36" x 18" oil on stretched linen

This is the largest painting I have done since picking up a brush again. It was a lot of fun to pull the colors together and design the piece before starting to paint. I was trying to make the day look really cold yet add some warmth through the bird.

12" x 16" watercolor

I had started this painting en plein air but ran out of time in the field and decided to finish it in the studio. The sheep were very curious as to what I was up to and stood watching me very attentively. I also made a new friend in some kind of mutt that day.  I’m thinking I may try an oil painting of this same scene as a large painting. So far about the largest work I have done is 16″ x 20″, but I’m thinking much larger which is possible now that I have a studio that I can leave set up all the time at home. I hope you all have had a great Christmas and blessed new year.

  

12″ x 9″ oil on linen panel

This is my entry for this months Virtual Sketch Date. I did it pretty quickly this time and finely stayed a bit looser than usual.

12″ x 18″ Oil on masonite panel

This painting has an interesting story behind it. The base of the painting is from a drawing I did on the masonite panel somewhere around 15-18 years ago. I found it when I was going through some boxes of old work. I am not sure why I kept it but I decided this was another opportunity to play around with oils. I’m still in the learning stages of how to paint with oils. So this has been on my easel for awhile and I have done a few smaller paintings while I worked on this one. Partly because I couldn’t decide how to handle certain parts of the painting. Like the house in the background. I also went out and took some new reference shots of the tree in the fall to have some up-to-date reference materials. This tree is in front of Founders Hall on the campus of Ashland University. I have always loved these old pines and obviously wanted to paint them for a long time. The house in the background is the Gill Center which is also part of the University campus. No, the owl wasn’t really there either time. I am not sure why I placed the owl there other than I was into wildlife art back in my early days when I drew this on the panel. So I decided to finish it that way. Now I need to decide how to frame it and what to do with it. It may be time to start looking for some ways to show my art. 

Sheep Laying Together

7″ x 5″ watercolor and ink.

This is a quick study done as reference for a possible larger painting. I was also trying out a combination of pens with watercolor. I Hope to do a lot more of these in the coming year.

The White-tailed Deer, Odocoileus virginianus, has been extremely important in Ohio’s history. The state tree, the Ohio Buckeye, is named because its nut resembles a deer—or buck’s—eye. Buckeye is based on the Indian word “hetuck,” meaning “eye of the buck.” White-tailed Deer have been in Ohio since the end of the last Ice Age. The deer played a very important role in the lives of practically all of Ohio’s prehistoric Indian cultures. Ohio’s native people used the deer’s meat for food, the hide for clothing, and the bones and antlers for tools. Indians also used the hides, antlers, and bones for ceremonial purposes. There are tons of deer in our area and although there are those who do not like hunting, harvesting of deer through hunting is necessary to control the over-population and allow for enough area for these animals to rome.

What I have depicted here are 3 white-tails that frequent the field behind my house. I live on the edge of a residential area and behind our house is a grassy field then the alfalfa and the wooded area. It is early morning and the deer have come out to eat from the alfalfa. As in most herds the does are the ones that enter the open field first to make sure there is nothing to fear. However the ears up mean she has been alerted to something near-by.

So, my moly is on its way to Anne in Spain. Whew.

This is my first entry in my moleskine for the Moly_X_32. This is part of the international moleskine exchange.

Also cross-posted on my Flickr page.

Originally uploaded by redredpres

This is the first painting i have done for quite some time in oils. This is an 8″ x 10″ done from a photo i took at a nearby lake.