Dog Portrait-finished

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16X20 oil on canvas

I finished Mr. Cooper today!  You all have seen him already but I will tell you what I changed today before declaring him finished.  Because at this point, adding more will just be more.

Here’s what I did… I added a halo of light on his tail, rump, head and back of legs a bit.  I reworked the side of the rock he’s standing on, adding the palate knife strokes, and the green grassy stuff on the bottom left.  I lightened and softened the top edge of the hill to push it back in space more, and I signed it.  I like the rough palate knife stroke, for me that sort of thing changes it from a blown up photograph in to a painting… art.

They are a little hard to compare because the one photo is a little warmer than the other.  It’s closest in color to the finished one.  But here you can see the changes I made today.

Ceramics

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One of these days I will take some pictures of the stuff I made with my daughter in our parent/child ceramics classes we took last winter and spring.  Those hands helping my daughter are the instructors.  I loved taking the class her, but I did learn that clay is not my medium.  I made one thing that I love, a raccoon.  My daughter made a lot of little jewelry dishes.

Have a great weekend!!Eowyn_lores

My girl.

 

And my next painting

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It seems to be a 2 post morning for me.  Yesterday I went running with my group.  The sky was really clear and the hills were green, blue, bumpy, and beautiful.  As I was running along I saw this gorgeous landscape ahead of me and jumped off to the side and let everyone pass and took this photo.  I always run with my iPhone so I can track my runs thru a GPS app, and so I can take pics like this.  I’ve been wanting to paint my group running out in the hills.  I’ve taken a lot of pics of them but they move away from me pretty fast and nothing has turned out yet.  But here even the dogs behaved.  They were pretty far away when I took this picture but I cropped it and pulled them back closer.  This is about half the gals and there is another dog off trail out of frame.  I’m going to sketch this out today and see where it goes.  Yesterday one of these ladies asked me if I would paint a painting of the group in the hills for her, I had already taken this pic when she asked me.  Then another asked if I’d do a family portrait action shot for her parents of all the grandkids.  We’re trying to figure that one out.  It’s all exciting and a little scary.  I’ll keep you in the loop.  Aren’t they beautiful?

Dog Portrait

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16×20 oil on canvas

This is the rest of the dog portrait that I was talking about yesterday when I only showed the very top of castle rock.  I’ve been working away at the doggie and he is getting there.  I still need to put a fringe on his tail and work out a few more things with him.  I also need to lighten up and grey down that back mountain up at the top to make it disappear.  I’ll try to make it look like it’s farther “back there.”  This painting has been tricky because the reference photo is a picture that the owner took.  It was taken in late summer so the grass on the hill was all dry and dead and the same colors as the dog.  The dog had just been shaved so he looked different than he normally does.  The owner wanted to capture a memory of her dog loving to climb up on this rock and pose.  I went out and reshot the area 3 or so weeks ago so I could bring in spring colors.  I reshot the dog because his owner likes how he looks when his hair is grown out.  I’m still working to get him to look like himself.  When he was shaved he looked like a lab or a shaved golden retriever.  He is a golden doodle,  I think.  He’s a beloved family pet.

Limes Away

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12X12 oil on canvas

First of all, thank you for the really nice response to my sons work yesterday.  He was happy to read all the nice comments you guys left.  He’s a good kid.  Some things come easy to him and some things he struggles with.  I want to clarify that he takes a painting class and works with a really wonderful artist that is teaching him how to lay down the paint, set up composition, grey down areas, and so on and so on.  We are lucky to have such a resource and artistic support.

On to the limes.  I painted this yesterday.  Sketched it all in.  I finished it and just thought, meh.  Today I like it a little more.  I am going to let it dry and then work on it some more.  the green of the limes and shadows are not quite there.  I think I’ll do a little still life of just one lime and see how far I can take it.  And one of a loose sketchy lime.  My style is always torn between this loose brushy expressionist type thing, abstracting the shape and form with gestural strokes, and wanting to go for full on realism.  So I will do both.

I thought I’d share a bit of the dog portrait/landscape that I’m working on.  Boy, it’s been a challenge.  The landscape itself has been fun and is clicking together, but getting the dog to “marry” itself into the composition is giving me the run around.  The piece is different than others I’ve done.  I’ll share more as it comes together.

