I’ve been working on a couple of new paintings. The one above is “Chickadee with a Pine Cone.” Real original name, I know. This was a personal project. I really enjoyed painting the original chickadee for my art class. I wanted to push myself and I knew this pine cone would push me in new ways. I found my reference photo on a website called Paint My Photo – pmp-art.com taken by Rodney Campbell. You can see the reference photo here. This is a popular photo but I still wanted to test my skills. I wanted to see if I could control my strokes in two areas, the feathers and the pine needles. I wanted the feather strokes to look less uniform and I wanted the pine needles to look more like the needles and not flicks of a paint brush. I’m pleased with the outcome in both areas. The pine cone was the most intense painting I’ve done in a while. It took careful attention to the shadows to make the detail pop like I wanted it to. In the end, I couldn’t be more pleased with the effort! (7×9;Painted on 140# cold press watercolor paper with Windsor Newton and Cotman Watercolors and a tiny bit of opaque white watercolor.)

The painting above is titled “Smoky Mountain Rise”. I have wanted for some time to paint a piece honoring those who lost so much during the wildfires in Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains. I grew up just north of this area, in the foothills of mountains that make up the larger Appalachian Mountain chain. When I first started painting, the Smoky Mountains were some of the first landscapes I attempted to paint. The wash of paint seems like such a simple thing to accomplish but in the end, it’s much harder to get it perfectly like I would like for it to be. This is my 2nd painting of this subject and I may try it one more time to fix a few things that I would have liked to have done differently. But overall, I’m pleased with this one too! (9×12; Painted on 140# cold press watercolor paper with Windsor Newton and Cotman Watercolors)