I’m challenging my bestselling painting, plus new paintings and endless reworking

09 Oct I’m challenging my bestselling painting, plus new paintings and endless reworking

First posted October 9, 2022 then revised Nov 7, from Seattle, WA

OK, this doesn’t look like much now but in my mind’s eye it will turn into a beautiful print and poster that will challenge my 1999 painting Pike Place Flowers that has sold well over $1 mn in prints posters and notecards. This will give it a run for it’s money or I will cut off part of my ear.

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There’s been issues with my lighting in my studio and an endless line of photoshop files of my paintings that I am finish-painting on the computer. Surprisingly, painting on the computer, at least the way I do it, is immensely slower than painting with real paint on an easel. Sometimes I think I have improved an image significantly and then I can’t tell which one is which when the new print comes back.

This Kestrel is one painting I’ve been working on with brush and easel. I like it, but I was hoping for a Northwest background. I couldn’t figure out how to make a branch from the Northwest look and I couldn’t come up with a good Kestrel habitat background, so I through in a blooming Agave which puts the image in the Southwest but has the advantage of not needing any background. Sometimes it’s very hard to make a painting work when it contains a closeup subject with a landscape, all of us wildlife artist have this problem.

This will be a Red-tail in flight. Very difficult, we will see if this ever works.

Here’s another brush and mortar painting, of Kingston, WA. I like it but I am struggling with how to make it work with the upclose bird combined with a landscape, as I was saying. I also fear the reaction if I use Pelagic Cormorants as the subject. This bird is fairly bright, but most times when a human sees a Pelagic Cormorant they don’t see the green and purple irridescent brilliance or the red on the face, and the bird is not celebrated as much as it should be in my opinion

This is one in a long line of files I’m trying to cherry up for coming publications. This is the painting we call “Baby” which I am hoping to publish in an XL, 12 x 36 format.

This is getting close to done. I started it 21 years ago, it ought to be! Can’t sell it, it’s on foam core!

And this is Osprey (flying). It was a long road before I suddenly became very satisfied with this image.

I’m still working on the painting we call “Winter Respite” or “Last Tango in Poulsbo.”

I am still burning a candle to finish my Specialty Birds of South Texas medium skinny. Here is a painting I moved to the computer early that has taken a lot of time. But I moved it because the pigments it requires are hard to work with in acrylic. This is a Green Jay pair.

Here’s another work in progress: “Snoqualmie Falls” In the last couple years I changed the bird foraging in the Vine Maple from a Ruby-crowned Kinglet to a Chestnut-backed Chickadee.

Contact Ed at ednewbold1@yahoo.com

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