Moses Botkin Monthly Challenge

This month's challenge subject was the view out our studio window. Very interesting. Mine turned out to be a watercolor sketch. I tried it in oils, but was really unhappy with my efforts. Those rocks are hard to paint and it was an overcast day.

If you look in the middle back behind my fence is a deer. He really did walk by there. Several did. We are blessed to have this 'green belt' area behind our house so we have a lot of privacy though we are buried in suburbia. We have a lot of wildlife too. Armadillos, skunks, opposums, deer, foxes, roadrunners, tarantulas, scorpions.... along with the traditional birds and squirrels.



Green Belt
8x8 watercolor sketch
(c) 2009 Robin Cheers

Studio View
8x8.5 oil on canvas

(c) 2009 Silvina Day



Studio View
24x18 oil on canvas
(c) 2009 Marie Fox



View from my Studio
8x10 oil on panel
(c) 2009 Vicki Ross



Outside My Studio
16x20 oil on canvas
(c) 2009 Suzanne Berry



The View
4x6 oil on hardboard
(c) 2009 Diana Moses Botkin



Electric Highway
8x8 oil on board
(c) 2009 Michael Naples

Central Florida

These are just some tiny oil sketches I've done trying to record my memories of scenes we've passed while driving around. We went tubing on the Ichetucknee river a couple of days ago and drove out to a neat little hamlet along the gulf marshes. Today we're packing for our beach week. We go to Amelia Island Saturday morning.

Seven Strokes

oil on paper

My friend and fellow artist V Vaughan inspired me to try this "technique". Today I painted at her farm with Plein Air Austin and did several scenes using just seven brushtrokes. The idea is to plan the values and colors and how you'll lay it in, and load your brush and not lift while you make your strokes. It was a great experiment and I really enjoyed the exercise. I also found that it was a great way to lay a scene in quickly allowing more time to dabble with deatils while the light remains. I wonder if this would work for figures/cafes?