"Horned Owl" Gourd

Peter Quinn, a gourd artisan who is rapidly establishing a reputation for excellence, carved a replica of one of my paintings into this gourd and asked me to "fill in the blanks" with the colors used in the original painting. His burned-in sketch was so perfect, that I only wanted to tint his masterpiece. Peter and Jim Greenwald have formed an alliance - Peter's gourds have Jim's painted cartoons on them - talk about a "marriage" of talents. I understand that a selection of these one-of-a-kind craftsman masterpieces will be available for purchase at the SCG Oktoberfest.

European Street

Wanted to show my progress in the challenging stonework of this street scene. I worked on the tile roof this afternoon. Had already done some underpainting, but needed a photo of an older tile roof. My fellow artist, Barb Lang, and her photographer spouse, Charlie, sent me photos of the tile roofs in Italy. Barb took some lessons in Italy last May and Charlie took lots of photos. Still work to be done, but am rather pleased so far with the results.

City Flowers

This is a painting in the process -- with a long way to go -- lots of new challenges for me, including angles of lines, old stonework, values for shadows, and European cars. Am pleased with the building stonework on right side of painting. There is darker stonework on the center building that turned out nice (but doesn't really show in the photo), the blocked stonework on the left building is still "building" and needs to be adjusted as it is out of sync. I didn't notice that it was out of sync until I did the photo. Also, there needs to be some depth perception adjustments. My reference painting is from Arlen Madole, so I am anxious to do credible work even though this is waaaay outside of my comfort zone. Comments are welcome.