I paint with Gouache-paint on regular canvas or various types of board. I try to mostly paint wet-on-dry; use a mirror at all times to check on shapes, perspective and composition; and use as many reference photos as possible but I don't sketch, grid or use a projector. I start paintings in yellow for two reasons: yellow is the easiest color to paint back out, and the yellow underpainting hopefully helps to make the subjects sun-lit and bright. I don't paint outside where light conditions are constantly changing, the wind blows over the easel or the water gets too cold:
See what I mean? (For the record, my intention here is not to deceive, but to have a little fun. I was swimming at Denny Blaine beach on Lake Washington, the Orca was swimming in the Salish Sea and photographed by Brian Raven.)
New finish on Owl poster painting, scroll down! Also, finally, Steelhead! I'll put that image here:
Nov. 26, 2009
Also: Nearing new finish on Multiply bird poster.
All-new strategy for Spokane Bird Trail Map
Oct 9, 2009 I have been given a list of about 40 birds that need to go on this by the world's best project director Christi Norman. Here's my problem: I like to work large and reduce for printing to make my painting look better. Secondly, I always take about 2 to 5 years to completely finish a painting but only have a little over a month to deadline on this. In the past I've always painted directly on to the map at 1 to 1 size, but I think that approach has reached the end of the line. I think I'll paint several large paintings, reduce them, and drop them in to the map.
Here's the first: A Violet-green Swallow chasing a Cliff Swallow in Republic.
Oct 12, 2009.
Calliope Hummingbird
Oct. 12, 2009 Spokane. This is for the right middle of the map next to the city. That's a Black-headed Grosbeak.
Oct. 12, 2009. Here it's easy to see why I'm in a panic about finishing this. I better go downstairs and start painting.
Top right
Oct. 20, 2009
Bottom right
Oct. 20, 2009
Bottom left:
Oct. 20, 2009 That's Curlew Lake.
Palouse Falls insert
Oct. 20, 2009 I have a belief that waterfalls can't be painted well, but which came first here, the bad painting or the belief? This is not done and I'll work hard on fixing its faults. That's a White-throated Swift.
Oct. 26, 2009 Lower left.
10/26/2009/ Top right
Oct. 26, 2009 lower right.
Oct. 26. Here they are on the map. One last painting I still have to start, a painting that will go by the charming name "Top left." Also I might need a small top middle painting.
November 7, 2009 Top left.
Nov. 13 Lower left.This is the final shot of the painting, (by Ken Wagner, on South Capitol Hill 3281030, in case anyone needs their artwork shot. I hear Brett Corrington does a good job also, also on Hill) I had to move the Yellowthroat in Photoshop, it was covering a road due to a planning error I made. By the way, Nature is so great, here's an example: the three waders on the map have blue, red and yellow legs respectively, all bright. I'm failing to show off the Avocet's blue legs well because it's wading in a blue color-field. I hope the Avocets will forgive me.
Nov 13, 2009 This is the final shot of the cover piece for the Map, a White-headed Woodpecker on a Ponderosa Pine. I began this painting years ago and it was published in the book "Important Bird Areas of Washington" and I published it. But I kept on working on it over the years, and I believe it proves the point that, contrary to what's usually encouraged in art class, sometimes it's good to keep on obsessively fussing with a painting for a long time.
top left Nov.13 final.
top right final Nov. 13, 2009
lower right Nov. 13, 2009 final.
Nov. 13 2009 final Palouse falls. This will be the first birding trail map with a rainbow. I'm liking this better now.
Black-chinned & Calliope Hummingbirds for the map.
Nov. 13, final Map painting general layout. Files to be dumped into designer Al Tietjen's computer ASAP. Al has saved many a map.
End Bird Trail map paintings, back to regular work: Meanwhile, watch the news for publication of the Spokane Loop of the Great Washington Birding Trail. Publication Date: sometime in December, 2009
Nov 21, 2009. Here's the final, minus the key. Look what a great job Al did with the edges and seams, lightening the images so hopefully the map will attain a slighly Brigadoonish quality as the scenes fade in and out behind the map.
