Posts made in June, 2010

"Meander" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic painting on Ampersand Gessobord, 6 x 6". Copyright ©2010 Lesley Spanos, all rights reserved. Painted with permission from Google Street View image.

This week Bill Guffey’s Virtual Paintout explores the islands of Hawaii. It was hard to narrow it down to one image out of the fourteen I chose, but eventually I settled on this beach scene in Hau’ula, Hawaii, on the northeast shore of Oahu:
View Larger Map

If I could go for a walk on a beach like that every morning, I could give up caffeine…

"No. 1059" by Lesley Spanos. Acrylic on Multimedia Artboard, 6 x 8". Copyright ©2010, all rights reserved.

Trolley No. 1059 was built in 1948 and acquired by San Francisco in 1992 to become part of their historic streetcar collection. Though it served in Philadelphia, the car is painted to represent the Boston Elevated Railway Co..

Our location is on the Embarcadero at a stop near the Ferry Building, with the Bay Bridge in the background:
View Larger Map

Pretty, eh?

This week my goal was to not murder the paint by working it to death, so I limited myself to only one hour. Got finished in only 50 minutes. Yay! I’d love to have a bigger version of this one for my wall, so I might try it again when I have a big birch panel on hand.

Many thanks to Lee Brown for providing yet another spectacular HDR photo for his A Day Not Wasted June challenge. His process removes most of the “bad” stuff artists encounter when painting from photographic references, like dead shadows and blown out highlights. His photos are so lifelike it’s almost like painting on location.