A male House Finch on my back deck having lunch

I am honing my birding skills by making pictures of birds feeding on our back deck. Eventually I will introduce some natural surroundings to capture these little guys on tree branches. In the mean time, I thought some of the painters out there would like to take a crack at painting this beautiful little House Finch. If you do paint or draw him, send me a picture and I will display them in this post! I hope you all are having a great Sunday.

Lee

Here are the paintings I have received of our little bird!

My November Painting Challenge Submission

Ahhhh, a holiday weekend with plenty of time to paint. Well, here it is – my November painting challenge submission of Château d’Azay-le-Rideau. Although I started with a pretty tight drawing, I tried to keep my brushstrokes loose. I struggled a bit with the reflection but generally like how it turned out.  OK, I will admit, this was a tough challenge. It seems so easy when I put up a photo. Painting it, however, is an entirely different proposition! Below is a detail shot of the brushstrokes.

November painting challenge detail photo

11x14 inch sketch of Azay le Rideau on Gessobord

Here the sketch I will use to paint Azay le Rideau for the November ADNW challenge. To make the sketch, I first drew a 1-inch grid overlay on top of the reference photo using Photoshop. To keep things simple, I printed the gridded photo at actual size, which is 11 x 14. I then drew a 1-inch grid on my 11 x 14 Gessobord ground using a ruler and small T-square. At that point, all I had to do was sketch the chateau to the Gessobord using the 1-inch gridded photo as my reference. As long as I drew the correct lines in the right box, my sketch would be drawn in the right proportions and perspective. Once I finished sketching, I used a kneaded eraser to erase as much of the grid from the Gessobord as possible. Before moving forward, I must spray the surface with a workable fixative so I don’t wipe away my sketch when I start to paint!

Gridded printout reference for Azay le Rideau sketch

When I start painting, I plan to first tone the Gessobord with a very pale yellow. The pale yellow will serve as my brightest lights, which is where the sun is the most intense on the chateau in the photo. The transparency of the toning combined with the white primer should allow the lights to reflect back and pop against the progressively darker areas as I paint them in. We shall see!

Château de Chambord

I am planning to start selling my work in nicely made museum quality frames. To test possibilities, I thought I would first visualize a series of framed French Chateau images processed in sepia. To me these images work well with an aged photo technique because the structures themselves are about 400 to 500 years old. Wanting a frame that complements the images, I built virtual prototypes in Photoshop from a photo of a frame that adorns an oil painting in my collection. They would be somewhat pricy to have made, but I like the way the gold leaf liner sets off the image and how the wood provides richness to the overall impression of the scene. Now to meet with the frame maker and get them built!

Château Azay-le-Rideau

Château de Cheverny

Château Azay-le-Rideau

Boathouse in the Loire Valley

What could be more perfect than a boat tied to a quaint little boathouse with flowers everywhere and no swing set in the back yard? The beautiful scene above is one we ran across while visiting Chateau Azay-le-Rideau in the Loire Valley. As I crossed the bridge, I was instantly drawn to the near perfect composition of elements. If you are attracted to a scene, there is probably a good reason. I highly recommend you stop for a second to try and figure out why. Once you do, the trick is to get the camera to see it the same way you do.

Along these lines, the original color photo (shown below) is almost too much. Although beautiful, the camera sees everything in the scene with the same intensity, which makes it a little overwhelming. It is like getting whacked over the head with a color sledgehammer. So, because I was originally attracted to the boathouse, I processed the photo in a way that would draw the most attention to it.

The original photograph

First, let’s address cropping. In my view, the boathouse fits nicely in the left third of the photograph. If you are not familiar with the Golden Ratio, you can read a quick primer that I wrote a while back HERE that my help. It is basically the rule of thirds with a little math thrown in for good measure. In addition to being able to position the subject near a third, it’s also nice that there are a number of converging lines that also draw our eyes to the subject.

After cropping with the concepts above in mind, I ran a black and white conversion on the photo with an Adobe Photoshop plugin called Silver Efex Pro. After the conversion was done, with a click of a button, I ended up with a new black and white layer on top of the original full color layer containing the original photo.

Showing the layers and painting with mask to bring back color

At that point, I used a layer mask in Photoshop (shown above) that allowed me to “paint” in the color from the layer below. The black/dark areas in the mask layer in the upper right of the layer palette are where the color is being let through from the photo below. Looks complicated but it really isn’t.

In much the same way I paint, I tried to focus the most color and detail around the subject. If you look at the final image at the top, the flowers are more saturated the more you move toward the boathouse. Also, the vignette mutes some of the peripheral detail so we can focus more easily on the subject. Photos like this can be processed a million different ways and it is great fun to experiment to try and achieve your artistic vision. Give it a go!

I just had to give this one a go. It has been a while since I have had the pencils out and it was fun to finally sit down and draw again. I think I will try another when I have time and just focus on her face. This drawing is about 10 inches high and I found it difficult to work the right amount of detail into the the piece.  Thanks to those that are submitting work for this month’s challenge. It is always a joy to see your work!

Lonely brushes this month

It will be back! Sorry no picture  to paint this month. Between work and getting ready to head to France, it has been tough to find the time to set the challenge up the challenge for August. Rest assured that it will be back the third week of September. You will have until the end of October to complete your submission. The subject? Well France of course. Provence to be specific. We will be staying in Paris, the Loire Valley, Avignon, the hilltop town of Roussillon, and Nice. If I can’t take a compelling picture in one of those places to paint, I’ll give up! Van Gogh liked the area so I suspect you will too.

Thanks to all that have participated in the past. It is such a joy to see your work and I look forward to seeing more in the months to come!

When does old become beautiful?

I have had my eye on this old house for a while. I am not sure who owns it or anything about its life but I always glance at it when I drive by. This place sits on a ranch about five minutes from my house a ways back from the roadside fence. I found it particularly beautiful yesterday now that the cottonwoods are beginning to burst with a gorgeous spring green. The scrub oak has not sprung yet and I think it adds a nice area of interest below the ponderosa trees as well.

This photo was made from a single handheld shot with my Canon DSLR and a 100-400mm lens. As I said, the house is in the distance so the only way to make this shot work is to bring it closer with a long lens. Once downloaded, I applied a little sharpening and did a bit of dodging and burning to accentuate the elements I found most interesting. As if I was painting on canvas, I wanted to make the house the focal point so that is where I applied the most detail, focus and contrast. I also added a bit of glow to the grasses up against the house to amplify the feeling of the sunlight in the scene. To complete the treatment, I used the Topaz Simplify plugin to create a simplified layer and then used layer masking to bring back the detail I wanted.

This process as a blend of photography and digital painting. For me, it adds an incredibly interesting new dimension to my photography and fine art pursuits. Give it a go!

"Autumn in Central Park" - 11x14, Oil on Panel

What kind of person hosts a challenge and never participates? I have been bad so please forgive me! Here you folks have been doing the work month in and month out and I have been sitting on my duff. My conscience got the better of me this month so here is my submission for December. Frankly, I had an overwhelming desire to get the brushes out. I missed them. I completed the underpainting a couple of weeks ago and finally got around to finishing the work today. I had a blast! Except for the figure, I restricted myself to a number 4 filbert on this painting, which forced me to keep things loose and really think about how I was describing each form.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the challenges this year. I truly appreciate your submissions. It makes all the time work while. Best of all, I feel like I know many of you now and my life is richer for it. Keep up the good work and I look forward to seeing your pieces again next year!