Get Rad Man

I met Rusty almost 10 years ago at an Arizona skatepark. He had driven there in a beat up van he called The Radmobile from his home in Kansas City, MO, with his best friend, Zach.

Rusty has serious skateboarding skills, but you'll never find him in the limelight. He skates purely for the love of it. He's 100% skateboarder, and he's so much more. Rusty is a talented and prolific artist. His street art is all over Kansas City. The pattern I painted on his seat is a stencil Rusty made for grip tape art. Rusty is intuitive. He has an uncanny ability to locate the best donuts in town, no matter where we're skateboarding. He also rocks the guitar, and he's a formidable Wordfeud opponent.

Rusty Durio is one of the Good People of Skateboarding.

Get Rad Man, 30x40 inches, oil on canvas in wood frame

Detail

Detail

Small Works

I've recently joined a good group of creative people called the Arlington Artists' Alliance. Around this time of year, the group hosts a Small Works show at Cassatt's Cafe and Gallery in Arlington, Virginia. I painted these two 5"x7" pieces for the show. I like making tiny works. One or two days and each is done.

The finished pieces, in cool vintage frames.

Head in the Clouds, 5x7 inches, oil on canvas

Cat Nap, 5x7 inches, oil on gessoed board

An Icelandic Seascape -- Study in Orange

Orange Lighthouse at Öndverðarnes, Iceland, 8x10, oil on canvas, 2015

This lighthouse stands at the westernmost edge of Snaefellsnes Peninsula, at the end of a tiny gravel track across an ancient lava flow. The Svortuloft bird cliffs are just below it. It's a great place for whale watching.


I learned a lot about mixing oranges, and the light of the never-setting Icelandic sun. I painted and re-painted the lighthouse until I got those rich hues I was chasing. I used a very limited palette for the piece: cad red, cad yellow, yellow ochre, ultramarine blue, titanium white, ivory black. The underpainting is done in burnt umber.


Sitting down to paint this one felt like a short vacation. Even now I can hear the waves crashing, and the birds shrieking. I can feel the fierce wind on my face. Maybe you can, too?


SOLD.




Old Glory at the Smithsonian

8x8-inch oil on deep, gallery-wrapped canvas

It's hard to avoid feeling patriotic sometimes when you live and work in Washington DC. I enjoyed watching the breeze make the giant flag hung from the National Museum of American History billow and dance. The transparency of the fabric in the mid-morning sunlight was something I knew I had to capture in paint. The deep shadows in the building's window wells also captured my attention.

Painting Nanta Dog

My sister is bonkers about her dog, Nanta, and with good reason! Nanta is a very sweet dog. Nanta is getting on in years, and starting to slow down a little. I painted this portrait of Nanta for my sis, as a gift. Shhh ... it's a surprise! (She doesn't know about this blog, so I think my secret is safe for now.)

7x5 inches, oil on gessoed acid-free mat board

The surface is acid-free mat board with three layers of sanded gesso. I toned the surface with a very thin coat of burnt sienna. I use water soluble oils, to protect my lungs from chemicals in turpentine and to make cleanup easy.

I drew Nanta from the photo at the end of this post. Because this is a surprise, and Nanta lives hundreds of miles from me, I had to choose from the photos my sister posts of Nanta on her Facebook page. I chose the photo below because the lighting brings out the texture in Nanta's coat. 

To paint Nanta, I loosely followed the method I've been working with lately, which involves completing a monochromatic "dead" layer first to adjust values before adding color. Normally, I would start with an underpainting in burnt sienna, but I thought this piece would be fine without it. Here's my dead layer:

Dead Layer

When the dead layer had dried completely, it was time to add color. I normally paint two transparent layers of color. I block out color with the first and add vibrancy with the second. I used a limited palette to paint Nanta: ivory black, titanium white, French ultramarine, yellow ochre and burnt sienna.

Limited Palette

Here is a photo of the completed first color layer. Normally I work with the background at this stage, but I liked the way the toned canvas complimented the rich colors in Nanta's fur, so I left it visible. I painted crude shadows in front of Nanta to "ground" her.

First Color Layer

I added the second color layer when the first was fully dry. For this color layer, I pushed the lights and darks, and looked for interesting color juxtapositions. I noticed subtle blues and greys in her fur, and brought those out where I could.

When the second layer was completely dry, I added the details that are so fun to paint. They  make the painting come to life! For this painting, I focused on Nanta's eyes, nose and whiskers.

The little copper frame I chose accentuates the warm palette of the piece. I hope my sister likes it!  

Finished and Framed



Real-Life Nanta

Great Salt Lake Waterscape

This little painting captures the dance between the ripples in the shallow water of Great Salt Lake and the shapes the water's movement makes in the sediment just below the surface.

I used this piece to explore the Flemish method, which involves several steps: imprimatura (toning the canvas), a drawing, an underpainting, a monochromatic "dead" layer (allowing for adjustment of values before adding color), a first transparent color layer, a second transparent color layer (adding vibrancy), and a finishing layer (adding final details).

Sold.

A Trio of Tiny Paintings of Icelandic Wildflowers in Vintage Italian Frames

Claire and I explored an active volcano in Iceland last summer. Delicate wildflowers blanketed the volcanic rock. I painted them for her, to remind us both of the adventure we had that day. I found the small, ornate, frames and thought the wildflowers would play nicely with them.

These paintings are 1.5x1.75 inches each, requiring tiny brushes and a steady hand!

For more information about these paintings, click here.