Painting a 1.5″ horse isn’t easy! Back in 2017 I did a series of tiny oil paintings for an art show in Nashville. This one is called “High Plains Drifter” inspired by the spotted horse Clint Eastwood rode in the famous film. The painting is tiny at 4″ x 6″.
From Life Figure Drawing
Every serious student of art at some point takes a life drawing course in college. After college was done I missed life drawing; the opportunity to fine tune my skills from a real live figure, to improve my speed and style with gestures, the fun of being with other artists in the studio. Thankfully in 2009 I was lucky enough to find something similar at a life drawing meetup in Austin. Later I would join life drawing groups in Nashville and Denver.
This pastel drawing was done at a wonderful life drawing group in Nashville, Channel to Channel https://www.channeltochannel.com/. I started with a quick gesture and in about 20 minutes this developed into a completed drawing. This particular model was one of my all time favorites; easy to draw, great poses, good at holding a pose. I got a lot of my best drawings from her poses!
StarPOW! oil painting
This is an oil painting I almost finished in 2008. It had some technique issues, I considered giving up on it and did not work on it again for ten years until this past June 2020. I really put the effort in, wasted a lot of oil paint figuring it out, it was not a well planned project. I repainted it almost entirely, the figure, background and finally finished it! The colors and composition are absolutely stunning in real life, and it looks beautiful on a wall at a large size of 20” x 47”!
Mount Falcon Oil Painting
This oil painting was based on a photo I took on a hike at Mount Falcon here in Colorado. It’s a small piece of work at 6″ x 6″. You can see the progression of the work from basic quick drawing to a fully developed painting.
Running Horse pastel drawing
This illustration was inspired by the a brilliant artist I have loved since childhood, Walter Foster. You can see the progression of the drawing from large shapes to developed completed drawing.
“Blue Shoes” pastel drawing
This drawing was inspired by an illustration done by a famous comic illustrator. I love to draw people in motion and shoes are always great fun to draw as well! This is a pastel drawing with gold accents, at 13″ x 15″ completed in 2019.
Life Drawing
This is a full figure life drawing I had started and almost finished during a life drawing session months ago but didn’t. I got stuck, ran out of time and let this drawing sit and came back to it yesterday to fix some issues and complete it. Its a miracle that it turned out as well as it did, since I had no reference material to work with.
I really enjoy working with pastels because the colors blend together beautifully and embody soft but vivid qualities.
Santa Fe Sundown
“Santa Fe Sundown” is an oil painting on wood, 6″ x 6″ x 2″ which was inspired by my visits to Santa Fe New Mexico. This painting was a study of color and blending with a wet brush and dry brush.
Blood Sky
“Blood Sky” was painted on top of a painting I had given up on, using extra paint from a smaller oil painting I was working on at the same time. Just goes to show that if you leave something laying around long enough you will find a use for it. There weren’t any planned strokes in this work, no reference material, it came from my imagination. The work is a study of color and how color is used to build background foreground.
