Baby With Dog

8" by 10". Guardian Angel dog watching over baby.

Turtle and Snake Painting, Painting Pets III

Is your pet a turtle or snake? If so, then I just painted your pets, or at least something like them. Painted from a photo, 5x7" canvas board.

How to Paint Like Caravaggio, Part II

This is the second post about Caravaggio and I've lost track of how many times I've painted in his style. In the other post I reproduced Youth With Ram and David With Head of Goliath. This time I painted my usual model as Boy With a Basket of Fruit; not copying the original but painting to look similar to it.

Cloudy Sunset Painting

A very quick and small, about 5 x 7", painting of a cloudy sunset, a nice excuse to paint the pinks and purples found in nature.

Friend as a Giant Eating a Person

This is a portrait commissioned by my friend Jim showing him as a giant eating a person like a sardine. It's somewhat similar to Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son. 5 x 7" canvas board.

Orange Cat Painting

Cross-eyed orange cat painting, commissioned. 8" x 10" canvas board.

Cupid Painting Reproduction, Detail of Titian's Sacred and Profane Love

Cupid oil painting reproduction, detail of Sacred and Profane Love by Titian. 6”x6” canvas board.

How to Paint Like Michelangelo, Creation of Adam

Technically, to paint the Creation of Adam by Michelangelo Buonarroti you'd have to paint with tempera paints onto wet plaster. If this plaster is part of a ceiling, as is the case of the Sistene Chapel, you'd paint it much larger than life so the people 70 feet below could see it without squinting. My reproduction painting is done in oil paints on a small piece of canvas sheet measuring about 5 inches by 8 inches, meaning you still might need to squint if it was right in front of you, and I didn't really paint like Michelangelo painted. But I still liked to reproduce the famous fresco in my own way.

Cherry Blossom Painting Van Gogh Style

Cherry blossom oil painting, painted Vincent van Gogh style similar to his Almond Blossom paintings, ~5 x 8" canvas sheet.

Van Gogh Reproductions: Starry Night and Sunflowers

I did two painting reproductions in one session: one of Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers (8x10" canvas sheet, 1.5 hours), and van Gogh's famous Starry Night (8x10" canvas board, 1 hour speed painting).

This is the first time I painted van Gogh sunflowers. One of his sunflower paintings is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It is an impressively large canvas that catches your eye as soon as you walk into the room with its vivid colors, stark contrasts, complementary colors, and the thick impasto forming all the parts of the flowers that jut out toward you. The first time I reproduced the Starry Night was on a 16 by 20 canvas for my sister, this little one is for me. I could have perfected the details and added more of his signature brushstrokes but the goal was to finish it in one hour.

Water Lillies Painting a Day

These white water lillies are not a Monet knockoff, but rather painted from a photograph, and just to be different (or to save canvases), it is painted on the acrylic-primed back, or verso, of a previous 5 by 7 canvas.

Painted simultaneously, an orange friend for the octopus the other day:

Peacock, Painting a Day

Painting of the day: peacock head closeup, painted from photograph, oil on canvas 6" by 6", painted in one hour. 

Octopus, Painting a Day

This colorful octopus is the first in a series of small 6" x 6" canvases of simple subjects to be painted in under an hour. Painted from a photograph, the creature had the loveliest bright pastel colors of light orange, blue-green, blue and purple.

A Friend as a Frans Hals Portrait

This is my friend Steve as a Frans Hals portrait. There are many smiling Hals portraits in this exact pose but the one I was inspired by was a portrait of Pieter Van den Broecke. I've painted Hals paintings before, most recently a friend as Malle Babbe.

How to Paint the Mona Lisa

This is my friend Anika as Mona Lisa, painted on an 8" by 10" canvas, a size I've been using for most of my portraits. I can't say I've copied the techniques used to paint Lisa as there is no sfumato smile or glazed subtlety like in Leonardo's original, but I have been using under-paintings more, which is something they did in the Renaissance. This is the third time I've copied Leonardo da Vinci works, the first being a Last Supper from a decade ago, and the second being a tiny Lady With an Ermine.

Miniature Golden Eagle Painting

The painted wingspan on this little eagle is about 5 inches, whereas the wingspan of the golden eagle that landed on a branch outside my kitchen window was closer to 5 feet or more. That giant magnificent bird flew away from me when I went out to try to get a snapshot, and I could hear such  powerful flaps from its wings as it soared away. I didn't get that snapshot so I attribute Tony Hisgett, U.K., with the photograph I used for reference here. This is the second time I've painted a golden eagle, the first time as Zeus landing near Ganymede.

American Gothic, or How to Paint Like Grant Wood

This is my version of American Gothic by Grant Wood, a tried and true subject of imitation and parody since 1930.

Caribbean Waters and Rocks Oil Painting

After painting a snow scene, my painting's topic gets tropical. I've had enough of winter, and I'm dreaming of returning to the Caribbean this spring. This little canvas is from a photo I took of Devil's Bay, on the island of Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. The whole point of the painting is that beautiful clear turquoise water that I am so ready to wade into. I got the colors of the hot boulders and water so perfectly I just want to drink it. Or at least I want to drink a rum cocktail while swimming in it.

A Friend as Oliver Cromwell Portrait

This a portrait of my friend Noah as Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England during the Commonwealth or Interregnum period between kings Charles I and Charles II. There isn't much to distinguish this portrait as supposedly one of Cromwell, except for the unadorned suit of armor that he wore in the painting I referred to. He was a very plain and Puritanical man (he banished Christmas after all), and while later in life he may have enjoyed pomp and regalia as king in everything but name, in essence he was a moral and simple man of the people.

At any rate it is always nice to paint metal.

How to Paint Like Pieter Bruegel

Hunters trudge home through snow after a less than substantial winter's hunt, with all their tired dogs in tow, and ready to sit in front of the fire with a hot porridge and a warm ale. The workers of an inn nearby are busy preparing for the night's clientele around a bonfire, while their placard swings in the cold breeze. Sprawling into the distance lies a bustling lakeside valley, alive with young and old alike taking advantage of the frozen ponds with their sleds, tops, curling stones and skates. It's a winter's day in the life of a post-medieval town and countryside in Pieter Bruegel's "Hunters in the Snow."

While Bruegel's mid 16th century painting style is easy to reproduce as I've done here, this is by far the most complex composition I've painted in quite some time, with so many figures, trees, and buildings. This painting gave me a reason to slow down and realize that paintings can take more than a day to complete. So I took my time and worked back and forth between fore- and background, large areas and details as I saw fit.

All the while I only had to look outside my window during this February storm for snowy inspiration. If my dog were here, we'd be out trudging like these hunters.