Pyrography: I started wood burning a while ago and I don't know why I've never tried creating any serious work with it before now. I guess it's because Im still learning. Always learning something new. This is one of my silly grandcats that lives in Mississippi. Yes, I said grandcat. It's burned onto a 4x4" plaque.

I've had a lot of posts popping up in my FaceBook memories from this blog I started way back when. It was intended to encourage myself to make time to paint every day. Now, it would be a nice visual diary of my work, methods, and progress. Its always nice to see how far you've come with your work. That's what seeing some of these older paintings has done for me. You don't realize how far you've come until you look back.
 Reference photos: I tend to horde reference photos for rainy days. Some of which are bad quality, others way beyond  my capability to recreate. After years of doing this I’ve learned that eventually I’ll work out an approach in my head, tackle it, and  have a work I’m pleased with. The photo for this was very grainy and the bluff seemed overwhelming. I started the painting with an olive green background which helped me tremendously in creating the shadows for the light filtering down. This photo is of my son and his new husky mix puppy on one of their first outings to Red Bluff in Ms. It's one of his favorite place, in the region, to hike. It was taken by his girlfriend with a camera phone so it was kind of grainy. At first, it was an obstacle because I wasn't sure how to approach this photo not being able to see details. The blessing in that is that it forced me to stay loose and not focus on the details, but instead, the light.
Puppy break, 8x10 Oil