1 out of 1 people surveyed agreed it's more fun than watching grass grow!

Ed paints with Gouache-paint on regular canvas or various types of board, & only likes to paint wet on dry, uses a mirror at all times and has as many reference photos as possible but does not sketch, grid or use a projector. Ed does not paint outside where light conditions are constantly changing and the water can get too cold.

Steelhead

March 22, 2008

March 27, 2008

March 31, 2008

April 3, 2008 This is meant to be a sister-print of the Return of the Sockeye skinny-sized print which is currently an only-child. I've felt bad about not having a Steelhead image on the booth (except for the Salmonids poster) for about 20 years now. This should solve that. Hopefully, a version will be on sale at least by May.

April 6, 2007. One of the traps of painting is unintentionally making the subject the same color as the background--not because you want to but because you have paint on the brush, and casually go back and forth between painting the subject and background, so they start to be the same. I want to lighten and blue up the background a bit, while leaving the fish untouched.

April 14, 2008 It's not that dark on the right, my bad photo. Hope to have an 8 x 10 and a horizontal skinny of this in a week or so.

Spring Flowers at the Market

Jan 23, 2008

Jan 30, 2008. Both this and the next are off to a really bad start. I work in gouache, but the red I use is acrylic (trade name is Opera) and it just stays where you put it and is extremely annoying to work with.

May 5, 2008

May 9, 2008. A customer who is also an artist mentioned I should get back to work on this and that just might have been good advice. But will I be able to paint daffodils?

 

Resurrected Varied Thrush painting

March 25, 2008. I found this painting that I started in 2004 and gave up on completely in 2006 when I was moving paintings out of the basement in anticipation of flooding that didn't come last Sat. I think I just needed time away from it. I worked on it only about 2 or 3 hours and this is what it looks like now. I think I'll get it shot and bring out an 8 x 10 print of it and maybe try to use it as an anchor painting for a NW forest bird skinny.

Seattle from the Bay

Jan 30. 2008. Notice how impatient I got right away on both these two, and how bad they both look already. Still, I'm thinking it's just a phase, and I'm pretty excited about both of them.

Feb. 2, 2008. Trying to get the WAMU building looking right--I've got a ways to go here--always becomes one of the key tasks when painting the city. Of course, the space needle could be the #1 dealbreaker.

Feb 11, 2007. Despite the wide angle of this shot, I've had to squeeze Seattle laterally by about 20% and it's possible people who are really familiar with the city won't like that. However, my past paintings from the bay were squeezed a lot more.

March 1, 2008

March 13, 2008

Northern Pintails in Flight

Feb. 22, 2008. I'm hoping to have a an all new Duck Skinny before the end of 2008, so I need to paint this and at least 5 more duck paintings for that.

Feb. 24, 2008

Feb. 27, 2008. Clearly I've got problems, will they be fatal?

Warblers of the West

 

Oct. 28 This poster will show Warblers of the West, but only for the US. If I added Canada like in some of my other posters, I'd have to paint 10 more species. Plus, it would start to conflict with the next poster, which will be Warblers of the East. I painted too fast on that male Yellow-rumped.

Nov. 2, 2007

Nov. 16, 2007

Dec. 2, 2007

Dec. 10, 2007. Unfortunately, I might have to turn the Virginia's Warbler, second from bottom on right, around so it and the Colima aren't both looking out of the painting and thus dissipating interest in the poster. What were they thinking?

Dec. 15, 2007 What's that Palm Warbler going to be standing on? Can I make that a spring adult male instead of a dull fall bird I've got (above the singing yellowthroat)?

December 20, 2007

Jan. 10, 2008. I cut the left side of the painting a bit. The camera likes this painting as much as it dislikes Flattery Eagles. I'll never understand that aspect of painting/publishing.

January 15, 2008

March 25, 2008 This is getting close to first finish and in a couple weeks I should have a 12 x 16 poster. Wouldn't it be nice if I hired a designer to do the poster instead of just printing Warblers of the West underneath in Times Roman? Too bad my parents raised me to be so thrifty...