Western Tanager
Sept. 25, 2009
Sept. 28, 2009. Readers of the Ed's Sightings page of this website might recognize Butyl Creek.
October 2, 2009. I've also been working on "All aboard for Anacortes" which was begun in July of 2006. I'll put the latest version-- with yet a different species of bird in it--up soon, if the series is still on this page.
Oct. 6 2009
Nov. 14, 2009 It's amazing how I don't see errors in the painting til it's reproduced on a computer screen or print somewhere. The fixes will be minor--I'll redirect the foreground water so it's coming directly at the viewer to improve the S-curve, also darken some shadows under the fern but not much. This baby is a keeper.
Painting Ducks for a Duck Skinny
July 8, 2009 Cinnamon Teal
July 31, Cinnamon Teal --almost done
July 31 Lesser Scaup
Scroll down: finally finished Steelhead!
Seabirds of the Sound
April 26, 2009. This is FPO, "for position only." These are cutouts I'm doing with scissors so I don't paint into a corner when I actually get going. They're held up with double sided tape. The subhead of this poster--not the title--will say "of the Salish Sea, with a definition following. I'm not going to fall on that sword again. (I guess I'm saying the name Salish Sea hasn't exactly caught on with people so far.)
August 13, 2009. It's been a long time, I've been finishing things (Multiply poster, Steelhead, Common Loon, Cin. Teal, Owls, Troll, Pike Place Flowers) started in the past or long in the past which doesn't seem worth putting up on this page. Here is a question on this one: Which ducks are seabirds and which aren't? I've answered this awkwardly here, including Greater Scaup, the Wigeons and the Cans but not Pintail, Greeny, Mallard or Can Goose. Any margin is going to be fuzzy, but if any seabirds of the Salish Sea experts are out there who think I'm making errors of inclusion or exclusion are MORE than welcome to email me at ednewbold1@yahoo.com
Birds need to multiply Poster Painting
Back in 2004 I started this painting of birds that were declining in the hopes of creating a message poster.
June 18, 2009 Anchoring the bottom right will be a Marbled Murrelet. This bird could be the fasted in the world. Canadian researchers tracked one doing 113 mph on radar. It is not known by me whether that was wind-aided, but it was definitely flying very, very fast.
June 24, 2009 I meant to have the extinct species be in the mist, but it's not happening. I have 6 extinct species in the painting.
June 29, 2009 At the top it could say "People" and below the image it could say "aren't the only ones under orders to multiply."
Sept. 12, 2009 Added a Red-necked Phalarope in the lower right. A version of the poster is available at the Market store and on the on-line store.
Nov. 26, 2009
Space Needle for skinny "Seattle & Points Northwest"
April 22, 2009 This looks like it's going to be my favorite of the Space Needle paintings I've done. But will anyone else like it is always a pertinent question in this business.
April 26, 2009. That's a Gluaucous-winged Gull, AKA SeaGull.
May 1, 2009 I'll try to soften up that yellow to blue transition in the sky. As always with buildings, I can't help it, I try to do as little work as possible on them. But they need more work.
May 13, Whoops, now the gull doesn't cross in front of anything in the background. This leaves the viewer able to suppose it could be anywhere spatially and creates the Huge-gull-going-to-fly-into-the-space-needle problem. One of the big problems facing the world today.
May 17, 2009. Hmmmmmmmm.... Not sure about how this is going. Maybe I'll give customers a chance to weigh in--after toning down the yellow in the sky.
Orcas to be companion piece for Return of the Sockeye
Feb. 13, (Friday) 2009. These are the rare Yellow Orcas of the Puget Sound.
Feb. 18, 2009. When making up a configuration like this, one has to be aware of unintended inferences a viewer could be induced to make by the composition. We all know that the male Orca here is a benign figure, but could it look predatory to someone, whether they are knowledgable about Orcas or not, just based on the gestalt of the composition? And though it's definitely a larger animal, have I made it too big here?
