This small oil painting (8x10) was inspired from a sketch I did last week. Then the setting and situation started to appear. I'm working with the paint differently than I did in many years ago and the paint is behaving differently from how I remembered it. Maybe it is the amount of moisture in the air here in Flagstaff as compared to Ellensburg, WA.

This small oil painting I did yesterday. It measures 8x10. I'm really enjoying the subtle color variations that are possible with using oils.

Tons of snow the last few days. I have been painting and will post images tomorrow.

I missed my workout today but I did get to do this drawing/watercolor. There are some aspects that I think work well ... especially the middle section. I will probably explore that design more and I think there needs to be a car or two in the image. I think the trees are working well and the wispy smoke adds a nice asian influence.

I finally broke out the oil paints I got for my birthday and did this oil on wood panel painting for a project that I need to get finished in the next month. I was happy with the results and happy to be painting with oils again. Oh yeah, this is a peregrine falcon ... the piece will focus on how the peregrine falcon is surviving in urban areas.

Two more drawings completed over the weekend.

I've not been posting but I have been drawing.

Space again ... I really have not been happy with some of the backgrounds I've previously done but this one is working pretty well by bringing the figures to the foreground.

I'm still exploring the space kids theme for my friend. This image explores or is more of a brainstorming session of some of the ideas and words associated with space.

Here is another look at space with pen on paper. I also looked at quotes. Here are a few: For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars - pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across the eternal seas of space and time. Henry Beston - Space - the final frontier ... These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. Gene Roddenberry - For at least two million years men have been reproducing and multiplying on a little automated Spaceship Earth. Buckminster Fuller - Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil galactic empire. Star Wars (title crawl) George Lucas - May the Force be with you!

I finally messed up and didn't do an drawing yesterday, I made up for it by doing two today. I'm still working on space themed images for kids. What do you think? I've also been playing with some manipulations with the images in Photoshop. I'm still really having fun with just doing the pen sketch first then using watercolor to fill in the drawing.

My friend Spencer asked for some robot ... space images for his son. Here are some of my first sketches. I think it might even work to have them colored on. What do you think?

OK - I'm a slacker ... I watched the Alabama vs. Texas game and didn't get to add color to this image. I looked at the tree image for the previous image ... I think this image has something to do with the greening of the desert and the southwest.

"The Early Bird gets the worm" - I'm not completely satisfied with this image but there are some really interesting aspects that I will try to explore over the next few days. I'm especially drawn to the larger tree figures on the left side.

This was inspired by my boot. I know, not very inspiring but then I started to think about all the places they have been, the rain, the mud and it all of a sudden became more interesting. I also wanted to show the nature inspired forms for texture and pattern. I started with the image below but really didn't like how that was going so I did another and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

This drawing was done from a photo by Bobby Yip / Reuters. The original photo appeared in Sunday, January 3, 2010: NY Times. The photo was used for an article based on the marginalizing of the west by the rise of China. What really caught my attention was the lower part of the image being warm, included people and was about manual labor and the top part was cool, architectural and very modern.

Well, at the beginning of this I was afraid I might run out of ideas. As you can see here, you can draw almost anything. Coffee machine on the counter ... another pen drawing with watercolor. I was also thinking about construction and how little things can become huge later on. Can you see the problem with this image?

Autos and plants (watercolor in sketchbook). I think about how vehicles make us dependent on oil ... but what about ethanol - how can plants allow us to ... and the debate goes on and on.

This image was first drawn in pen then I used Grumbacher watercolors to add the color. These owl and bear characters were inspired by a previous drawing I had done with not as much detail. I probably could have used better paper but for now I'm just working in my sketchbook.