April 25 2008 I was going to take this in to be photographed today, but a I see a number of mostly minor things I should fix up. Maybe it'll go in Monday.

(Wild) CATS of North America

Nov. 24, 2007

Dec. 2, 2007 I'm surprised how well this is going, but some big problems are developing. The Lynx looks too goofy, and the worst problem is the Jaguarundi on the bottom right, plus it leaves too much blank space below it. Maybe I could add an artifact or something botanical. Also, I really have no idea what Jaguarundis look like. I saw one never in the wild but once at the Desert Museum in Tucson.

Dec. 10 2007

Dec. 15, 2007

January 10, 2008. I painted the Jaguar, Cougar, Bobcat and Ocelot with great discipline, but charged ahead thoughtlessly on the Canada Lynx and now I'm paying dearly, as the highlights are lost and there may be no chance of ever getting them back. I'm afraid to hose the Lynx away because the substrate is so fragile. I'll just add a lot of white and yellow to try to reimpose warmth and lightness. As far as the Jaguarundi goes, I'm doing pretty good considering how foggy my notion of what they really look like is. I understand there's general confusion here, and I once heard someone say that the Jaguarundi varies so much over its range that someone once suggested they be divided into four species.

January 15, 2008. I'll paint on this for a couple more days and then make this available at the store--a first edition. Then I'll try to make improvements based on what I see and what customers tell me are the problems with it.

.

Feb 11, 2008. There's no forgiveness in this business when the underpainting is neglected, like I did with the Canada Lynx. Ironically, I'd rather have white space where the Lynx is that what I have to work on, which is driving the intensity to high. I just hope this one cat doesn't ruin an image that I otherwise like.

 

Signature Birds of Seward Park

Dec. 2, 2007 This is kind of our closest real park, and it's going to have a nature center soon, so I thought it'd be bad if I didn't have a painting about it. But are these birds too small and crowded?

Dec. 10, 2007 Need some land birds in this.

Bald Eagle Rehab

May 30, 2007 Back in 2004 I had an epic stuggle with an Eagle painting and ultimately gave up. I had wanted it to be successful perhaps a bit too much. I ended up printing one version of it as an 8 x 10 print, which we still sell, Eagle at Flattery. However, I kept working on it and in trying to improve it, I at least temporarily ruined it. However, I've never given up on the concept in my mind. This is what the painting looked like when I picked it out of the basement and started working on it today.

June 5, 2007. Should she be looking at a more 3/4 angle toward the viewer? I hope not, because that was the kind of question that got the best of me last time.

June 6, 2007 That was fast. I'm looking up and all I see are stars. I start painting too much on the eagle because it's the most interesting place to paint, and it gets to be a wet-on-wet situation. Even though in my head I know nothing good ever comes from wet-on-wet painting, my compulsivity won't let me quit and things can come crashing down pretty fast.

OK, might as well take a hose to it.

Clear out the right side so you can see the ocean. But is that a good place for an Eagle?

June 7, 2007. Can I put another Eagle in at the right? I need to show air under the Eagle. Will this one get the garden hose? Who knows, I sure don't. Stay tuned for the next installment of Watch Paintings Materialize!

June 10. When putting a new subject on a canvas that's already painted down, I believe I must paint very slowly in white and yellow layers up so that the subject won't get lost into the background. It's a dangerous time to paint fast.

 

June 12, 2007. The bird on the right is intended to be the female, bigger with more of a "Roman Nose." The compositional problems and perspective errors are coming back to roost almost as if I were painting chickens, though. Maybe I'll move the right-hand bird up to where her tail breaks the cliff line of the far island, because I'd say there is 0 hope of the painting working the way it is currently composed.

June 20, 2007. The upper Eagle is going to be looking out of the painting to the right, hopefully creating a nice line for the viewer who follows the line of the twoEagles' focus from left to right. Will try to get the yellow out of the white water under the cliffs.

June 21, 2007.

