GABRIELLA

This was a 20 minute sketch done yesterday morning at a figure drawing session I go to on Wednesdays at the Ashland Art Center. I bought a new kind of charcoal I'd never used before, vine charcoal, and it was really nice how it smeared using my finger. The girl's dress was a black negligé of sorts, and the see-through part was easily rendered by simply smearing the paper in the areas that were transparent. During one of the breaks I discovered the girl's name was Gabriella, and she just moved here to Ashland from Jersey last fall. She asked me to see my drawings of her, and this was the best one.

OREGON COAST

The day before (see previous post) was a very wet and windy day at the Oregon Coast. This sketch was done the next day, which was a beautiful sunny day in the mid 60s with the air super fresh and clean from all the wind and rain. I did a series of watercolor sketches as well, but they're not complete enough to show here.

GREY DAY AT THE COAST

Sitting here in a condo overlooking the ocean near Brookings, Oregon. Winds are gusting up to 40 mph, and there's a fire going in the fireplace. Just did this sketch through a window that was blurry with rain streaks. Cozy and warm inside, but about to go out for a walk down to the ocean.

CALDERA TAP HOUSE PAINTING

Here's a photo of me putting the finishing touches on the painting I've been posting about these past couple weeks. The new Caldera Tap House is set to open to the public on Monday, and there's an invite-only opening tomorrow night in Ashland, Oregon. This photo was taken last night, so glad I got this done in time.

ALMOST DONE

Almost done with this painting for the new Caldera Tap House in Ashland, Oregon. As you can see in this photo, the wall is fairly rough, but I think overall the painting has come out well. All that's left now is to fill in the oval and then it's on to finishing work, including drawing the black outlines for the individual hop leaves, and also drawing black outlines around the edges of all green leaves and the barley at the bottom. A friend recommended using a paint pen, which is a great idea, as then the width of the line would be consistent.

CALDERA TAP HOUSE, PART 4

Almost done with this painting at the new Caldera Tap House in Ashland, Oregon. Getting the yellow to orange fade was not as hard as I'd thought; I just went for it and painted as fast as I could before the paint could dry. A friend suggested using matte medium or gesso to help with the blend, but I just used straight house paints and a fairly dry brush.

CALDERA TAP HOUSE, PART 3

Well, if you've been reading my blog recently you'll know I'm working on the painting of the Ashland Amber label for the inside of the new Caldera Tap House in Ashland, Oregon. It's amazing how long it takes to paint something like this. After finishing all the green leaves, I think I need to go back in and make the yellow veins a little narrower, which can be done by painting into them a little bit with the green paint. The tricky part will be the orange to red fade for the sunset sky above the mountain. Someone suggested I just paint a solid orange up to the banner (see original image below for reference), and then paint red above the banner, which is probably what I'll do. This housepaint stuff just doesn't blend well at all, and with the uneven surface of the wall it'd be very hard to pull off an even fade.