War Eagle, 12″X14″, Oil on Canvas, 2012

I’m two days into a new painting and its coming along quick.  It’s smaller than I’m used to working with, but the advantage here is speed.

Over the last few years, I have shot a ton of photos.  Usually I try to work several together into my large collage style paintings.  After browsing through my sets on Flickr, I kind of felt that many should be interesting little character sketches in their own right.  I’m once again going to try something I don’t normally do, and work on these little pieces concurrently with my larger pieces.

Here we go off into uncharted territory, so I think it’s fitting that I start with a plane that was out at the War Eagles Museum.

Stop at 700 Mundy, 48″ X 36″, oil on canvas, 2012

Finished!

Last year I had started a painting based on the Sunset Heights area of El Paso, focusing on the Sunset Grocery:

While working on it, I had to put it aside to work on getting our bathroom/bedroom project finished.  I stored it in my garage and subsequently the canvas got damaged.  I wasn’t very far along so it wasn’t a huge loss but I didn’t want to start from scratch on a new one using the same image.  I tweaked the idea some and set out to have another go at it:

The Sunset Grocery building has been photographed, drawn and painted by many others so its familiarity makes it difficult to come up with a fresh take on it  I think this layout is unique and will make for a stronger image than my first attempt.  We shall see…