OK, this isn't working either

June 22, 2007. This isn't a painting, this is a game of "Move the Eagle!" Maybe I'm dreaming, but it might work if the top right bird were looking more toward the viewer, and the white bird were finished. The left bird will be gone, but will that create new problems on the lower left?

The advantage of Watch Paintings Materialize for me is that I see the painting more objectively when I look at it here on the screen. I lose some of the irrational enamourment that overcomes me working on the painting in the studio. Given that it's on canvas and I haven't done well on canvas generally in this decade, and that the problems seem to keep endlessly cropping back up, sadly it may be time to put this painting back to sleep for another couple years.

June 23, 2007. Forget what I wrote above.

June 24, 2007

July 2, 2007.

July 20, 2007 At least it's safe from the garden hose!

July 29, 2007

Aug. 6. 2007. I'm thinking this is done enough to get some version of it out and see what people think of it. I'll take it in to get photographed on Wednesday, Aug. 8.

August 24, 2007.

Sept. 12, 2007. This might be nearly done, at least for a while.

Sept. 20, 2007

Sept. 21, 2007. If I look at my own history it's not encouraging. The paintings I really struggled with and spent months and years painting on haven't been my most successful ones. There's not near enough light in the lower left.

Oct 28, 2007 This is going in today--although I'll fix the white spot in the main cloud first.!

PS. It went in that week and then two more times, the last being in December.. The more paint that's already on the canvas, the less meaningful added strokes become. There is a point at which one should move on, regardless of whether one thinks all of a painting's issues are fully resolved. I'm guardedly optimistic that the new versions that are on sale now on the on-line store at this website represent nearly the best work I'm capable of doing.

January 15. 2008. When I say I'm going to quit painting on something, I have no credibility at all. Next step is to redden up the all the new yellow light, if I can get the paint to cooperate.

Feb. 11, 2008. For the last month or so I've been trying to make it more like a sunrise. The risk is unreality and over-romanticism, but actually this look is what I've been going for and I'm thrilled with this image because it more conforms to what I've been seeing in my mind's eye for the last 8 months or so, while every time up till now when I actually derived an image from the painting I was mightily disappointed. Still, I have to use a T-square and aggressively straighten the trees on the left headland.

 

Seabirds of the Maine Coast

Feb 4, 2007

Feb 13, 2007 I immediately painted into a jam, panicked and painted too fast on the male Common Eider in front. To be fair, this is going to be much more of a challenge than Owls for several reasons, not the least of which is that the Seabirds of Maine don't sit on twigs that grow exactly where you want to paint them. Another question: is the Leach's Storm-Petrel too big?

Feb. 14, 2007

Feb. 19 2007

Feb. 23, 2007 The birds with a white wing patch & red feet are Black Guillemots, very similar to the Pigeon Guillemot which is common in the Puget Sound here.

March 1, 2008

March 6, 2007

March 17, 2007 We visited mom, and I spent a couple of days obsessed with ruining an old painting (it should be salvageable), so I haven't got the progress I wanted to show on this. Plus, I have 3 more species of terns to put in, and I have no idea where they'll go, except the Common Tern will be flying. Should I put a Puffin swimming in the water in the lower left?

March 22, 2007 Delia takes a dim view of putting a Puffin swimming in the lower right. She says I should leave some places where the viewer's eyes can rest. I'm thinking they can always look at someone else's painting if they want to rest their eyes. I'll try it and see.

April 7, 2007 This has been really slow going. I had to re-finish 6 other paintings including Owls of the US and Canada for publication in advance of the Shorebird Festival in Hoquiam.

April 13, 2006 Maybe Delia's right about that swimming Puffin in the lower right. But I have bigger problems than that to worry about here. An annoying thing is that one of the most persistent problems, the male Eider, was the first thing I put in. Also, the group of Puffins isn't really very artfully arranged. But there still seems to be a baby with all the bathwater, at least in my mind. I really like the line created by Razorbill/Herring Gull/Great Cormorant sequence. The Double-crested Cormorant, the one drying its wings, should be looking at the viewer.

