are quickly running out of space in the house and as Chaise's toys multiple he is in need of a dedicated playroom. One option we are considering is to fix up the basement. The other is to move my studio to the basement and use that room as a playroom. I would have more space in the basement which would be good. However it would also be out of the way. Now I have to walk past my easel every time I use the bathroom. This has kept me thinking and mindful of my progress. I worry that out of sight, could be out of mind. That is not likely, but a fear I have. Light isn't an issue. In fact I may have more natural light in the basement than I do now. Plus I would be able to open the back door which would let in some north light and provide fresh air. So something I must consider early this year.

The Cougar, Raven, Bull, Buffalo and Hawk are my totem animals for the year. These have been coming to me in thoughts and visions of paintings as of late. There is power in these animals and they will be the focus of my work this year.