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18X24 oil on canvas

This is another that is starting to come togetherFullSizeRender-107

8X10 oil on canvas

Lots of work in progress.

I completely finished, signed, and delivered the beach scene.  It was well received.

The Work of Ethan Millward!

On Saturday my son finished his Mammoth painting and asked me if I would feature his work on my blog today.  He was pretty proud of it.  This first painting of his is of our chicken Penny.  I love his chicken paintings,  he painted 3 of our 5 backyard chickens.  This kid can draw waaaaaaaay better than I could dream of.  And to think that back in kindergarten we had a silly meeting to determine what we were going to do about his fine motor skills because he couldn’t hold a pencil correctly.IMG_5146-2

And here we have the mammoth scene that he loves.  I love to watch him work, he doesn’t use any reference photos.  Everything comes right out of his head.

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Here he is in the studio.  This cool dude will turn 16 later this month.

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Another chicken.  This one is named “Fluffy Buffy Cute Cute Eowyn Millward.”  Can you guess who named it?  Not Ethan.

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This one is Ethan’s chicken, he named it Henny.  Our chickens are named:  Hennifer, Pennifer, Jennifer, Chipmunk, and Fluffy Buffy.  They are a lot of fun and VERY silly.IMG_5147

Here’s Ethan’s Peregrine Falcon.  Ethan is something of a naturalist.  He’s an expert on many types of animals.

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Ethan has been in love with dinosaurs for as long as I can remember.  He has drawn them from all perspectives.  I like the close up dino that looks like it’s looking at you.FullSizeRender-104

For a while he was working on doing illustrations for a book about frogs.  He has done several frog paintings.  This one’s my favorite.

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Ethan is building up his portfolio of drawings, cartoons, and acrylic paintings.  His dream is to attend The Art Center in Pasadena.  GO get em Ethan.

Draw!

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I’ve started carting around a small drawing pad everywhere I go so that I can draw and doodle and plan new paintings during the many waiting times in my life.  I wait while my kids are at piano, while they are auditioning for this or that, while I’m picking them up, for the doctor, the dentist, the orthodontist, for so and so to show, you name it.  I do a lot of waiting.  Today I pulled it out at church and doodled away this next painting idea.  I painted one lime in watercolors yesterday with my daughters little set of watercolor “pans” that I bought her.  I liked it and thought I’d do an oil painting with lots of limes.  With the canvas all full of limes.  Just green, white, and blue.

Lots of Stuff Going

 

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I have a bunch of stuff in the works right now but nothing completely finished to show today.  So I thought I’d show you all this new painting I started and a little about the process that I’ve started using more and more.

Scraping back.

The first time I tried scraping paint back I was afraid I’d lose everything and make a smeared mess on the canvas.  But with oils when they are wet, that doesn’t happen, or at least it hasn’t happened yet.  I’ve found that I can scrape back my thickish paint (I’ve always used a lot of paint, I like the look of it) and leave behind nice smooth flat color that has lovely blended edges.  I’m careful to clean my palate knife between each scrape.  After scraping off the color I can go back in and build up the painting again.  I focus on areas and build them up using the first hit as a guide.  At first you might feel like you are losing everything, but second time around always comes back better with more depth and nice edges.

Today I started this beach scene.  It’s the same beach as the one I just finished with the 4 kids.  With this one I used a more horizontal 10X20 canvas and left out the kids and raised the horizon line so there is less sky.  I blocked in the initial colors and then scraped back the paint.  Next I’ll build it back up again.

I’m selling this beach scene when it’s done, let me know if you know someone that wants it!

I did this one as a study for a bigger one I’d like to do.  Maybe 24X60″  but I’m thinking I need to paint my beach in Northern California, rather than this beach in Oregon that I’ve never been to.

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I also worked on Katie Peak today and hung it on the wall with my friends (my kids and my little baby niece).  This little landscape is getting there.  It’s much like the last little hill painting I did for the auction, but 8X10 instead of 8X8 square.  It’s for my friend that was outbid at the auction.  Win-win.  I think this painting needs one more go at it.  It was hard to do the same thing twice.  Have you ever tried to reproduce one of your own paintings?

Have a great day!!  XOXO

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I love this little face.

 

 

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