April 23, 2007

April 26, 2006. I wanted to have a copy of the poster for the Shorebird Show in Hoquiam this weekend, because Steve Kress, the hero who brought Puffins back to Maine, was the Keynote speaker for that last year. Normally, you can pay double at Ivey Imaging and get it shot in a day, but they're too busy lately, it'll take a week, so I'm just going to have a mockup of the poster there with a sign explaining why a Seattle artist has been busy painting the Seabirds of Maine.

May 20, 2007 Done for the time being. This will be Version #2, which I'll send to Maine in time for an opening of a gift shop at the interpretive center. Except that the Double-Crested Cormorant is not looking back at you and except for the water in the left foreground, I really like it.

Spruce up the Moose time

Feb 23, 2007. This isn't totally in the spirit of Watch, but here are changes, hopefully all improvements, I'm making on the Moose painting, which was one of the first two or three paintings I ever did in gouache back in 2001 when I switched from acrylics. I didn't understand some things about gouache then, like the fact that you can work it forever, you never need to ever finish (hooray!). Adding flowers in the foreground, they are supposed to be astors but I can't achieve the color of astors with the paints I use (When I add the amount of blue I want, it turns to gray). I have too much warmth and brightness in the green in the distance.

Owls of U.S. & Canada

(or, is planning overated?)

Jan 7, 2007. When I do a natural history poster, I normally plan it carefully ahead of time. For the Salmonid poster, I made clay salmon and laid them out on a grid. For the butterfly poster, I cut butterflies out of cardboard all the right size and arranged them on the canvas, replacing the paper butterfly only when the I was ready to final paint the butterfly.

Jan 10, 2007. However, for Owls of the U.S. & Canada, I thought I'd try the opposite approach: Just hit the canvas painting. Will it work? I really don't know. Stay tuned to this website and see! The biggest problem here might not turn out to be composition, though, color is already looking like a future problem.

Jan 12, 2007 Is it going to get crowded in here?

Jan 17, 2007. Maybe planning isn't overrated. Still have 10 more species to put in.

Jan 19, 2006 I wanted to put in two color morphs of Eastern Screech Owl. But it looks like I'm deciding to put all the screech owls in the lower left, and there's only enough room for three individuals representing three species. Or I could stash Whiskered Screech Owl on the lower right. That's a thought.

Jan 22,1007

I use the fluorescent yellow paint to brighten the subject, position things and it binds with the other paints and brings them out as a glazing agent. White paint won't do that in gouache. If it works it should be like fish sauce in Thai cooking--it looks (tastes) terrible when it stands alone, but when it's painted (cooked) into the final product, the result is better than the sum of the parts could otherwise be.

Jan 27, 2007 I've been painting on this kind of furiously (I have a deadline of a bird re-habber convention in Tacoma) , and for the most part it's been carrying me along like a river and a canoe, but look at the two Screech Owls that are still yellow in the bottom left (Western in front, Whiskered behind) they are culprits that seem to have a really bad attitude. The photo of the Western I'm working from is one I took of a bird that had been re-habbed by a falconer couple (Dale & Denise Pressnall, who have had a really tough time of it lately with Dale getting sick. They are the greatest and I wish them the best) that had been hit by a car and rode ten miles impaled on the grill. It got peeled off and re-habbed by Denise and Dale and turned out fine.

Jan 31 2007 I was hoping to have a test version of this in time to take to Tacoma to the bird rehabbers and educators meeting, but there's a lot to resolve. Worst owl right now is the Whiskered Screech Owl between the Burrowing Owl and the red Eastern Screech Owl: That one really needs work.

Feb 4, 2007

 

Hurry-up Blue (Sooty) Grouse

Dec. 18, 2006 The map shown below is done, although I haven't been able to upload the picture of it for some reason. However, Christie Norman the Producer and Al Tietjen the designer found an empty space on it that was in need of a Sooty Grouse painting. Only trouble is, the project has to get done in 2006, so I am trying to hurry up here. Sometimes I have good luck when I hurry anyway.

