Caribbean Cove

Twenty-two years ago, I supported Haitian Refugee operations at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  Near our camp we had a small beach and cove.  I did not have a lot of time off but, I did this sketch with colored pencils on a Sunday afternoon.  There was a lost anchor sticking out of the surf.  The fluke is sticking out of the water on the left middle of the sketch.

Black Tailed Praire Dog

Another long day at work , so I will post a sketch from another day.  This is the Black Tailed Prairie Dog, resident of the prairies of the United States and interesting cute little beast.

Sinai Peninsula

Work ran late so I did not work on the Marabou Stork but, I will try to get to that later in the week.  Tonight, I pulled out an old water color pencil sketch from 1991 on the Sinai Peninsula.  This is from a mountain top in Egypt looking across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia.  It was morning and I took about 20   notes to try and capture the beauty of the view.  Hopefully I can go back someday and paint this in oils.

Red-Checked Cordon Bleu - Kenya Bird

This strangely named little sparrow sized bird was my first day light bird in Kenya.  It was on a small trail near my hotel with monkeys.  It was very bright interesting looking bird which definitely caught my eye.  I looked through the bird guide book and easily IDed it since it was so unique looking.  It is the first daylight bird because the night birds were these huge ugly Marabou Storks in these trees in downtown Nairobi on the way from the airport.  It was a little scary and very Hitchcock "Birds: movie looking.  I will post the Marabou Stork later and you will understand.

Astilbe flower

I jump between oil painting and drawing.  Usually I return to drawing as frustration hits in the painting.  It seems to sharpen the painting and always is a good thing to work on as your drawing skills can never be too good.  This is an Oil Painting exercise done in about 1 hour to get me back into the painting mode.  I have roughed in the basic colors, the flowers are ok, but I think I will let this sit and I will lighten and better structure the leaves.  The background will get a more varied treatment to add depth to it.

Guinea Hen

I saw Guinea Hens in Mombasa, Kenya.  They are squat strange dinosaur looking things, especially with the horn on there heads.  They are very efficient at cleaning your grass of insects.

Grey-Crowned Crane

This is a quick sketch of Grey-Crowned Cranes.  I used colored pencils and quickly captured the likenesses and I tried to get the movements.