Views of Fort Macon

These are two more small 3 1/2 x 5 paintings. Both are different scenes from Fort Macon Sate Park, near where my dad and sister live in North Carolina. These were part of my Christmas present series, and were done for my nephew and brother-in-law who live here in NJ.

More small Christmas houses

I had a slowish afternoon today - at least until I started getting phone calls from work! But during the lull I painted two more of little 3 1/2 x 5 house portraits. I always thought I hated to work really tiny, but this little portraits are fun to do and a real challenge.

Fuzzy Little Buck

Darn the photo of this one. This is another of the small 3 1/2 by 5 inch paintings I am doing as a Christmas gift - a picture of "Little Buck", a young deer we used to see often at Rifle Camp Park. He was very distinctive looking, and you could pick him out of any crowd of deer.

I took three photos of him to make sure I got a good shot, and then framed and wrapped the painting. It was not until after that that I found *all three* of the photos I took were out of focus! I've never had that happen before. Grrr, can't retake, so this is the best of the three.

Winter Moon

The other night as I was getting ready to head out in my car, I was struck by the beauty of the full moon shining down on the street. Of course I didn't have my camera, but my new cell phone has a 5 megapixel camera built-in, and I always have my phone! So I took it out and tried to capture a picture of the moon. I was pretty happy with how it turned out, so decided to try to turn it into a painting. I worked on this tonight but it's just a quicky - only about 30-40 minutes spent on it. The photo didn't have a lot of detail to work with so I was more than just some "blobs" in the photo to translate into the painting. :-)

How's the Water?

It was back to class last night after a couple weeks off, and I finished up my penguin picture. I was not totally happy with my progress when I posted it last time, but a number of minor modifications made me feel better about it, and this is the finished deal. As usual it's on 9x12 Art Spectrum paper.

But since I still had plenty of class time left I needed to start a new painting, but I was prepared for that and even knew what I wanted to paint. The other day I was hanging out on the street corner waiting for a bus home, and I thought the scene with rush-hour traffic and city lights looked pretty cool. My new HTC Hero cellphone has a 5 megapixel camera built in, so I took it out and snapped a shot. I was pretty happy with how the shot turned out, so I decided I wanted to try to paint the scene.

This is a bit bigger than most of my paintings have been - a 12x16 size instead of 9x12 - and a bit more intricate, so may take me longer than my usual 1 classday to complete. :-) But I got a good start on it, so am showing a preview below of how far I have gotten so far.