Feb. 21, 2009. I'm usually really soft-hearted and misty-eyed about whichever painting I happen to be working on (later I get my objectivity back pretty fast, usually with the help of sales data!), so it's normal for me to be "high" on a new paintings, but this one is off the charts--I'm totally loving it. Plus I've remained fairly disciplined about dropping the values down slowly and not trying to darken it too fast. Some of my most successful paintings have taken very little time--Company, for example, took less than a month to finish and was my most successful painting between 1981 and the mid 90's.
March 20, 2009. I'm a bit horrified reading all the optimistic, positive comments in the above entry, so I guess I'm regressing to the mean. I didn't like it without a seventh Orca, which is going in in the top left and like many areas of the painting needs work. If this and future paintings do succeed, I owe it all to Arlene Mraz. She's one of the painters in the Artstall Gallery which is across the hall from us in the Economy Arcade at the Pike Place Market. I was admiring one of her paintings and asked her in disbelief how could she possibly get certain effects with paint. She told me she was using Turner Acrylic-gouache and told me to order some and where, and continued to admonish me not to waste time with regular Gouache anymore. I finally did and this is Painting Number one with Acrylic-gouache. It behaves very differently from gouache, all this paint does is layer and glaze. It doesn't misbehave the way gouache does, but with a paint like this you don't have the luxury of changing your mind all the time.
March 24, 2009. Have I lost something? The surfacing Orca really needs to be solved. Unfortunately, I'm working with one blue--ultramarine--that is regular gouache and I'm thinking that might be where some of the blotchiness in the blue is coming from, because the acrylic-gouache is silky smooth.I'll order ultramarine, but that's 2 weeks away.
April 2, 2009 If I get this printed, better make sure the printer has enough blue ink in stock.
April 7, 2009 At least this shot has a bit of color complexity. I'm going to publish in horizontal skinny size soon, so that will be at the store in about a week. April 22, still working, get a shot up tomorrow.
April 26, 2009. I had to reposition the two lowest orcas as they weren't fitting into the format. This Turner Acrylic gouache blue paint is sure drying cold. Another thing about Turner: their ultramarine blue is actually a thalo blue, so I have to stick with Windsor Newton when I need ultramarine. I still like Turner acrylic-gouache, just the honeymoon is already over. Notice I keep failing to resolve the surfacing orca at the top left.
May 1, 2009 I'm going to tilt this 2 degrees when I print, I kind of forgot to stay in the lines and the close orca here is too low. I think there's enough yellow and red in the actual painting--which should show up in the print, that this won't look too unsophisticated. The blotchiness I can't get rid of, despite using acrylic-gouache. I may soften the worst blotches in photoshop.
Northern Pintails Begun in New Mexico
Dec. 26, 2008
Jan 3, 2009
April 2, 2009. Head size problem again, this time on main male. A lot of problems. Need to get some mood in this painting. The shot that inspired it, which I took at the Nisqually and is on the Sightings part of this website, has a lot of mood, shot on a typical weather NW winter day.
Crane Festival in Othello is coming up March 20, 21, 22! We'll
be there! Plus--Finally getting a finish on Cats of North America, scroll down this page
Jan 4, 2009
Jan 6, 2009
Jan 8. 2009.
January 16, 2009. I don't have any big issues with this.
Jan. 23 2009 Now there's issues. The waterline needs to be softened, among others.
Jan 26, 2008 I used auto-levels on Photoshop to brighten up the colors, and the result may be a little overdone, but it should be calmed down a bit when it gets printed--I'll take it in after one or two more painting days, and I'm just trying to stay the course on this one.
Feb. 2 2009 The colors need calming, and the work around the grasses (could use research on the marsh grasses, will take shots at the Festival) and the reflection and other places needs to look less frantic. The composition is great considering it's a two-subject painting. There are lots of S-curves you can trace that carry you into the painting
This painting was finished for the Crane Festival and will be at the on-line store soon.
Anna's Hummingbird--what for a background?
