Bucky Cat

6x6 inches, acrylic on paper

I've been thinking about painting our cat, Bucky.  She is a charming black and white female, rescued from the Humane Society about five years ago, and better than an electric blanket in the winter.  I love 

her sweet nature, plush fur, and the two freckles on her pink nose.  The challenge here was to choose colors that are interesting, not just black, white and gray.

Yupo Pose

11x14 inches, watercolor on Yupo synthetic paper

I had to laugh this week when a friend at our weekly art play date shared his reservations about painting on Yupo, which is a slick synthetic "paper" made of plastic.  He compared it to pushing around snot.  I guess you like non-absorbent surfaces, or you don't!  Certainly working on a surface that puddles if you are used to having paint soak in, can be disconcerting.  I like the challenge and the aspects of working this way that Yupo allows.  It automatically demands that you work a little looser, and it makes lifting out highlights wonderfully easy. 

I wish I could say I painted this from direct observation at the figure studio, but I worked from a reference photo our mode let me take last summer.  She always poses in yoga outfits, and obviously enjoys working with artists.  This makes for a very relaxed painting session, and I have lots of sketches of her done directly.  But these days I'm not going out on winter roads in the evening very much, so the pictures I took in July are coming in handy.  I also would never try to work on Yupo in the figure studio because I need to let layers dry as I alternately add darker passages and lift out whites.  This process works best for me at home.

I'm not unhappy with the results here, but I think I may use a clear acrylic spray to fig the image the way it is, and then go back and play with adding some acrylic glazes, just to see how it works. 

Another Snow Scene

10x10 inches, acrylic on paper

I've been wanting to paint a series of acrylic landscapes that were fairly loose and bordering on abstract, and then I just kept adding details.  Still, I did something I had been wanting to try.  I liked a reference photo I took of a road in the Palouse of eastern Washington, so I dug it out.  I took the picture in May, so the hills were a brilliant emerald, but here I decided to see if I could imagine the setting in winter.  I heard from a distant cousin there last week that there hasn't been much snow, but that didn't stop me. I spent way longer on it than I planned this morning, but I'm glad I gave the scene a try at last. Scenes like this are what I remember from growing up on my family farm - lots of brilliant sky morning and evening.

My plan is to mount the painting on a cradled board that I've painted a dark charcoal color.  After it dried, I'll varnish the whole thing, and wire it.