Dec. 20 2006. His legs and feet look terrible. My goal isn't to make them look great, that's an impossible dream, just to get to a point they don't draw attention to themselves.

Dec. 21, 2006 I woke up this morning and thought "I'm painting a Turkey, not a Blue Grouse!" I meant it as a pun, too. So I tried to make the bird look a bit more lanky and less like a Turkey and give it more highlights to make the painting less of a turkey. My friend Rick Droker told me that these Grouse eat moss spores, so I tried to re-emphasize the idea that that is moss in the foreground in front of the hen. It lost some of it's earlier painterliness, but at least I got his legs so they aren't so annoying.

Sandhill Crane

Oct. 20, 2006 This is with a thought for the Sandhill Crane festival in Othello, WA next March or April

Oct. 26, 2006.

All Aboard for Anacortes

July 29, 2006

August 2, 2006 May only be room for one Pigeon Guillemot.

August 5, 2006 I think I have a problem with the Pigeon Guillemot not wanting to work with the design. Delia thinks I should flip the bird and have it coming at the viewer 3/4 angle on the left side.

August 9, 2006. Decided to enlarge the ferry. The Pigeon Guillies might be blocking the line of sight.

July 14, 2006

Aug. 22, 2006. It's supposed to get better! It's not really tilted, thats the photo--although I should check that. A typical painting error is to lighten up backgrounds or fields just as they disappear behind objects and I see I've done that with the field (it actually is a field in this case) up top where it gets lighter as it goes behind the building.

Aug. 24, 2006. I was surprised to meet someone at the store who actually visits this page often, as in every week-- a really great guy from Germany named Dieter. That inspired me to resolve to more frequently update, although Dieter won't be checking it out for a little while, he's sailing up the west side of Vancouver Island instead. Be careful, Dieter! Am going to have to tone down those pillars on the red house and darken the forest.

Sept. 7, 2006

Sept. 12, 2006. I think I'll go back to one Pigeon Guillemot, and take out the two Western Grebes, since they aren't working out anyway. The painting needs more subtlety.

Sept. 27, 2006 That's a Pigeon Guillemot back in. This painting is annoying me. Maybe the red is too fluorescent. I went looking for Alex Young's classic painting of the same scene on the internet but couldn't find it. I thought maybe there would be a clue there as to what's wrong with this. The only thing I don't like about the Young painting is that it has no wildlife.

November 2, 2006

May 5, 2007

This is one of many situations where I'm trying to decide if I should give up on this painting or keep trying. I don't have an over-confidence problem generally but I may have been overconfident with this painting. I think I thought because the scene was beautiful, the painting would be too. But I have serious problems with the line in this painting, and they may be inoperable. The road creates a strong line but doesn't give the viewer any way to escape from the painting. Putting a Red-breasted Merganser in a new spot in the foreground is helping, but is it helping enough? I seem to be unable technically to paint a Madrona woods above town. The problem of gouache paint sinking into spongelike canvas seems to be getting the best of me on the landscape part, although maybe the problem was with an overly hurried underpainting. Anyway, I may try it as a poster over the words SAN JUAN ISLANDS and see if anyone gives it the time of day.

May 20, 2007. Even though I'm disappointed I couldn't solve most of the problems, despite putting in a lot of time on it, I'll put a new version out at the store and see what people think. Then from now on no more gouache on canvas, it's all going to be on some kind of board.

May 29; 2007 The reason for putting the female in was to try to retro-fix the compositional problems. The painting up til now was a two-subject painting, (the ferry and the red house) and even numbered-subject paintings don't work, it's a rule my dad taught me. Increasing the Duck presence is intended to make them the third subject. The problem is, I didn't underpaint the Mergansers enough and they look like they're swimming around trying to find some sun. Still, I kind of like it.

