This is the first painting I did this year during Plein Air Easton. It is probably the second most painted boat on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The first, called Crow Brothers, was dismantled last year. I'm sure it won't be long before this boat, Crow Brothers II catches up with it's deceased older brother in being depicted on canvas. Both boats are icons of Tilghman Island on the Chesapeake Bay.
I did this painting also at Plein Air Easton. It won the Vanishing Landscape Award at the competition and auctioned off for $2,500.00. Not bad for a 9"x12". I stood in a pond that connects with the Chesapeake Bay to get the view that I wanted, and to stay somewhat cool. The tide kept rising as I painted and I soon had to get out while I still could. The egret showed up just long enough for me to paint him in.
I just returned from a wonderful but very hot week of outdoor painting at Plein Air Easton. This painting won the Award for Best Architectural Painting in the competition. It was an old abandoned farmhouse right outside of Easton, Maryland. I was intrigued by the decorative front porch columns and the road leading up to the house. Not to mention the lives of the people that once lived in this house.
My painting Tarnished Silver was a Finalist in the David A. Leffel Award for Excellence in Painting competition. This painting was selected along with 37 other Finalists. David Leffel is a world renown master artist who has preserved the method of painting in the tradition of the Old Masters, and is known for being very demanding in his appreciation of art. I'm very honored to have been selected for his competition.
This spring I went into a wooded area and sketched and photographed some fallen trees. At one point I fell off a log into a deep stream and thought I had destroyed my new digital camera. But a week later I had a little Easter miracle when I turned the camera on after putting it in a Ziploc bag with some rice and it worked. If you ever drop something electronic in water don't turn it on, put it in a Ziploc bag with rice for about a week. The rice absorbs the moisture. I composed this scene from the reference material I gathered that day.
My painting Courtship was juried into the Society of Animal Artists 51st Annual Show, which will be held in Traverse City, MI at the Dennos Museum Center! Every year this show hosts paintings by giants like Robert Bateman and Lars Jonsson, so I'm much honored to have been accepted into the show. 364 Submissions where made and the process included 9 judges and took 6 hours to complete. The show begins September 15th, 2011.
Here is another quick study I did. The same beautiful woman as before in her red dress walking through some apple trees in blossom.
