Sketching by the Oklahoma River last night

I drew until it was too dark to see what I was doing. Also this week I saw scissor tailed flycatchers and great tailed grackles.

House Portrait, Pen & Ink

Oil Portrait: Boy, Dog, and Poppies

 Finished last night. 8 x 10 inches on panel.

This was commissioned by a coworker. None of the photos I took captured the subtlety in the skin tones...it does look best in person.

Pet Portrait -- A dog in oil, 16 x 20 inches

Pen-and-Ink House Portrait

house portrait in pen and ink

This is about 8 1/2 x 10 inches, and was done with a combination of disposable technical pens and dip pen with sumi ink.  It was a lovely house to draw, and I particularly enjoyed the shadows of the trees.

Pen and Ink House Portrait, Old Louisville

8 x 10 inches, finished a couple of weeks ago.

I would very much like to do some oil paintings of Old Louisville architecture.  The sunlight and shadows on the brickwork and roofs was very inspiring.

Oil landscape details

Early spring landscape along Floyds Fork

"Early Spring, Floyds Fork at Seatonville Road," 16 x 20 inches.  I finished this today at home after starting it last Friday on site.

I used a limited palette: burnt sienna, ivory black, burnt umber, Naples yellow, red iron oxide, ultramarine blue, titanium white.

I am very happy with the finished product, though this photo didn't pick up some of the subtlety in the tones.

knife painting - Germantown shotgun houses

Sylvia Street, Germantown

This is an oil painting I started about five years ago, and only had it at the underpainting stage before I put it on a shelf in the garage and forgot about it.  I didn't much like how it was coming along.  Finally, a few weeks ago, I pulled it out and used a painting knife to complete it.  It's one of my only knife paintings, and I like the result.  It was, for me, pretty experimental, since I don't have much experience with painting knives.  It was certainly different than the detailed pen and ink work I usually work on, and I want to do more soon.

Floyds Fork Winter Landscape (oil on panel)

This is a plein air (mostly...) that I just finished. The weather was cold on Friday morning, but forecast to warm quickly, so I got gear together and went out to the Parklands at about noon.  It was a great day to be out, though windy.

I used a limited palette: Ivory black, titanium white, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, burnt umber, and cerulean blue.

I finished most of this on-site, but did a little fine-tuning and touching up when I got home.

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walnut ink drawing: work-in-progress

sketchbook - in a big bath robe

House portrait, slowly progressing. ..

...and nearing the end, at last. I think I can finish it this weekend.

Pen and ink, late at night

I am trying to finish the first house portrait of the year. It's a combination of sumi ink and disposable technical pens.

Falls of the Ohio Pen and Ink Detail

 This is another closeup of a pen and ink drawing. This section is about 4 x 4 inches. I really like the closeups because I like seeing the pen strokes and the patterns in the lines. That border between the representation of the scene, and the abstraction of the marks on paper, is what I find most exciting about any art medium.

Landscape in oil, 16 x 20 inches

This was a commissioned work on panel.  I added a little more glazing after this photo was taken; I'll take more photos later, even though the difference is so small most people wouldn't notice.

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin sculpting

pumpkin sculpting with my daughters

Art Pumpkins: American Gothic

 Here is my second American Gothic pumpkin for the Jack-o'-Lantern Spectacular. The first one, drawn by another artist, had its face (or more specifically, the farmer's face) eaten by a squirrel. I created a replacement, but it was eaten by a deer. Here is yet another. I haven't seen it lit up.

It's a little hard to see in the photo, but this time, I gave the farmer a widow's peak and fangs.

Those are the phases of the moon framing the image.

Clinton and Trump Pumpkins

Here are two pumpkins, both drawn by Edward Cabral, and carved by me (because they needed to go out for the show but Edward wasn't around).  Edward did a great job, and I hope my carving skills did them justice.  In my humble opinion, the eyes on both really sing.

artists: Edward Cabral and Mark Tabler

artists: Edward Cabral and Mark Tabler