30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day 1

We have moved studios and we are now up and running again just in time for artist Leslie Saeta's 30 Paintings in 30 Days January challenge!  I have been wanting to do this large Arcticscape for a while so at least for the beginning of the challenge, my daily postings will be showing the daily progress on this larger piece.  Today I laid in the major shapes with some preliminary color.

It is good to be back at the easel!

Villa Koi - COMPLETE

This is the completed painting, Villa Koi.  I hope you enjoyed seeing all the stages that led to the finished piece. 

Villa Koi - the Koi stages

Here come the Koi!

Working on the white Koi.

And then the orange and white Koi.

Extreme Koi close up.

Villa Koi - the pond stages

This is the beginning of a painting of the Koi fish at the Getty Villa. 

Putting in the first layer of the pond - a pea green wash.

Laying in the second layer of color in the pond. From this point on, all the paint is applied with a palette knife.

Adding some green to the pond floor.

Laying in the first lily pad.

The next lily pad is a deep, dark red and green.

And another lily pad in another beautiful variation of green.

Added another layer of a much lighter green, letting the dark green show through.

Now for some tiny lily pads.

Spent some more time on the light layers in the pond and then started on the submerged lily bowl.

Added some more color to the bowl but not too sure about the green.

Darkened up the greens on the pond floor.

Added the rest of the paint to the submerged bowl.

Summer Dreams

Lucky to be juried into this show with the California Art Club this summer with Balboa at Topaz!

Stained Glass But Not

Colleen Schaan is a regional instructor for Copic. I saw her video about making stained glass bottles with Copic ink. I did not have a glass bottle so I decided to use the mixed-media film that we used in a Copic workshop I attended this past January. My local Michael's and Joann's craft stores did not have a gold leaf pen but they did have silver leaf pen so what I ended up with looks like a stained glass window. 

30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day 27-30 - Buildings, Sky, Clouds, Water, Reflections - COMPLETED

Buildings, Sky, Clouds, Water, Reflections - COMPLETED

For the last 4 days of the challenge I worked on completing this piece.  I changed the sky and the water color from what I did initially, going a little grayer.  The dark blue band at the top became too dark and I had to wash out a lot of the color with the Copic blender.  The tones in the clouds are very subtle and I think might benefit from a little more contrast in the future.