Caught Looking

It's fun to give some thought to guessing what this little parrot has interrupted his grooming routine to peruse. Is there a hot little parrot chick out there? Maybe there's a human (how dare them) trying to snag him for a photo, or perhaps it's a wild monkey climbing the next tree in search of bananas.

In any event, I painted this guy awhile ago, photographed the painting and stored it on Photoshop. A few days ago I was looking at photos and playing around with the many different treatments you can perform on your pictures. I discovered an unfamiliar one that turns a photo into a monochromatic version of whatever color you have already selected. These looked to me like they should make some interesting collages. This is the first, but I carried it a bit further than I had intended by painting much of the parrot over again with my acrylics, and then did some outlining with marker before varnishing.

Caught Looking is 11 1/2 x 15 1/4 inches on 140-lb. Arches Cold Press Watercolor paper.

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I Haven't Disappeared

There are other facets to the art biz besides making art, and although that's what I'd rather be doing right now, the fact is I'm working hard doing some matting and framing for a couple of exhibits.

Although I haven't finished a new painting today, I thought I would put a new one up on the blog anyway. This one is called Can You Hear Me Now? It is an acrylic, marker and watercolor mixed media on watercolor paper. I started by using an acrylic heavy gel and just creating some texture on the paper. At this point I had no idea what I would be painting, and I let the paper dry and sit for about a week. The next time I looked at it, I just "saw" banana leaves, so the parrot seemed a natural fit for a subject. I drew these things on with a pencil to use the drawing for a roadmap before painting.

When watercolor goes on top of acrylic, it is very slick and moves around a lot, so the result is a nice loose painting. I love the colors in this painting. At the end, I did some outlining with a black marker to define form. There is a huge amount of texture in this painting that you just cannot see in the photo, but it's there -- all over the place.