Market @ Night Rework

Sept. 12, 2006 About 20% of the time I work on old paintings now that I'm not limiting editions and selling the originals right away. Sometimes I ruin a perfectly good painting, (you won't see them on Watch!) but other times they need it. Market at Night has the distinction of being the slowest-selling of all the Series 1 Notecards, and I've been working on it ahead of it's second edition and to allow it to be part of a skinny that'll come out soon. Putting it on Watch helps me see mistakes, and I see one now, the light streaks in the very bottom right are coming out the wrong direction.

 

Rufous Hummingbird

July 28, 2006

August 24, 2006. Ultramarine blue, which is what the background is mostly made of, is the worst-behaving all the poorly-behaving pigments in gouache. All I want is a reasonably smooth field, and all I can get is this blotchy surface. Might need to make the green more red-brown. The head doesn't look too big in the mirror, but it sure looks too big here, although Rufous are big-headed hummingbirds. The green is inaccurate.

Sept. 7, 2006. Painting a background field is always the hardest thing in gouache, as I've already harped on about. It's strange that the head looks so much too big to me in these shots, but when I look at it in real life or in the mirror, it looks right. I must be visually confused in some way.

Sept. 12, 2006.

Oct. 26, 2006. I'm trying to make the tawny in the tail look different from the irridescent red in the throat, but don't know how. That seminar I took with Robert Bateman is coming in handy: I'm using a kitchen sponge on the background.

Nov. 12, 2006. I'm calling it done for now. Trying to smooth out the blue gouache field behind the hummingbird is just not possible given my technique--I've put a lot of hours into this and the frustration quotient is high right now. Maybe the printing process will be kind to it, or maybe it just won't bother people that much.

Dec. 6, 2006. I couldn't get paint to adhere to some of the surfaces around the bird, so I fixed the background a bit in photoshop. There's a slippery slope--but I'm not very far down on it yet.

Birds of TBR

The Bioresearch Ranch, in the Peloncillo Mountains, extreme SW New Mexico

July 9, 2006

July 15, 2006

King Salmon

May 22, 2006

May 26, 2006 This is going to be part of a new all-fish skinny that I would like to have in a month or two, so there will probably be a lot of new fish starts showing up on Watch and I'll be painting furiously, if all goes well.

May 26, 2006 same painting, different light conditions

Bathtime

The inspiration for this painting is twofold: Our backyard recirculating stream has been attracting a constant stream of migrating warblers who love to take baths (see What's New, this website). Also, I'm supposed to show up at the Edmonds migratory bird festival this weekend, Friday May 5th and maybe Saturday May 6th. If I can get this painting done in time, I could use it for a poster for the festival.

 

Everything was going good till I tried to put the second Yellow Rumped Warbler in. It seems more realistic to have birds of the same species bathing together (see photos in What's New). But I could tell I'd never be able to make this bird look real.

Now there are three species, from left to right Nashville, Orange Crowned and Yellow Rumped.

Well, this definitely sets a speed record for me: It's only been 40 hours since I started on May 6, 2006, and the finish is somewhere in sight. Maybe this page getting positive reviews from the Malone-O'Brien family was a factor.

May 12, 2006.

Birding Trail Map Painting, NW Loop

April 2, 2006 The previous three finished maps are up on this website, Go to the homepage and click on birding maps (as of tonight)

April 23, 2006

June 17, 2006

July 4, 2006. This painting is in a death spiral the likes of which I haven't seen for a while. Do I start over or keep backing and filling--I'll wait for a sign.

July 7, 2006

July 15, 2006

August 24, 2006. I've had nothing but fabulous luck on these map paintings--until this fourth one! Paintings that fail take longer to paint than ones that succeed, and this has been absorbing a huge amount of time. That wouldn't be a problem, but the quality of this is a problem. I'm debating starting over, but that seems harsh at the moment.

Oct. 20, 2006. I need to get a shot of this outside, so it will be better lit. The painting in actuality isn't quite as bad as it looks here, which isn't saying all that much considering that this shot didn't even come up last time I checked the site.

Oct. 26, 2006

Nov. 13, 2006

Nov. 17 2006 Christy told me I have to get this thing done, so hopefully we'll see some acceleration finally down the left side.