Dec. 29, 2008
Jan 11, 2009. This is a tribute to the toughness of a species that stubbornly stays and survives sometimes very rough Western Washington winters. People have become drawn the wrong conclusions about these hummers when they see them in adverse wintry conditions in places like Seattle. They think that by putting out feeders--and you can see this on flickr if you search "hummingbirds in snow,"--that they have confused the poor things and lured them into staying up North when they "should be in Mexico." The fact is, Anna's Hummingbird is not a migratory species. It's not even entirely clear how much sugar water is crucial to them, as they survived winters here in the Northwest when it was not generally known that they were here, at a time when not a soul put out feeders for them.
Jan 16, 2009 I'm putting this painting on the front burner and will have an 8 x 10 available ASAP in the on-line store and at the Pike Place store, although Mark Moon (Wed-Sun Store manager) is already on record predicting that "People don't want a picture of a hummingbird in the snow," and maybe he's right. We'll see.
June 24, 2009 comment: Someday I'll make the blue go away, maybe turn it to a very subdued gray. For the most part, customers aren't buying this image. Still, the problem may not reside in the painting at all. Hummingbirds in snow may be a fact of Seattle life in 2009, but there could be many reasons people don't want to remind themselves of it.
These are the new fall prints at the store:
Sept. 18, 2008 I haven't been reporting to this page much lately, partly because of this. This is the 2008 fall printing. It's the first time I "painted" a bit in photoshop to improve problems in the prints. They get delivered today and will be at the store by this weekend and I'll try to get them on the on-line store today.
Drake Woody
August 3, 2008. This is intended to become a painting of a drake Wood Duck in a wetland.
August 4, 2008. I love the look of hen Wood Ducks, what with their cool white racing stripe and all. However, having an even number of subjects makes it massively more difficult to create a good painting, and you basically have to use some kind of trick, so I'm just going to paint the male here.
August 7, 2008. The photo for the dead stump and the water lillies is from Stillwater. I suppose these are the non-native water lillies.
August 14, 2008. I'd like to continue to darken the foreground and the left side. This painting could come in handy as I try to build skinny prints with two new themes--one would have a "wetland" theme, (would include a dragonfly, turtle, swallow, etc) the other a duck theme, and I'm hoping this can acceptably anchor both. By the way, the painting didn't just get worse--ie more muddy and dull. I just didn't use Photoshop's "autocolor" on this shot before posting it up.
Spotted Owl Renovations
Sept. 18, 2008. This was a painting I did for the cover of Bird Watcher's Digest. That went well, but even though I liked the cover a lot, I felt I hadn't done a good job on the painting and let it languish for about 5 years. Delia recently told me she thought it was beautiful, which turned me around on it. Now I'm reworking things, and will make it a new 8 x 10 soon. I'd like to un-green the forest a bit, easier said than done.
Jump for Joy
August 10, 2008. This is going to be a painting of some kind of Salmonid fish jumping near Seward Park, Seattle, with Mt. Rainier in the background. 2008 will not go down as one of my better years, so sometimes in a year like that you want to paint something that doesn't hold back. Let's say this critter isn't going for an insect or anything, just jumping for the sheer joy of it.
June 24, 2009 I more or less finished the fish painting, but everyone complained about the fish. So in the last couple of days I painted out the fish and am constructing a flock of Canvasback Ducks on Lake WA, but I see problems abound and my work is not through. (I auto-colored this on photoshop and since the painting is supposed to be moody, autocolor may be a really bad idea, because it basically spreads the color out, making the whites white and the blacks black, thereby removing the mood.
June 30, 2008 Third try is going to have to be the charm here. The Canvasbacks created perspective problems . I don't know how I let these Mergansers get so dark. I'll have to lighten up at least the females, although it's best if you keep don't let this happen in the first place.
Sept. 12, 2009 This is the second time I've enlarged the Mergansers. I may need to warm up the females, esp. the far one that disappears into the background--it should have a different level of "coldness" than the background, but doesn't. I also lost their upward motion, which helped make things interesting. I paint too fast when I think a painting is especially good sometimes, and end up with a wet-on-wet mess, still, this is may all-time favorite painting after "Daytables," which I'm printing again, hopefuly with better color, this week or next.
Return of the Seven --to the Discovery Park Lighthouse
June 7, 2008 Return of the Seven--that is Seven Sanderlings, one of my first limited edition prints which was issued in 1983 which sold out in the late 80s. I still sell a very small version of it in an 8 x 10 mat which in the store at this website.
