"The Boss" PDL Mustang completed

I painted the PDL 2 Mustnag for Father's Day, so of course my Dad wanted PDL1 for his birthday (today). Never had to work to a tight deadline before, but thankfully I got it finished to a reasonable staqndard last night :) It was hard working from a not-terribly-suitable reference pic (the car raced competitively in the 70's I believe and doesn't get out much any more, so struggled to find anything of high quality) but I'm happy with the result.

Polar Bear completed

Not much was needed to make this feel complete - just a shadow and a hint of some out-of-focus shapes in the background. Looks better in real like though :S

"Mt Cook" completed

Back to Mount Cook, but in the new style I'm attempting to hone and adopt...

Random Central Canterbury pic completed

Not sure where I took the photo this is (loosely) based upon - it must have been on the way to Wanaka or Hanmer. An attempt to cement the style I first tried out last week.

"Lake Tekapo" completed

Had another go at the fresh simple style of paintnig mountains I first attempted last week. I like this one better than the last one - it's quite satisfying to produce "real"-looking mountains without having to fuss over intricate details :)

"Frolicking" completed

I did this one in response to a request for a dolphin/whale pic. I quite like how it turned out :)

Polar Bear half-completed

I did this one as an excercise, since I've been struggling to describe detail in situations where there isn't much contrast to work with. I quite like it so far, but the next step is to have him cast a shadow and to put him in a simple setting.

"Balls Pass" completed

I've found mountains hard going and a bit frustrating at times lately, and the harder I worked at the ones that weren't cooperating, the worse they looked :O So I decided to sketch out some mountains and then paint them in a maximum of 2 washes, forcing me to be looser and more expressive than I usually allow myself to be. I also picked some interesting colours to force myself to focus less on recreating the reference and making it look more original. I really like how this has come out, especially the soft look - generally my mountains' contours have been expressed with predominantly hard edges, but I like this approach better :) The river is a bit basic, but I was making that up since the ref pic has a road instead, and so I didn't want to get too clever and ruin it. The river wasn't the point of the exercise anyway ;)

"New Hampshire" half done

Another pic I've attempted at the same time as my brorther - this was his choice. There wasn't supposed to be any water, but the initial version wasn't really turning out how I wanted it to, so I changed direction :P Still needs quite a bit of work to bring it to life though...

"St Bathans in Winter" completed

Not much to say about this, just wanted to create something stark with a cold wintry appearance... this is based upon a photo from my trip down to Wanaka back in March

"Corvette" completed

This was a stretch for me, and I can see plenty of room for improvement in it, but I'm reasonably happy with it for the time it took. One day I'll hopefully use it as a reference for an acrylic painting... I think I'll leave the second car out next time though :P

"Freedom 1 & 2" completed

Random pics I threw together to fill in time while waiting for my Corvette pic (next post) to dry. Both turned out ok, neither particularly special nor disastrously bad... I find that I feel better about my progress if I mix more comfortable subjects with scarier ones - pushing myself while still getting stuff done :P

"Lake Hayes" completed

Painted this one on Friday. Up until now I'd been expressing mountains using hard edges to denote contours based on shadows, which works ok but tends to dominate the picture because of the high level of contrast it generates. So this time I decided to try more blending-in mountains using soft-edged subtle shadows to give in impression of contour. I feel like these mountains have retained their impression of immense size, but they still let the lake in the middle-ground be noticeable too. It works much better in person actually - probably the most real-feeling painting I've done in a while. I might try to re-photo it later...

Random trees completed

Managed to get through two paintings last night. Couldn't be bothered tracking down a new reference pic so just made up these two from scratch :P

"Akaroa n noir et blanc" completed

Painted two variants of a photo I took at Akaroa over the weekend. The trip to Akaroa back in May was very cold and gray, hence the photo was quite glare-y and washed out of colour, so I decided to accentuate it. I quite like the imposing clouds and the way I captured the light rays on the farthest hillside :)