New work, but as always, tweaking the old!

12 Aug New work, but as always, tweaking the old!

Posted from Seattle, WA August 12, 2015

Hi everybody, I’m as thrilled as ever to get more paintings done, and almost as thrilled about making my old paintings even a tiny bit better.

The trip to New Mexico created a spurt of new paintings with more on the way.  I want to do a medium skinny of familiar Southwestern Birds.  The interest in the Southwest stems directly from the drought and the devastating hit the Northwest eco-system took this year, from suffocating overheated salmon to early-departing swallows and dead seastars.  I love the Northwest, I don’t want to feel like a liar creating happy work if the happy is gone.

This will be the anchor piece for the new SW familiar birds medium skinny.  A Gambel’s Quail on a last-year’s Agave.  It has the composition I like for a top-of-a-skinny painting.

Here’s a start on a Vermilion Flycatcher for the SW skinny.  I got a ways on a Swainson’s Hawk painting also but might want to restart that one in the air, a flight pose not a sitting pose, for dynamism.

Here is an painting I started a while back at the instigation of Robert Wall of Clallam Bay.   I owe everything here to  ref and ideas he provided.  Look for his shop, which will be in a new place next year, if you get out to Clallam Bay.

This file is not translating on this website, as reflective prints of this file look fine and not garish, at least nothing like that.  Too bad, I’ve put a lot of work into it and wanted it to look good.  I could fix the file for the website, but that kind of misses the point.  A new version should be at the store in three weeks or less.

My last new start, Snoqualmie Falls, reached a devastating conclusion.  I loved it, loved it, loved it, then as I finally finished it I realized I hated it.  When this happens, I try to drop the painting out of my mind for a while, move on to something else and let go of any emotional tie I have with it.  Next time I look at it, I can either say, “Oh, I see how to fix that!”  or possibly:  “That’s beyond fixing!”  We’ll see.

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