This one is done is my response to the Copy challenge. I wasn't thinking about copyrights or anything and just went right to one of my Andrew Wyeth books and copied one of his loose untitled watercolor studies of Karl Kuerner with a dead deer on a snowy hillside. I then realized that it might be illegal to have done this even though I am not planning on selling it. Wyeth works are not in the public domain.
Regardless, I learned a lot, especially after trying to match his color palette. He gets a lot out of just a few earthy colors with some mysterious cold grays and very subtle greens showing up here and there. When I saw these colors flowing across my paper, it was kind of magical to see the way they could suggest a lot with a little.
Then I did this painting based on some photo reference I had of a local 4th of July parade from years ago. I removed a lot of extra background stuff as I was going for that stark Wyeth quality and some of that mysterious feeling in the poses. "What are those guys doing out there in the road? Why don't they look happy?" I also forced myself to draw everything without using any of my graphic designer tricks with transfers and tracing... thinking that is what Mr. Wyeth would have done.
A peaceful relaxed view of a typical front porch in the summer in Tennessee. This one is somewhere near Columbia. I used a little colored pencil near the end and some gouache touches. Video below.
This cat pushed on our back door this past winter and came into our house. After finding the owner, we agreed to take care of her until the owner gets an apartment of her own and finishes school. So...we will see.
I am putting together a video of this painting, so check back and see if it is ready.
Here is another view of our nearby hiking/biking trail near the Wolf River. I used some torn sponges to add some leaf texture, which is something I haven't done in a while. I also made a video