Miniature Painting - No 25 - Alaska Moose

This is something a little different in my miniature paintings project. I had the idea of doing a series of state maps with the state mammal symbol superimposed over the map. The colors of the map would relate to the colors of the state flag. In the first one here I used Alaska and its state animal, the moose, with blue and gold, colors relating to the state flag.

 5"x7" oil on Gessobord

Original: SOLD

It would be fun to do more states but, unfortunately, this took about twice as long to do as the previous paintings this size. The time extra it takes to add the map is considerable isn't really worth it for a painting this size. I may do some more state map mini paintings eventually, but for now they're on the back burner. I'm open to requests, though. If you'd like to see one of your state contact me and we can discuss it.

Gratitude Monday - Internet Graphics

They say it's good for you to regularly "count your blessings", as trite as that may seem. But studies show that regularly taking time to consider the positive things in your life, however small, actually has a real effect on your mood and physical health. It doesn't take that long to do, so why not do it?

I figure Monday is a good day to take time to think of the positive things in our lives because most people find Mondays to be a bit of a downer. The weekend is over and it's back to the long grind, counting the days until Friday when we have time to get back to the things we really enjoy like friends, family, leisure, and painting!

So let's take a few moments to be grateful for things we have right now. I'll start with something small to make it easy. I'll start with something to do with art so we can all relate.

Today I am grateful for the amazing advances in internet graphics! This may seem silly but think about art in the days of your youth. Unless you are really young, you can remember the days when the internet graphics looked like this:

I actually played (and loved) Maniac Mansion, but that's another story. lol

My point is, graphics were not favorable for displaying art back then. My first web site was on GeoCities, now long gone. But back then your images were pretty much limited to cheesy low-pixel graphics and limited, horrid color palettes like this.

(Anyone here remember the dancing baby? Haha!)

Back then it was very hard to share your art on the internet. Graphics and bandwidth were so limited you couldn't show anything of quality. Even if you did have decent art images on your site, most people had slow dial-up connections that caused them to the bypass graphic-intensive sites of the time. No one thought of looking for art online back then. A whole world of sharing our art was closed to us then that is now open! So many more people have access today. So many more sites can offer high-res beautiful images of artwork now. A whole world has opened up for artists that never existed before. We can share our art with more people today than we would have dreamed of 20 years ago! Certainly something to be grateful for!

Children's Coloring Page - Rooster

Here's another coloring page for the kiddies to print out and color. This is the Rhode Island Red Rooster painting I did recently. I added a little extra, a fence and chicken coop, than the original painting had. More for the kids to color!

As with the previous coloring pages, have your kids download it, print it out, and color it or paint it any way they want, realistic or wild and crazy! (Click on the image to see a larger version. Then right-click on the larger image and select "save image as..." to save it to your hard drive.) If they want to color it realistically they can use the image below of my original painting as a reference and try to match the colors.

If you'd like to send me your child's finished colored page I'd be happy to share it on my blog here. You can email it to me at foreststudios@yahoo.com.

Miniature Painting - No 24 - Black Beauty

Well, I won't say this is the Black Beauty, the famous horse from the books and movies. I mean, any beautiful black horse can be named "Black Beauty", right? :)

This painting was actually done from a photo I took at a Hollywood Hill Saddle Club event last summer. He had a rider in the photo but I decided to paint him without it so he would look like a wild horse, galloping free across the open plains.

 5"x7" oil on Gessobord

Original: SOLD

Miniature Painting - No 23 - Junco

Onward we go with my miniature paintings project. Here's painting number 23, an Oregon dark-eyed junco. I photographed this cute little guy just a few weeks ago at Marymoor Park in Redmond, WA. He was sitting in a hawthorn bush soaking up what little warmth he could from the weak winter sun. This is a great time of year to for photography in some ways. The low angle of the sun in winter makes for some nice lighting even in mid day, which is great for those of us who are not good at getting up early in the morning to get that beautiful dawn light. :)

 5"x7" oil on Gessobord

Original: SOLD

How to Paint a Waterfall Scene

I've been working on this waterfall painting for a while, as some of you may know. I finally finished! A while back it was a toss-up between putting deer or wolves in the scene. I decided to go with deer because the scene seemed so peaceful and tranquil that deer just suited it better than wolves. Not to fear, however! I already have another wolf painting in the works! But, for now it's deer.

I thought you might enjoy seeing the painting in different stages of progress to see how I work. I can't say there's any scientific method to how I do my paintings. I just sort of go with what I'm in the mood for that day. In some images you'll see more work was done on rocks, in others more work is done on trees, in others more work is done on water. It was really just whatever I felt like working on that day.

I'm only posting a few images here because there are a lot. At the bottom of the post I've added a link to Youtube. I posted a video there that consists of about 20 images at various stages in the progress of the work. I hope you will find it interesting and helpful if you should decide to do a waterfall painting yourself. Feel free to ask questions and leave comments about the images and video!

How to Paint a Waterfall Video on Youtube

Miniature Painting - No 22 - Brown Goose

Today's miniature painting is another domestic bird, a brown Chinese goose. According to Wikipedia:

The Chinese Goose is a breed of domesticated goose descended from the wild Swan Goose. Chinese geese differ from the wild birds in much larger size (up to 5–10 kg in males, 4–9 kg in females), and in having an often strongly developed basal knob on the upper side of the bill. The knob at the top of the beak is more prominent on males than females. By 6–8 weeks of age, the knob is already pronounced enough that it can be used for sexing. Chinese geese are a close cousin of the African goose, a heavier breed also descended from the Swan Goose.
Chinese geese appear in two varieties: a brown similar to the wild Swan Goose, and white. While many domestic Chinese geese have a similar body type to other breeds, the breed standards as defined in the American Poultry Association's Standard of Perfection and other sources call for a slimmer, taller fowl.
Chinese geese are among the better laying breeds of geese. A female Chinese goose can lay 50–60 eggs over the course of the breeding season (February to June), although there are reports of Chinese Geese laying up to 100 eggs during that time.

I've seen a lot of these on ponds and rivers around WA, hanging around wild ducks and Canada geese. I'm not sure if they are wild descendants of escaped domestic geese or domestic geese just out for a swim. They look as natural in the wild as they do on the farm so I decided to paint this one in a natural wild setting.

 5"x7" oil on Gessobord

Original: SOLD

Miniature Painting - No 21 - Rooster!

Doing something a little different today. Instead of wildlife I decided to do a farm animal for today's miniature painting, a nice red rooster. Who doesn't love a Rhode Island Red, a classic symbol of country life? Now that we've moved from a small yard to having over an acre we've been thinking of building a coop and getting a few chickens to have some fresh eggs. I hear Rhode Island Reds are good hardy chickens so they are good starter chickens for us less experienced chicken owners. :)
While thinking about chickens and eggs I visited a local farm where I snapped a few pictures of several different kinds of chickens. This painting is the result of one of those photos.

 6"x6" oil on Gessobord

Original: SOLD

Miniature Painting - No 20 - Baby Bobcat

This little cutie was painted from a photo I took at the Triple D Game Farm in Kalispell, Montana a few years ago. He was just so adorable, running around in the morning sun, exploring his surroundings and play-hunting. Here he had been running and playing and jumped up on top of a log to pause for a moment and look at his surroundings. Then off in a flash he leapt off the log and was dashing around playing again. So much fun to watch!

 5"x7" oil on Gessobord

Original: SOLD

Miniature Painting - No 19 - American Bison

Well, now that the holidays are over, the time for slacking off on my art is over! Back to business! This is the 19th of my miniature paintings. Today's painting is of a North American bison. This was created from a photo I took in Yellowstone National Park several years ago.

 5"x7" oil on Gessobord

Original: SOLD