Dec. 22, 2008. Al Tietjen of Fusion Studios designed this with the map I finished a couple weeks ago, some images he used from the SW loop map that I painted last year, and the Sooty Grouse painting I did very recently. Christie Norman, the map's producer and I have a high opinion of the work Al does and if anyone needs a designer his number at Fusion Studios is 547 1303.

 

This is a possible logo for a new organization, Puget Sound Birdhoouse Project--is that name right?, my friend Mike Donahue is starting. Also, I'm planning a Swallow Skinny by the end of spring and a Duck Skinny soon after that. This will be one of the paintings for the swallow skinny.

Grays Harbor Shorebird Festival

take 1 & 2 on a painting that's meant for the Gray's Harbor Shorebird Festival in Hoquiam Washington April 28 to 30, 2006

March 30, 2006. second bird up from the bottom right should point out to help get an S curve.

April 5, 2006

Lucky Ride

Feb 10, 2006

 

Feb 20, 2006

I messed up the mountain on this last day of painting, accidentally of course. Will have to try to return to the old idea. Plus I let the whole thing become too monochromatic. The painting could end up being seriously too blue. D- for today. Still, it's been really quick, and my best ferry ever, I think, and I have high hopes for it still..

March 18, 2006 The Painting took a small turn for the worse here. I'll back off on the yellow sky, work on the foreground water, and fix the foothills somewhat. There are two compositional problesm I can see, the Orcas are crossing so as to make a perpendicular wall to the viewer, and the Mountains, two peaks in the southern Olympics, also make a barrier. The S curve goes through the whales up to the ferry and then up the snowfield and then left along the ridgeline--it's a bit weak but I've painted paintings with no S curve at all, rebel that I am.

March 22, 2006 I told Kelley from Monroe I'd put the latest version up in case she wanted to use it for her Orca presentation for her class Friday. I don't see the sky in the painting as nearly as yellow as the camera here does, but that's not the first time I disagreed with a camera.

April 22, 2006. Some of the problems are persistent. I spent a whole day on this almost ruining it, but it's back, and it'll be the best painting I've ever done, in my (perhaps only mine!) opinion.

circa June 10, 2006

June 16, 2006 Whoops somedays you win, some days you lose

June 21, 2006. Delia pointed out the Orcas are less of a barrier this way, & I think that's a factor in why I like it better this way. Plus the Orcas are calmer, and that calms down the whole painting.

June 22, 2006, Not too much new painting done, although I almost lost it again. The paint on the back of the front Orca isn't gripping because I've worked it so hard, so I'm petrified of working on it now & afraid of ruining it before I can get it to a photographer. This is under a yellower light.

July 28, 2006 What a difference a professional digital capture (what used to be called a photo) makes. Maybe I should let go of this and call it done, at least for a while.

August 30, 2006. Now maybe it really is done, at least for 2006. Of all the paintings I've ever gotten involved with, this and Hummingbirds of Costa Rica, which is not finished yet, are my favorites. However, this hasn't shown signs yet of being a particularly good seller, but I think that will change when the version we're selling gets updated and is better published.

Sept. 25, 2006 I'm done with this completely, now, am not going to touch it again in 2006.

 

Sandhill Crane near Othello

I'm going to be at the Old Hotel Art Gallery during the Othello, WA Sandhill Crane Festival and wanted to have a new Crane image for that. The Festival is on the weekend of Saturday March 25th. Othello is south of Moses Lake.

Nisqually

March 8, This is the view from the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge looking toward Luhr Beach, where the late Kevin Li"s efforts have resulted in a Purple Martin colony. That's going to be a Great Blue Heron.

