Mixed Media Demo

This 9 x 12 piece was painted with a combination of acrylic washes, oil paint, and Prismacolor pencils. The portrait is of one of my all-time sports heros... hockey great, Bobby Orr. This depicts him as an eighteen year old rookie for the Boston Bruins. As artists, we are always looking for challenging subjects. In this case Bobby's brush cut was a bit of a challenge to render. Fun stuff!

Combination Creature

This painting started out as an in-class acrylic demo. It sat around, unfinished, in my studio for several months. One night as I was about to clean my palette after an evening of oil painting, I decided to put this on my easel and cover the acrylic with oils. I find myself working back into older paintings more and more. An older piece that you no longer like can serve as a great under-painting for something new. This creature is a combination of a Great Horned Owl, a Grizzly Bear, and a Swallowtail Butterfly.

Acrylic Stages: Mandrill

This shows one of my in-class demos from under-painting to a near finish. I am using acrylic paints here and you can see that I start out applying it in a monochromatic fashion. I feel like I am "drawing" with the paint at the earliest stage. I establish my mid-tones and darkest darks with several thin layers of acrylic. The next stage shows how I begin to show the form by adding some lights and some color with a more opaque paint application. I really sneak up on things here as the painting progresses, the paint gets thicker and the color gets more saturated. I love the versatility of acrylics. They can be used transparently like watercolor or more opaquely like thick oils. They are ideal for glazing techniques due to the quick drying times.

In-Class Acrylic Demo

I painted this pelican in-class this past school year as I demonstrated how I use acrylics. I played around with acrylic paint, off and on, for probably ten years before I was pleased with the results.

I think that they're actually more difficult to use than oils. This piece was done 11 x 14 on cold press illustration board and I worked from my own photo reference (taken in Naples, Florida).

For the sake of design, I matched the color and stylistic marks of the bird's feathers with the weathered wood.