Welcome to the New Year

On this, the second day of the new year, I’d like to wish everyone a 2012 filled with wonder, joy and new challenges successfully met.  Today we are getting alternating sun and flurries with quite cold wind chills.  I am happy to be snug inside my studio and looking at it out of the window.  We have started to see the deer reappear with the end of gun hunting season.  I have seen a quite a few does and a couple of bucks, some with the larger racks.  My sister and brother-in-law have long put out a lot a bird feeders and have attracted quite a few birds.  Unfortunately for the birds and the bird watchers, this year we have had 3 hawks move in with an eye to whatever wants to eat at the feeders.  They saw the juvenile actually perch on one of the feeder poles for the best view possible.  Needless to say, the smaller bird feeding population has radically reduced itself at least for the time being.  Personally, I am rooting for the hawks going after the mice and squirrels that seem to abound out here.

The little red barn

We had a rather quiet holiday without a lot of company so I was able to get into the studio and paint some.  I enjoyed doing the ink/watercolor animals and decided to  branch out and try a landscape.  It is a little larger than the animals were so it took a bit more time, but not inordinately so.  These paintings take a lot less time overall than the pastels do which is somewhat understandable given the detail and size involved.  It is kind of nice to be able to finish something in only a day or two versus close to a week.

I like the way that the sky and the barbed wire fence turned out.and some of the foliage, but on the whole, I don’t think it is one of my better paintings.  It is okay but seems to lack enough pop to my eye.  I had hoped that the red barn would provide a more significant focal point without being garish and I do like the vee the pasture forms around it but it is still lacking something yet.  In the animal portraits I was able to say, there I’m done, but this still seems to need some work.  I think I will play around with the pen a little and try to balance the positive/negative space a little more.  Also, I was very messy doing this and ended up with dirty white borders.  I may have to mat it to hide them.  And the view with a mat does change the look of a picture.  It is probably worth a try.