New Piece: Desert Night Walk, Acrylic on Gallery Canvas, 15" x 30"

Just finished this new piece! -I have no idea where it came from or what it means, therefore it must be a metaphoric representation of some deep-seated subconscious issue or idea within me.... or maybe I just thought it was a cool scene to paint. Maybe it is both, or neither. Couldn't tell you for sure because I'm not sure myself, ha! 

I will be participating in Open Studios here in San Francisco this year, and this piece will be on display along with about 15 other pieces for that weekend. Keep you posted as more details emerge :)

Here are some step by step pics of the work as I went along below:

As ever, thanks so much for taking a look :)

​Andy C.

​'Two Cats: Troy and Tab Hunter', Acrylic on Canvas, 12" x 24" 

​This is a new pet commission for Jan, featuring Troy and Tab Hunter, her favorite cats!

Started out with a solid pencil sketch and then built up all of the values in black and white first, afterwards adding colors using matte mediums for transparent color layers and finally highlights with pure color. 

Fun fact for this particular painting: After selecting my main source and sending Jan a pic of the pencil sketch on the canvas, she pointed out out that in this particular shot, Troy in the back was holding Tab down, and Tab was getting ready to bolt. Since normally they are best buds, I used secondary references of a happier Tab, and widened his eyes as I progressed with the painting.

​Your can see the gradual changes in Tab's eyes from pic #4-8, after the 3 photo references.

​Check out my main source images, as well as the step by step process I took below:

Thanks for checking my work out, you guys! Please feel free to share your thoughts below.

Next, I took the image into Photoshop and made a stencil out of 8 separate  pieces of 8 1/2 " x 11" papers, taping them together as seen below. The stencil had a lot of subtle 'noise' on it, because the original smaller file was blown up to match the size of the canvas I was preparing to work on. (Normally not the best scenario, but for my purpose it worked perfectly.) I guess the best way to describe it is that the stencil was a rough approximation of the original, much smaller image. Then I mixed a LOT of blue. The back color coats had to be done in one session because I wouldn't be able to match the blue exactly again if my supply dried out before the canvas was done. (Had to be a flat color, no deviations.)

​The actual canvas I am working on is 24" x 30" (See below) : 

Here you can see the composite stencil, before I taped it together, next to the canvas:

After this step, I put charcoal all over the backside of the stencil, and traced the message onto the canvas with a pencil:

And then finally, I filled in the letters by hand below:

The challenge here was to NOT make a SINGLE mistake on any letter, at any time. I had no more blue, and any attempt to match the back color to correct a lettering error would not have been a perfect match, and would be plainly visible to the eye. So, I had to make each letter right, the first time every time. This canvas required that I go over the letters three times, with three coats. So it really didn't let up until it was done. (Whew!) 

This effort was made as a present, btw :)

​As ever, thanks for looking you guys!

​Andy C.