Corner House Before Sunrise

As artists, we all tend to paint our surroundings. Some mornings when I'm heading out for an early morning workout this corner house is illuminated. It reminds me of an Edward Hopper painting. I of course cannot begin to mimic Hopper, but I can add my own spin to it. I've recently picked up many varieties of gel pens and Kuretake Gansai Tambi granulating colors both were used in this series of paintings.

Magical Hills

The fog was extremely thick on the day I took the photo that inspired this painting. Of course all images are open to interpretation.

Hopper On Freight

One of my current favorite painters is Edward Hopper. I'm drawn to what I perceive to be the "Aloneness" in his paintings and drawings. This house from my hood reminds me of that imagery. I recently dipped back in to my passion for gel and dip pens. This drawing started out with just the Kuretaki Aurora Violet as the background. I used a dip pen to add the drawing of the house and you know the rest.

Richmond Chick 2

We were on McDonald heading home and I saw these chickens behind a fence. Of course we had to stop for video and photos. This is one of the finished mixed media pieces that I completed of these characters. Many more will follow. Urban chcken farm...what a concept.

Night Flight 2

This was inspired by the sketches that were posted previously. I am in the process of evaluating what I currently have in storage. I have a lot of old sketchbooks that I have completed. Maybe I can explore them again with fresh eyes and different skills. Some of them were completed in 2009-2010. IMHO my people sketches were much better.

Point Reyes Layers

This was also inspired by the same set of plein air sketches I spoke about in my most recent post. Below are the sketches completed on site.

I recently purchased a set of oil pastels made by Caran D'ache. I think the next paintings will be with this medium. I will keep you posted.

Night Flight

I always go back to revisit old plein air paintings for additional inspiration. We made a visit to the Point Reyes National Seashore a couple of years back. I remember this visit because I sketched in the car to avoid snakes. Long story short, I encountered two snakes in one day at this location a few years back and it still haunted me. I sectioned off a number of squares on a page of mixed media Canson paper and completed about 5 little plein air sketches. I pulled that page out recently and did some pastels. I will try and post the sketches later. Of course I took liberties with the time of day or night.