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June 10, 2007. This is the lighthouse at West Point in Discovery Park, in Seattle NW of the downtown in the Magnolia neighborhood..
June 15, 2008. In 25 years, only one of the Sanderlings grew up to be an adult, the one heading away from the viewer.
July 6, 2008
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.
June 15, 2008
January 16, 2009. I've spent the last half year working on this painting hard, but the changes in any given session were small and didn't seem worth putting up on this site. Lately I have been really trying to correct a serious left/right problem: the painting looked bad in the mirror. This may not seem like it would be a big problem, but if it doesn't look good in the mirror, it essentially has no chance at being a really good painting. A problem like that will creep in if you paint on it for a while while forgetting to constantly check your work in the mirror. I'm going to put the mirror image up, just to see if the problem is completely solved:
Jan. 16, 2009. Flipped for purposes of problem-solving. There are still really annoying things about the painting when viewing the mirror image of it, as shown above. The big rock and some of the rocks on the far left look wrong. Even the fish apears as though, perhaps, it's too big-headed. (When you have that problem, you can make the head smaller or the body bigger).
I'd like to completely resolve this issue because I basically like this painting and want to print it large, 9 x 32, to be a companion piece for the large Return of the Sockeye. Then my plan is to do a same size painting of underwater Orcas, to make a trio in that size.
June 29, 2009 I've been really working hard on this, but it wouldn't have made sense to put too many shots in, they'd all look the same. It's pretty much done now--I might remove some red out of some rocks. I'm calling it the best painting I've ever done, but that's meeting with mostly skepticism.
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?
May 22, 2008 I need to get more black into the red in this painting.The camera isn't seeing any black in the tulips, which makes them look quite unrealistic.
May 24, not much different. I'm thinking I have black in the tulips, but if there is the camera sure doesn't see it.
June 7, 2008. Given my current strategy, I obviously can't get any black into the tulips. Maybe I'll give people a chance to accept it with the tulips looking like this. I have been trying to make the second batch of tulips white with wine-red petal outlines, but the paint doesn't want to work with me on that either. Maybe I'll go on the internet and order some of that acrylic-gouache paint by Turner that Arlene Mraz, an artist at the Artstall at Pike Market and a neighbor there, has been telling me about. Always looking for paints that can pack a punch, and there're hard to find.
June 15, 2008
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.
July 10 2008. I had to ask the Virginia Warbler (2nd from the bottom on the right) to face into the painting as there were too many birds headed out, which is a big compositional no-no. I also added a female, the Townsends at the top. The Chat in the original format was repeating the pose of the female Redstart, so I faced her head toward the viewer, which always is a good idea as it involves the viewer.. I also was continually bothered by the female Yellowthroat facing downward in the original composition which presented too much monochromism. This is really close now and I'm ramping up to print it offset litho, along with Owls of US and Canada.
(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.
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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.
Sept. 18, 2008, This image is just too spare. I thought of trying to paint a house cat cleaning itself, lying up against the title, "Cats," in the poster. I thought of putting plants, boulders, or logs in for them to be on. Not all paintings are destined to work out. The Lynx looked good to me yesterday when I was painting, but not here.
Jan 23, 2009
I need to figure out a way to experiment with different backgrounds in Photoshop so I know which direction to take the blue background, which is maybe a non-starter.
Feb. 2, 2009 This is a professional shot of the painting by Ken Wagner, not one of my snapshots. I'm going with this one and putting the poster on the on-line store here at this website and it's at the Pike Place Market store.
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.
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
May 22, 2008. I've worked on this hard this this spring and this is probably the final version which will become a 14 x 18 poster and is already a 12 x 16 poster. For some strange reason I could not get this image to go up on the on-line store part of the website, so it's sitting here for now.
Nov. 26, 2009 I've been working on this painting despite the fact that it is published and for sale. I'm hoping to republish it in December of 09, along with a large version of Steelhead that I've kept on working on and the Multiply bird poster.
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
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
