I really love planting wildflowers. It’s interesting to look out the window and see the bees buzzing around the blossoms or hummingbirds getting nectar. My favorite thing, though, is when I see finches in the flowers. They’re so beautiful. They like to eat the petals. I’ve wanted to portray one of them for a long time. They blend in with the background most of the time so they’re hard to see. This painting shows a finch eating blossoms.
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Venice is a beautiful city in Italy that is built on stilts. People travel by boats. Tourists like to ride in gondolas, like the boat shown above. When painting water, do reflections of the solid object above and put the reflections under it. The colors should come from the original item. The waves make reflections wiggle, so the lines of a reflection move back and forth.
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These are flowers from my own wildflower garden. They are pink, but shadows give a blue tint. As a result, they looked this way in the shade. The dark shadows against the light background give drama to the painting.
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Manarola is one of five villages in Cinque Terre on the rugged coast of the Italian Riviera. The villages and the hillside are all part of the Cinque Terre National Park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The five villages can be reached by a trail above them or by boats or trains. They cannot be reached by automobile.
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This is another painting of my wildflowers. I’ve been intrigued by the view from the ground looking up. The stems give a rythmn to the picture, and the pink and green are complimentary colors which give interest.
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This still-life was done by concentrating on shapes, values and colors. They were all put together like a jigsaw puzzle. The view close-up to the canvas looks like a bunch of weird shapes, but further back it comes together.
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My wife wanted me to paint this. She says it is the story of our life for the past sixteen years — painting, dropping off to galleries, shows, etc. There is depth in the picture because of atmospheric and linear perspective. The atmospheric perspective has things that are closer to the front painted over the top of items further back. Linear perspective shows the doorways and building filling the whole space on the right, but getting smaller as they move to the left.
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I remember how surprised I was the first time I visited Amsterdam. Instead of roads, I found canals. Most people rode bicycles. They’d park them next to the canals. People would try to park their cars along side them. I was worried we’d drive right off into the water. I was intrigued by a small car I saw throughout Europe — “Smart” was the brand. It was tiny, but would fit in very small spaces.
This painting shows linear perspective — the water is wider in the front of the painting than in the rear. This gives depth to the picture. Another technique used is complementary colors — red and green, which gives contrast and interest to the painting.
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