Best of Show and First Place

In the August Gallery competition my painting “Some Gave All and the Rest Gave a Whole Heck of a Lot” won Best of Show. I was so excited as that was my first Best of Show win. This is a 14″ x 11″ (matted to 20″ x 16″) watercolor painting of MY uniform with my top three medals (Joint Service Commendation Medal, Navy Achievement Medal, and Meritorious Unit Commendation Medal). For those who don’t know I spent 17 years in the U.S. Navy.

So, I entered the paintings from my last post into competition yesterday and I’m happy to report that my “Golden Koi” painting won 1st Place!

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Where Has This Year Gone?

I can hardly believe it is already September and my last post was in January. Time sure has flown by. My apologies for being MIA. I’ve had some personal things going on that have really taken up a lot of my time over these past 7 months. Do not worry though, I have still been creating art! I’ve also gotten really involved with a couple of Urban Sketching groups down in San Diego, but I’ll save that for another day.

I thought today I’d share with you some paintings that I have done in the last two weeks. This first painting I plan to enter in an art competition where the theme is “Rustic.” It is a watercolor painting (14″ x 11″) titled “Little Red Barn.”

This next painting was done in a workshop taught by Joyce Thomas. She is a wonderful English watercolor painter that resides here in Hemet. It is a watercolor painting of an English cottage titled “Dove Cottage.”

The third watercolor painting I am sharing I also plan to enter into an art competition in a miniature category; it measures 7″ x 5″. It is titled “Motel.” It is my interpretation of an old motel on Highway 74 in Homeland.

The fourth watercolor painting (10″ x 8″) is also going to be entered in a competition. It is titled “Yellow Koi” and was painted from a photo I took of the koi pond at Balboa Park in San Diego.

This last mixed-media painting (5″ x 7″) was done for a friend of mine. She loves dragons and asked me if I would paint one for her. I finally got around to painting it yesterday afternoon. I’ll be giving it to her a week from this Tuesday (hopefully).

I’d love to hear what you think. Thank you so much for stopping by. Have a Blessed day!

 

 

I’m back!

I guess I’ve been MIA lately. I don’t really have a good reason for it either. Not to worry though as I still have been making art in my absence. I thought I’d post a little bit of what I’ve been up to.

So I’ve been taking a fabulous monthly watercolor workshop with Joyce Thomas. She paints really fresh watercolors and I just love her work. So far I’ve attended three of her workshops. Here are the paintings I did in the workshops:

Let me know what you think about them. 🙂

Santa Clause Came to Town

I belong to an art trading site called ATCs For All and I recently joined a postcard (4″x6″) swap for hand drawn/hand painted Santas. I did my three postcard entries in watercolor. The first one is a close-up of a traditional American Santa, the second one is of an Old World Victorian Santa, and the third one is of a German Santa. I’d love to hear what you think of my Santas.

I Wish it Were Winter!

So, I’m a member of an art trading community called ATCs for All. On this site there is an ongoing trading forum of 5″x7″ original paintings where an artist will post three subject matters for a painting they would like to receive. The next artist chooses one of the three subjects and does a painting to send to that person. He/she then posts three subjects they like and so on. So the artist before me requested these three subjects: 1) Still Life, 2) Winter Scene, 3) Something Steampunk. Well I decided to go with the winter scene since it’s been over 100 degrees Fahrenheit here in Southern California for way too long.

Here is the painting I made for JSILVER. It is a mixed media piece — primarily watercolor with some white gouache and white gel pen. I hope she likes it.

Painting Again!

So I’ve been on a bit of an hiatus from painting…well at least from painting anything larger than an ATC (2.5″ x 3.5″). Today I finally got inspired and painted a red-breasted Robin in watercolor. It felt good to paint again even if this painting was only 5″ x 7″ in size.

Here is my Red-breasted Robin painting: