It's been a while since I have posted anything new, I have been working feverishly on a client website and trying to get some sculptures painted and in between all this I have been working on my mural panel. It took a turn halfway through and I decided to add more horses so it has changed some.
I was at this step a couple of weeks ago:

After a bit more work:

And the finish:

If you would like to see how the main mural is coming along, go to this URL:
http://muralmosaic.com/Cadeau.html

I worked on this a bit more yesterday, just starting to put some paint on the horses so I can start to fine tune them a bit. My plan for this looking like horses running on the plains is morphing into horses running in the surf. I think I will roll with that given the colors I have to work with. It will still be a stormy sky. Debating on putting in some lightening, not sure yet.
I am going to do a second panel for the famous horses part of the mural. I will be doing Seattle Slew which is appropriate for me since I live near Seattle and have seen him run many times.
Should be fun and a challenge.

I am taking part in an equine mural mosaic project which is very exciting. Here is the URL to see the actual project.
http://www.muralmosaic.com/Cadeau.html
Each artist is given a 16" X 16" panel that is already painted on to use for the backdrop for their artwork. You must stay within the colors that are on the panel and if there are any obvious dark or light areas you need to work around those.
Above is the panel that was sent to me originally.
Here is my panel with just the horses blocked in. It is going to be a stormy night with the horses running across the plains.

I worked on this one for quite a while, I wasn't happy with the middle ground and the mountain but I think I am OK with it now.
My goal was to show the power and majesty of this feral horse and I think I did that.

I guess I must be in the mood for something tropical since I am so sick of rain and cold so I painted these two Lorikeets. I got a bit carried away with the background because I was trying a new painting technique but I think it works anyway.

I have been testing various watercolor papers to find one I really like and ordered a piece of Twinrocker hand made paper. It is quite expensive but after using it I decided it is absolutely worth it!
The colors stayed so vibrant and the paper was very easy to work with. Because of its heavy deckle edge I decided to just mount it on a white mat paper and then frame it that way.
This is my grooming parrot! He is grooming his tail feathers.

Cactus pads

My demo for my WC class this week was one I thought would be fun for my students.
We wet the upper part of the paper and dropped in the background color. Let that dry and then wet the entire rest of the painting and again dropped in color. After that dried, we did some positive and negative painting and glazing to define the pads.
We were testing Lanaquarelle paper and found that the color of the paint stays very intense, unlike most papers I have used. As a result the painting is quite saturated.
The paper is very nice to work with and I love the intense color.