7" x 5" | Pencil on Paper

I only had two goals yesterday. First was to take some photos of butterflies and second was to do some pencil drawing; both were completed.

The female house sparrow you see was inspired by a photo I took in Washington DC April 2009. Somehow she seems to be an expression of how I have been feeling lately, but I won’t elaborate on that.

Butterflies are surprisingly difficult to get good photos of. Here are a few of then decent ones I caught. I wasn’t particularly happy with any of them, but that might be a sign that one of them should become a painting. Generally, my paintings are inspired by photos that are not particularly good. I almost never want to paint a great photo, because it is already in its ideal form.

I also discovered a vine down at the end of my driveway with some really neat flowers.

As always, I had to snap a few of the dog. Phoenix is really photogenic. Chewing on sticks in the backyard is still one of her favorite things to do.

And finally, I think this next one is my favorite photo of Phoenix ever. I particularly like it in sepia as seen:

I learned that blackberries are pretty hard to take good photos of…so most of them were bad. However, I did get this one really awesome photo, so I thought I would post it.

This photo has not been adjusted, edited, photoshopped or tinkered with at all. It is straight from the camera.

I love macro photography.

This is the first painting I’ve done in 2010 that is larger than 5×7.  This one is 12×16 oil on canvas. I am mostly done, but I do have one more session planned for the kind of tweaking that can’t be achieved wet on wet.

I am happy to be getting faster these days. I used to spend a lot longer working out details. Partly I think the figure drawing class I took helped, and partly just experience.

The inspiration flower came from my back yard. Not sure what it is so if you recognize it let me know. I enjoy over saturating and adjusting colors in my paintings as you can see. It’s fun.

I feel kind of cliche painting so many flowers…but they are fun and more importantly they are easy models to find, especially this time of year. Plus, flowers are pretty.

I actually had a lot of trouble that evening because I initially picked a difficult angle, and then I moved probably 15mns in and had to move a lot of the lines…so it really cut down my time. You can tell that my focus area was on the legs, and in particular the lower bent leg. The upper body looks strange because I didn’t place the fabric she was laying on which covered some of her skin. Without seeing what is covering some of the skin, the shape looks kind of odd and too narrow. Anyway…some days things click, and some days they don’t.

Week seven I was mainly experimenting with different kinds of lines. I don’t think either experiments were particularly successful, but they were interesting all the same.

I am in the middle of a painting I will try to finish and post in the not too distant future. It’s of some more pink blossoms and a glass. These days, all I am interested in painting is flowers and glass. But I think it’s just that time of year.

There are some really great buds on a bush at the back of my house right now. I am trying to decide which one of these I will paint. I’m leaning towards the second one. I really love the drama of the lighting…not that I couldn’t add some to the first…we’ll see.

Before I move on to the sketches, here are some daffodils from my back yard the other day. They seem to come up around my birthday every year, which is a nice treat. However they always seem to get a cold shock and  whither quickly. I like the focus in this photo on just one flower thanks to my amazing 50mm prime lens I got for xmas.

Now on to the figure drawing sketches. Sorry about the really heavy shadows. That’s what you get for taking photos in the evening while standing on a chair. I couldn’t be bothered to re-do them though.

Session three

15mn with a focus on the knee

30mn with a focus on the midsection

Session four

15mn cropped to focus

30mn focus on shadows

It was fun all the same and I got a few other neat photos.

In case you are wondering, the answer is yes, the saturation and color has been boosted on this lot. It added some neat blues to the tree bark among other things : )

My only regret on this trip is that I noticed that there was an “endangered amphibians” exhibit at the zoo right before it closed which I wish I had seen. I love painting frogs. Ah well…there is plenty of other great reference photos for painting from this trip…including a couple neat frogs who lived in the reptile exhibit.

In the Quarter

Street Musicians

Interesting Looking Pigeon

Buggy Tour

Street Sign

Street People Dancing to "Thriller"

Evening

Interesting Colors

Audubon Park

Duck

Another Duck, Preening

Pokey Birds (Don't know what they are.)

Squirrel on Trash Can

Audubon Zoo

Flamingos

Straw-Necked Ibis

Radjah Shelduck

Masked Lapwing

Nicobar Pigeon

Don't know this one's name.

Not sure what this one is called.

Bengal Tiger

Cleaning...

Pacing...

Elephant

Flowers

Cormorants

More Cormorants

Pelican

Requisite Aligator

Black Bear

Rhino

Giant Leaf Frog

Panamian Golden Frog

This one is extinct in the wild. : . (

Kori Bustard

Indian Roller