Bandit the Art Dog

This is Benny Alba's sweet pooch Bandit. When I first saw him I loved his unique markings and his crystal blue eyes.

Benny gave me the liberty to use a large unique size canvas [14x 43] and to paint him with a non-traditional palette.

He's very laid back and an awfully sweet dog. I really enjoyed painting him.

Dr. Kirby revisited

You may [or may not] recall the sketch I did of Kirby Cooper PHD during the Open Studios a couple of weekends ago. I finally did the painting I wanted of this man last night. I think it looks more like him because it features his piercing blue eyes and his beautiful white hair and beard.

Oil on 11x14 canvas

Not sure where I'm going with this...

It's one of those that I felt I needed to paint but now I don't want to say stuck but I'm not sure which direction I want to go.  So I will let it sit for a while until another thought comes to me.   

this is oil on a 12x24 canvas.

Daisy the Maltese

This is the first of three portraits I did for a friend. Her Maltese was rejected as being "showable" because of her pink nose. We made a couple of changes along the way because she wanted her to look more like "Elmo" from Sesame Street.

These are all oil on 6x6 gallery wrapped canvas.

Pachyderm Dream

and other weird visions. This actually came to me in a dream and don't ask me what I had for dinner last night. I don't know if it was a Timothy Leary version of Disney's Fantasia or bad cheese.

I'm curious what you think ( besides a possible 72 hour hold) of this oil on 18x36 stretched canvas.








Click image to enlarge

Only a face a mother could love

So this was a gift for a friend. 6x8 oil on canvasboard. Since their French Bulldog is a male, I thought a blue back ground would be nice. She said the blue was a "concern" and so I scraped and changed it to fit her homescape of deep green and pumpkin. Now it looks like he's trying to lick the background. Ah well, at least she's happy.

I finally did it!

I've been meaning to start this blog for quite some time. Okay, maybe just a few months. I thought if I started it now I would have it ready to greet the New Year in a couple of weeks. I'm really looking forward to 2009 as I'm sure many people are after a tumultous 2008.

I plan to document my journey into a career in fine art. I had declared a Major in Fine Art in college but because rent and car payments called, I ended up quitting college and entering the Oakland Police Academy after being hired by a Bay Area Police Dept. All through my police career, folks would ask me if I painted and I would always say, "No, not really."

A year after my retirement, I took some private lessons to learn some oil painting techniques and every once in a while I'll go back to water color but there is something about oil.

I thought oil was going to be like a slow drying acrylic paint which I was totally used to and very confident in. Not so Uncle Joe! Even with the fantastic developments in additives, textures and new techniques for acrylics (which I am dying to try also) there is so much you can do and learn about oil. I'm back to being a student but I'm loving it. After learning the basic techniques by painting landscapes [which I still don't like to do] I painted my first chosen subject. That is the painting at the beginning of this entry.

The splitstone or Lithop is a plant that has always fascinated me. The plants are native to the arid lands of Africa and grow only to a couple of inches across. I love how the plant appears to be a bulbous green blob until it splits and another "stone" appears and starts to grow and separate the "rock". Fascinating. In this painting, I didn't include all the little spots and blotches and kept the surface more smooth because I ended up liking the look of it. It's 24x30 and took me about 3 or 4 days to paint and then tweek a little after about a week of letting it dry.