Commissioned Cat Portrait

Today I finished another Cat Portrait "Elsa"
Don't forget to let me know if you or any of your friends would like a Pet Portrait, just forward my blog to them and my email address is dobyrne@mac.com to order a commission ;-)
Have a great week!

Solona Beach Plein Air Painting

Painted a beach scene at sunset at Solona Beach. It was a beautiful day everyone in their swimsuits sunbathing and having picnics. Incredible weather for this time of year. I started painting in daylight and ended in sunset so it was a challenge!!!

Week 6- 3/17th- Simba Cat Portrait

Monday 17th - Went to Balboa Park to paint but must admit I got distracted by all the goings on with St Patricks Day. So headed to the notorious Davis Marketing Celebration on 5th Ave where we had a great re-union with Leslie and her present and past employees plus family and lots of friends. It was a great time! the parade went right by her building so talk about front row seating!!

Tues 18th - Computer Day and meeting with Web Designer Scott to revamp my website. Worked on Blog updates.

Wed 19th - Worked on excel spreadsheet for finances, paid bills, checked emails etc. Worked on commissions.

Thurs 20th & Friday 21st - Finished the painting of "Simba" the second cat portrait for Tina.

Computer Issues

Tom Lambotte the Mac Guru came to my rescue thanks for the referral from Leslie Davis. He worked on my mac mini and saved me 17 gigs of space as my hard drive was completely full. So all I need now is more memory for things to work better. He will install this for me this Friday. He also showed me some tricks with my email so delighted for the help. If you need any help with your Mac please call Tom at 858-342-8826.

3/17 Lake Poway Oil

Took a day trip out to Lake Poway to see the wild flowers and the lake with two painting buddies. This painting I need to fix. I will delete the 3 trees on the left and add a hill so your eye doesn't go off the page and make some other edits. I'll post the final one later.

We saw lots of species of birds and I loved the geese but boy were they cheeky and made a beeline for me setting up my easel. Heres a photo of Fred going in for attack. He came charging out of the water and waddling up the hill to attack me so I held my ground, nervous but my passion for art took over, and he made a huge racket of squawking and then attacked my shoes, thank goodness for two things: 1. I wasn't wearing flip flops, 2. and he has no teeth! hilarious! once he pecked at me a few times he realized i wasn't a threat so posed for a few photos! which will be my next painting, thanks Fred :)

3/16/08 Point Loma Cliffs

Another wonderful painting day in paradise. It was blustery windy day so had some layers on. Fabulous pounding waves hitting the rocks. I had a great view from above. With all this painting going on I'm discovering how San Diego has so many fabulous views so I'll be busy for a long time ;-)

Peñasquitos Ranch, San Diego

This week I painted 2 paintings out in Peñasquitos Ranch. We have had fabulous sunny days but boy once in the shade it really felt chilly especially when you are painting and not moving much. A hare ran by with his cute white tail fluffed up, some ducks nearby quacked away to each other...they were the only sounds to be heard. So it was really nice to enjoy the peace and quite... made the time stand still. I hope you get this feeling from these two oil paintings.

These belong to the series of Plein Air Paintings of San Diego which will be for sale at my upcoming ART WALK show in Little Italy on April 26th and 27th. The Invite will go out this week. Please send me your email address if you have not received invites in the past.

Email Address: dobyrne@mac.com.

Head Drawing Portraits

3.10.08 Head drawing from a live model of a young man in charcoal.
3.16.08 Head drawing from a live model of a woman with a pony tail in charcoal.

Great practice for my portrait commissions!

Elsa, Black & White Cat Portrait

Tina commissioned me to paint her black and white cat Elsa who sadly passed away but thankfully Tina had a great photo to paint her from and now she is remembered forever and gives joy to her family. Elsa is now in Kitty heaven surrounded by catnip and treats :-)

My Dads Portrait in Watercolor

Last week I finished a portrait of my Dad Kevin, from a photograph taken on my Christmas visit home to Dublin, Ireland. For me this captures him with his favorite cap. Its a surprise for him so it will be interesting to hear what he thinks about it. ;-)

Female Head Drawing

This is this weeks head drawing of a female model. I really enjoy drawing people from life, its so challenging, very good training and can be so rewarding when they work out to your liking!

Vista Roadside View in Oil

I had a wonderful morning in the countryside painting a mountain scene, didn't quite make it to the lake but did take some photos of horses and a donkey near by. Love those animals. It was so peaceful and relaxing away from phones, traffic and general man made noises!

3/5/08 Overflowing Emotions

Last night I heard a strange noise coming from pipes in the garage and a visiting friend said not to worry about it unless you see water, as it sounded like a clog in the pipe. So I went back to work on my painting. Later that evening I noticed the toilet was looking low so I flushed it and Whoooa OVERFLOW time. (ok not the smartest thing to have done ;-)
But it didn't just overflow in one toilet but both, the second toilet water started shooting out of the bottom by the floor, of course this was after midnight but thankfully Jorge my wonderful handyman and Mark the plumber told how to handle it until the AM.
They both arrived the next morning and it turned out to be much bigger deal, a burst pipe in the road! so we had to call in San Diego Waste Management to check it out with their snake camera and hi tech equipment. The great part was I was surrounded by men that day! very entertaining and as you can imagine a lot of toilet humor!

"Toilet Issue" Translations

"An overflowing toilet, denotes your desires to fully express your emotions."

So obviously I must have some major desires to express myself, Yep see my life so far...to affect two toilets, a bath, a shower, the front lawn and a big pipe in the middle of the road!!!

The Volcano in Hawaii had issues today too...here is the local newspaper headline:
"Lava from Kilauea Volcano dribbled over a 20-foot sea cliff into the ocean today 3/5/08, forming clouds of acid-laden steam."

Week 3, Desert Scene-SOLD

During my First week I received a phone call from Tina out of the blue whom I met at one of my art shows a year ago. She called to commission me to paint 3 portraits of her cats, sadly Elsa passed away but thankfully Tina has her favorite photo which I'll use as a reference. The other two: Simba and Whiskers are doing fine. Tina decided to hand deliver the precious photo rather than mail it which I totally understand. So I worked on the first watercolor portrait of Elsa and completed it on 3/7. I won't upload a photo until Tina has seen the original.

My second week I sold a Guoache painting of a Desert Scene to Brian Shui, who is a very talented Chiropractor, also highly recommended for sports massage and general wellness. He can be reached at 619-688-3089 and his soothing office is located in Bankers Hill in San Diego. Above is a picture of the painting which he purchased as a gift for a friend and asked me write a personal note on the back which is always so nice.

The week of Big Waves!

This week has been great for big waves in San Diego. I painted another 2 plein air watercolors in La Jolla, my 2nd attempt at painting big waves, tricky business! but so much fun.

Above are 2 of this weeks paintings, The one of La Jolla Cove with the big wave was juried into The San Diego Watercolor Society and can be seen during the month of March along with another Italian painting of mine.

A lady from New York asked for my card and wanted to know if i give painting lessons and I said yes. So she'll contact me when she comes back. Excellent!

Another lady dropped by and recognized my from one of my shows, so we chatted a while and she will contact me for a dog portrait, her gorgeous dog is so sweet so it will be a pleasure to paint him.

I'm working on some portraits and will upload them when they are complete. Happy Sunday!