Rob’s Waterco☺ler

Been working on this for a few days.  Inspired from a 2004 trip with the USS Truman Carrier Strike Group.  Formation traveling through the Straits of Hormuz.  View from the flight deck of a Flight 2A Aegis DDG with the back nets down.

HB, 2B and 8B graphite on 100 lbs Lana paper, 14×17

Came home from work and needed to at least finish the rough of this 14×17 drawing.  Now it can sit a few days until I figure out what to do with it next, or be done with it.

Been awhile since I painted in my oils, so I thought I would break them out.  This weekend I ripped a stack of Pannelli cotton panels to 8×10 on my table saw and now have a nice stack to inspire some quick oil and acrylic sketches.  This is from a nice friendly squirrel picture I shot a few years ago and it made a nice subject.  This was done very quickly (about an hour) and kept loose.  I also used the six warm/cool primary palette.

Rob

This is an 11 x 14 acrylic sketch from a Middleburg Virginia reference photo.  I completed it the other day, along with a few other odd, less finished works.  Not sure if I am done with this so it will sit on the easel till I am ready to move forward, take it off and sign it, or toss it in the hall of shame.

On a side note: it has been busy here.  I have successfully crashed the website repeatedly over the last week trying to upgrade some of the .php files.  I finally gave up today and went back to the baseline that came with WP 2.3.3.  Maybe this weekend I will mess with it some more.  I am also in process of learning Ruby and Rails (Ruby on rails), and other misc web programming books (any guess how I crashed things!)

Speaking of books, let me tell you about my Amazon Kindle I got last friday.  I have been watching on the sideline the progression of ebooks for at least a year now.  When I found out that the Kindle now:

1. Works (with some manual effort) with .PDF files
2. Will soon (this month) have access to the O’Reilly Books (computer geek books)
3. on top of the other features like wireless, compatibility with other ebooks and document types,

 I went ahead and caved in.  So far I am liking it.  If you are an avid book reader (with $375 sitting around idle), or require a large amount of technical books which you read some times, this might be for you.  Time will tell if I am completely sold (although I guess I am stuck with it for better or worse).

Rob

The Clifton Art Show was last weekend (which pretty much got rained out) and I had very busy week full of getting used to my new 40 mile commute to work.  I must confess that I have not done a lot of artwork in the last 5 or so days.  Last night I jotted this 16×20 drawing down on 140lbs CP Arches and started adding some color (not shown).  Tonight I may work on it a little more and post a shot tomorrow.  This was drawn from a reference photo taken by Gina at a craft fair a few months back.  She watched the nice lady in the wheel chair get parked next to the unsuspecting little girl in the stroller and snapped the picture.  My intent is to make this look very Norman Rockwell -ish, only abit looser.  Should be pretty cool.

This Saturday I am going to the Aldie Virgina Mill (or there-abouts) with the NOVAL group of en plein air painters.  Should be fun.  I am taking the twins to thier first official paint-out with other artists so wish me luck!

Rob

Not much to say about this 11×14 acrylic painting except it is a work in progress.  It definitely looks better in real life  so I will have to re-photo it in better light.  I also need to tune the perspective abit.  Nice thing about acrylics is they are sooooo… forgiving

***9 June update**** I fixed the pilot house before I went to bed last night and shot a phot in better light today.  Much better!  I used a reference photo of a Tuna Boat in San Diego I tool some time ago.  The background and the pier area is very simplified.

This was done with the same six color limited palette I have been using.

Rob

Last night we had no power in Manassas, again.   Today the temperature was in the mid 90′s and more thunderstorms moving in.  This seems to make it rather difficult to do much painting, however today I managed to crank out this little 9×12 sea bird.  I used a reference photo from a San Diego trip I took some time ago and I have no idea what kind of bird it is, but it was interesting, (hence why I took the picture )

I used the six primary color limited palette again.

Rob

After watching Michele Frantz do her limited palette demonstration last night I came home and whipped out this quick, 45 minute, 9×12 acrylic sketch I have titled: “Whatsa you lookin’ at?”  I stopped last night because I thought I had the basic idea down and planned to go back into it and add detail.  Looking at it tonight my feelings are to leave it alone and sign it.  There is a very nice appeal to it, largely because I used the 6 color limited palette system Michele taught and it seems to have worked nicely.  Of note, I am usually reluctant to paint in acrylics because I rarely like the results, however this painting seems to break that trend.  I am going to try another tonight I think.

Rob

Last night we had tornadoes and other severe weather come through Northern Virgina and it knocked out the power and Internet to much of the region.  We had power, but no Cable, Telephone or Internet.  I took advantage of the free time to add some watercolor to this pencil sketch I started the other day on the Manassas Battlefield.  Not sure it improved the picture, but it was a good exercise in using colors.

Rob