This is not to say digital means cause cranky pants…

A brief return to some digital work.

And the cardboard square series continues…

roughly 6″x6″, Acrylic on cardboard

I have not posted anything for quite some time.  Things got busy with travels and moving…  Regardless, it would seem I am getting back into the swing and have some big-ish projects lined up for the summertime.  More on those as they happen.

This is a warm up painting, but I am quite pleased with how it turned out.  It is acrylic straight on un-prepped watercolor paper, and handled a bit more like watercolor than I normally use acrylic.  I like the results and it was fun to paint too.

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Skull-mask  8.5″ x 10″ Acrylic on Paper

Since I started painting with acrylics I have always relied on one color to act as my universal darkener.  That color being Paynes Gray, which is a rather dark bluish color.  I fist started using it with watercolor.  It does a far better job of making other colors dark than black and it tends to keep things from getting muddy.  however, it does throw in a bit of a blue tint across the shadowy-board.  Recently I have dabbled with raw umber, which is a rather dark brown.  It has certainly added a bit to the shadow making process but I wanted to see what else was out there.  So this past weekend I hit the paint isle and bought Van Dyke brown and the darked neutral gray they make.   Then I decided I should try to paint with them and see what happens.  Well, this is what happened:

“Ape” Acrylic on Watercolor Paper, 8″x8″ 

I decided to do something that is all dark.  This used both of the new darks I bought as well as titan buff and some cobalt green for the background.  All painted off a wash of pyrrole red.

They both seem like they will work.  The real test will be how they act to shadow flesh tones…

It has been a while, but I have made the return to my cardboard square series.

Another vaguely lizardy looking chap.

Roughly 6″x6″  Acrylic on Cardboard

But I painted some eggs around the time of the Easter. I went for a touch of the non-traditional, but the way I figure it, there is only one holiday (I know of) that features the painting of eggs, so painted eggs invariably are Easter-y even if painted with skulls, drippy hair and/or zebras. But really, who wouldn’t love to be visited by the easter zebra?

Acrylic on egg shells (emptied of egg content)

p.s. Yes, the skull is sporting rabbit ears…