The start of Juneau Welcoming Committee Oil painting

Today, I will talk about part of the process to making art.  I do a lot of sketching.  Sometimes I end up developing some of the sketches into ideas for oil painting. This weekend I attended a two day oil painting class with Armand Cabrera at the Great Falls Foundation of Art in Great Falls, Virginia. I worked on this on Saturday.  I used the preliminary as a bit of a guide.  I then worked in the initial scrub of painting.  The background was too bright and I took Armand's advice and pushed the tones down by greying them into a fairly tight range and then adjusted them to draw in the low tide exposed shoreline.  I added the posts of the channel markers and the number board, then  I developed the water in the channel.  Overall, I am pretty happy with the results.  Late this week I will add the eagles.

Wheel Barrow

This is a quick sketch of an old style Wheel Barrow with pencil.  I spent the day at an Armand Cabrera Studio Painting working on technic and impressionistic painting.  I will post the initiate results in the days to come.  

Chimney Swift

This is a Chimney Swift.  I probably have the best stories on this type of bird.  They use to nest in hollow old trees before the Europeans settled the U.S.  When the Europeans came and built chimney's they moved right in and built in the house hold chimney.  The wife and I have removed a young swift which went down our kitchen chimney and ended up in the furnace.  Our cats notified us of his presence and we were able to remove him with a screwdriver, a loosened flap on the flue, and a hastily emptied plastic large snack jar.  The bird in the jar was safely escorted through the cat obstacle course and out to the yard. Our house has three chimneys so we have had them nest in the spring and another bird flew down and throughout the house.  Its perfect cat entertainment.

Happy Birthday, Barb

Today is my wife, Barbara's birthday.  She loves The Day of the Dead motif.  I always do something in the style of the Mexican Holiday.  So Happy Birthday to my Muse, Best Friend, and companion for the last twenty two years.

Ruby-Throated Hummingbird sketch

This is one of my colored pencil sketch I did as a preparation for a painting.  It is a male Ruby-Throated Hummingbird.  

Prints for sale

http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/scott-suitts.html

Above is the link to my Fine Art America Page were you can purchase prints in various sizes of some of my original pieces of artwork.

Beach Kite Girl

A couple of weekend backs, I took the wife to a local Chesapeake Beach called, Flag Pond State Park, Maryland.  I know its a beach without beach in the name.  So besides sunburn, beach combing for sea glass, and this sketch of a little girl flying a kite on the beach.  I colored it after returning home.  Beaches are always interesting but hard to get something which has not been done a hundred times.