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.)

"I'll teach the seminar on obsessively reworking old paintings"

August 20, 2010. It's not the favored advice in the art world, but I have always believed in going back to old paintings and reworking them. I've wasted a lot of time that way and ruined some decent paintings, but my belief in doing it is somewhere deep in my soul and not doing it isn't really an option for me. This painting was first published in several forms in 2004. It has been very successful in skinnies but has failed when it has stood alone. I can't give up hope it could be successful in its own right: There's a look, that if it can be achieved, is really pleasing. This is the end result of the last month of work on it.

August 20, 2010. I've also been working on this again. The 14 x 18 poster is getting near sold-out, and I'll need to re-publish it soon. I repainted the Lucifer male and the Broad-billed male as well as both Allen's & Rufous female and have dinked around on all of them.

Where's Duke? is almost sold out!

July 17, 2010. Where's Duke? is a limited edition print of a painting of a Raccoon family I did in the 80s, and it's down to 5 or 6 left at the store. I hate the thought of not having a Raccoon print at the store, so I started this one, but can it fill "Where's Duke?'"s shoes?

July 26, 2010.

August 2, 2010. Notice the brilliance with which I avoid having to paint any paws. I miss the warm colors from the earlier version, but I like this better than "Where's Duke?" so far. Historically the most treacherous part of the process for me is finishing and publishing, though and then of course the buying public gets to weigh in.

August 8, 2010

Redstarts for 8 x 10 and new Shade Coffee poster:

July 8, 2010. American Redstarts are among our most under-celebrated birds. Here in King County, we're on the margin of their geographical range. Nobody's cuter, and that goes for male and female. Insectivorous and migratory, they are on my worry-list. The 8 x 10 print will be at the store beginning July 11 or so, and the painting should be part of the new Shade Coffee poster in the planning stages.

July 27,6, 2010. Had to repaint both birds to keep them in the picture.

Finally finished Orcas:

June 4, 2010. This will be available at the Pike Place Market store

in an 8" x 31.5 inch large edition as early as possibly next Tuesday

June 8. It will be a sister print of Return of the Sockeye and Steelhead

and will sell for $25.00 print only.

Ready to Rock on new poster...

April 16, 2010. This painting is for a planned new painting "Rockfish of the NE Pacific" with the subhead: Biodiversity on the rocks. What is visible are cutouts, except for the Bocaccio in the upper right. I'll remove the cutouts and paint in the fish as I go.

May 2, 2010 All the paper cutouts are gone now, and that's all painted

Rockfish but no fish is finished yet.

May 12, 2010. The poster is going to have the sub-heading:

Biodiversity Rocks! The Shortraker Rockfish, bottom right, has

been aged to 205 years old. So obviously, the old advice of eating

right and getting exercise is wrong. If you want to live long,

become a Rockfish.

June 14, 2010. I'm hoping to have a 12 x 16 poster of this at the store

at the Pike Market by the end of this week.

April 3, 2010 new Bald Eagle portrait

I've spent a lot of time painting rocky NW coastline behind Bald Eagles,

to mixed reviews. None of my many Eagle prints has been a best-

seller. Therefore, even though I have open canvas to the left of this bird,

I'm thinking of calling off my brush and deploying this pretty much as is

to let the buying (or not-buying!) public register an opinion.

April 23, 2010 This will be available in 8 x 10 at the store on next Tuesday, and I'll try to get it on the on-line store soon.

 

April 4, 2010: Sill working on wide Orca painting:

 

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.

 

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 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

 

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.