This was is a miss on a number of fronts and hopeful I can learn from it. The original photograph shows a friend's child riding a bicycle in some desert terrain near their house without any clothes on. I started trying to paint the background and just ended up with an ugly, muddy mess. So i re-did the background in washes of color instead of throwing it away and set to work. No matter how I tried, I could not get the face just right. So I ended up over-working it and it became blurred and soft, no edges, no definition. So when I painted the bike and it came in crisp and more powerful, it overwhelms the figure. So, I learned a new background technique that I like and that I need to keep working at figure and faces to get more comfortable (and work in bigger scale so I am not stressing to get detail in such small proportions).

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 06:39 PM | Permalink

I have a series of reference photographs of the items I use or carry with me when participating in my favorite passion - cycling. I have shots of my helmet, shoes, a spare inner tube. This still life started as just the cap and glasses but because I drew in the cap centered low and right, I added the waterbottle to give it more balance. I am happy with the colors, the shading, the lettering, the backgrounds. I got the outline of the cap a little wrong (nothing too drastic) and wish I got the glasses lenses and frame more perfect against the original but overall I am happy with this picture and feel like it marks progression in my ability to pull of a picture as I conceive it.

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 03:21 PM | Permalink

This is my first real portrait - of my granddaughter. I used a cell phone picture as a reference and used a ruler to be as exact as I could with the spacing and shape of the eyes, nose, mouth. I was happy with how the shading and highlighting of skin came out (finally getting a good skin color in acrylic now). I was happy with the shape and proportion of the legs. I was really happy with the overall finished picture. I liked the background (textured, chunky strokes with complementary color) but I wish I would have painted in the background from the photo (a black couch).

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 09:25 PM | Permalink

I did these three little landscape/florals from some photos I took in a wetland park behind a community center in Sebastapol California where my wife was attending a bellydance festival. I worked on them at one time - as a set, as I am really happy with both the small format, the way that produced a more richly textured work, the fact that they are more interpretive than photo realistic but you can still tell what they are. They look really nice framed and hung together as a set on our living room wall

Sebastapol Wetlands number one - happy with the colors and the shapes. Could have done better with the tree in the background and the direction and highlighting of the grass strands.

Sebastapol Wetlands number two - Really happy with the shapes and colors and patterns here. Even though this does not look exactly like the photo, it came out just the way I wanted.

Sebastapol Wetlands number three - Really happy with the central plant and the overall confusion of the multiple plant stalks and grass around and behind it. I think the colors came in a little too blue for this one and I'm unhappy with the pods above the main plant (back-grounded by sky).

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 09:17 PM | Permalink

I adapted this from a photo I took of my son looking out into the sunset at Laguna beach around Christmastime last year. I was happy with the sky and much of the water coloring. But the water in the photo has a liquid-metal quality that I just couldn't get. I also missed on the water colors - the purples were there in the photo but much different than I ended up in my picture. I was happy with silhouette - especially since I didn't settle for black and used dark versions of every color from the photo (learning again that shadows are not blackened versions of colors but deeper and darker shades).

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 09:11 PM | Permalink

I attend this bicycle festival in Monterey every year and this view (looking up on the North hillside surrounding the Laguna-Seca raceway where the event is held) is iconic for anyone who attends the event. I was experimenting with chunky, textured, childlike imagery and it worked well on the greens of the hillside and the sky. But I learned that I prefer realistic proportion and shading rather than the flattened look I ended up with here. I like the way the people in the crowds came together but looking back, realize I should have used more color and not left the figures all black.

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 07:36 PM | Permalink

I had a bicycle accident and had to have surgery and was kind of obsessed with the whole process for a while. This painting is an interpretation of an x-ray showing the titanium appliance holding my radius bone together. I liked how the background and different gray values came together. The appliance detail is not true to the original (didn't pay enough attention to the fine detail again) and I wussed out on the wrist bones so that part is not accurate either.

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 07:30 PM | Permalink

This was my first painting on a canvas. I took a long time to complete it. I like the way the fabric and skin looks. It showed me a path to a style of painting that I cam back to after a few experiments you'll see in later posts. I botched the proportions of the baby's arms, the mother's hand, and the face completely (look at it sideways). It taught me that you can't do human features by sight - I now use a careful grid sketch and even pull out a ruler to get the proportions of things more correct. Still learning.

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 07:25 PM | Permalink

This was my first attempt at a painting after a half-dozen color pencil drawings. I was happy with the way it looked like what it was supposed to look like. I was happy with discovering how to use highlight colors and that colors are never solid (added blue in the black shorts and gray in the white of the jersey. I botched the detail in the helmet and handlebars and pay more attention to fine detail now. I also learned to not apply acrylic straight to paper - the paper absorbs moisture from the paint and buckles. I use canvas now but if I do ever use paper again I will prep it with gesso.

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 07:20 PM | Permalink

This is truly my morning inspiration. I like the shading in the cup. I like the way the checkered background came out. I was not happy with the lettering and have been more careful about lettering since. The cup shape at the bottom is off a little and I work hard to keep the outline of objects smooth before laying on color.

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 07:16 PM | Permalink

For this picture, I switched to gray paper and loved the way it made the color pencils pop. I was happy to work out a way to get the detail in the bicycle chain (I used a little stencil to outline every individual link) and the spokes in the wheel (following a wheel-builders manual, I used a ruler to get the layout right and the lines straight). I really didn't have anything critical to say about this one after I finished it.

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 07:11 PM | Permalink

The reference for this picture was a video I shot while on a mountain-bike ride in Santa Cruz on a business trip. I like the way the colors of the sky came together - I learned to keep laying the colors on top of each other until the wouldn't blend any more (you end up with a smooth waxy finish that I really like). I like the shape of the figure. I didn't like how the edge's turn out kind of rough when you're working on fine detail.

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 06:25 PM | Permalink

I like the way the background came out on this one. And the way the colors blended in the fabric of the jersey. And the face (my first attempt at a face). Did not like that I missed a letter in the name across the front of the jersey (it's supposed to say Liquigas).

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 06:19 PM | Permalink

I haven't touched this website for some time. Life has a way of moving you in new direction over this much time. I posted a handful of drawings I had done in color pencil. I moved to drawing away from writing - to have something to do with creative energy that wasn't getting used up. I have since evolved and moved on to painting in acrylic and now feel like I am on a creative path that really satisfies me in ways that writing used to when I was young and hopeful and working on novel-length work.

The paintings I have produced so far have each taught me something. The biggest thing I have learned is that no matter how many things I get wrong this time, every painting I do is a new lesson to make the next one better.

I will be posting new work from here on and hope it serves as a record of progress, a living experiment. And if I one day become competent enough that every work I put out is something to be proud of - an expression rather than an experiment - it will become a catalog.

Now, back to work.

Posted by Steve Medcroft at 12:22 PM | Permalink