Harrier in the sunset

I happened to be working on a sunset picture from a place he loved when I heard that a good friend of ours and a man I consider to be a hero-- Kevin Li-- died in a diving accident in the San Juans. See Viewpoint 4 for a little about some of the difference he has made. I always had a lot of plans to try to direct the spotlight on him to get him what I thought was the credit he deserved but he always nixed my ideas, he wasn't in it for the publicity. Kevin was a doer. He once expressed surprise about something that hadn't been done to help the Martins in a colony that was being lost to lack of human maintanence. I told him I was never surprised when people didn't do things--only when somebody actually got up and did anything. It took a rare person, like Kevin, to do that, and truthfully, Kevin is the only reason Purple Martins have made a comeback in Seattle and I fear for them, among other things, now that he's gone.

On Saturday I knew Kris would be at work and Delia and I were headed down to Kent to look for a Duck. I asked Kevin if he wanted to come and although he didn't, we had a great conversation. You always learned something when you talked to Kevin. Kevin's knowledge about the marine life and ecology of this area was amazing. He told me he was going diving the next day and if I had had any ability whatsoever to influence Kevin I would have told him not to, but of course I didn't. So I told him not to go in water any deeper than five feet. Too bad I didn't have the good sense to go slash his tires the next morning.

March 22, 2006

 

Flying Eagle

I lost something here trying to bring this home, am trying to see what it was, I think the shadow under the white in the front.

Feb 18, 200. Time hasn't been kind to this painting. Maybe it can't work, what with nothing else in the painting and no room really for anything behind the Eagle, which would be an afterthought. I'm committed to getting a Bald Eagle painting in 2006, but maybe this isn't it.

Flying Red-tailed Hawk

well, it looks like my work is cut out for me on this flying adult Red Tailed Hawk.The tail looks particularly unrealistic.

The head's too big I think, and there are issues about how the wings are painted. the tail is pinker than tails look from the underside. This is March 15, 2006

March 30,2006

Common Loon Take 1 Circa Nov. 1

Common Loon Take 2 circa Nov 7 The camera seems to like this painting, which isn't always the case!

First Starbucks Store

Numero Uno take 1

Numero uno, take 2 Nov. 2, 2005

 

 

Kestrels, Rescued from 2001 failure

Oct. 20, 2006 My best painting ever, in my opinion.

 

Hummingbirds of Costa Rica project

Hummingbirds of Costa Rica take 1 July 20 2004

Above is Hummingbirds of Costa Rica begun July 20. Look at all these problems cropping up and it's just begun! I'd love to have a beautiful painting of the Hummingbirds of Costa Rica, so I'll keep throwing paint at this canvas, & will keep you posted. The one with the big white tail is a White-necked Jacobin, bottom right a Purple- Crowned Fairy which no mere painting could ever do justice to. These birds appear like fairies, shimmering over a dark tropical stream before foraging or bathing. I'll give this a 15% chance of ever getting finished.

Hummingbirds of Costa Rica Take 2 A Brown Violet Ear is jabbing at a Green Violet Ear--I thought I'd throw in some typical aggressive hummingbird behavior here.

Hummingbirds of Costa Rica Take 3 October 4 (still need to fit about 30 more in, am pretty worried about whether there is room for them and a bromeliad)

Hummingbirds of Costa Rica take 4 Oct. 15. Need to put in place 15 more from here.

Costa Rica Hummingbirds--Nov. 18, 2005 (Painting shot under better light than last time) I realized the Violet Crowned Hummingbird in the center top doesn't belong there, the species that occurs in Costa Rica is a Violet Headed Hummingbird, quite different, will be changed for next time. Placing the last 15 is going to be difficult, especially since I've left some of the duller birds for last, and mostly ones I haven't seen and don't have my own pictures of.

Nov 26 Costa Rica Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds of Costa Rica Dec.1 2005 There all in now, at least I hope I haven't forgotten any. Am pleased with how the Snowcap and Jacobin and the three Mountain Gems (with white, purple and magenta throats) above them look. Lots of problems still. Some are still perched on air.

H C R Dec. 4

Hum. of C.R. Dec. 14-05 almost at first finish, test poster 12 x 16 should appear soon. The two hermits on the low left and the green hummers in the center at the bottom need work, but maybe they always will.

First Finish Hummingbirds of Costa Rica, late December 2005

It's at the store!

 

Cutthroat