Steve Cooley Fine Art

Three, natural lighting, with shadows…¬† better photos coming soon.

just need to sign it.. the color’s not 100% in this photo, but.. good enough for now.

I have a timelapse movie of the latest new piece in progress up on my dot mac account.. check it out. I’ve been reviewing the timelapse movies I’ve done so far, and I’m starting to figure out how and where to place the camera so that I can show you more of what’s going on in the process of the creation of a piece. In this movie, I was able to swivel the camera around to show you the layout table and the bandsaw as I cut each piece… I think it’s more interesting to see how the pieces on the layout table go from no cuts to rough cuts to final cuts, interspersed with shots of the actual cutting.

It aint’ easy being a videographer and woodworking artist at the same time, but.. I’m trying I hope you enjoy it.

Yesterday, my extremely talented wife asked me how the new painting is going. I said “eh..” with a shrug. “Well, keep at it. It’s a dance, you know. Keep going.” Good advice, and a nice way to look at it.

Technorati Tags: ideas, painting

The new piece is coming along pretty nicely. I sort of worked out a lot of the problems on the first piece in the new series, and now I’ve implemented some serious speedups.

layout

cutout, vertical layout figured out and pieces primed

spacers placed, glued, and fastened

underpainting done

layer one of the top painting

layer 2/3 of the top painting

Another couple of layers of top paint and final glue up, and piece 2 is done.

Technorati Tags: abstract, fine art, fineart, painting, woodworking

I’m extremely pleased with this piece, and I’m intending on it being the direction I go in for a while.
check out more photos

especially nice on the heels of the announcement of regular accounts being free, I’m in a new show in Second Life:

Huge thanks to Enjah Mysterio!

Technorati Tags: art show, artblog, fine art, second life

plein air watercolor of Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia. I was just there for a trade show, and at the encouragement of my wife, decided to take the same setup I had in carpenteria with me to philly. I walked down to Penn’s landing from my hotel on 12th street. (wow, that’s like.. 15 blocks! )
man, watercolors are hard.

ah, here’s a photo of roughly where I was… I didn’t use photos or sketch anything out before putting color on the page, but that painting is what I saw, and here’s what the camera saw:

This is the second watercolor I did on the same day as in the previous post… This is plain aire as well. There’s something about the parking lot in view of our campsite that I liked. We were at the beach mid-week, so we were probably seeing a minimal crowd for as much potential they have to entertain at this state park. One white truck was parked in the lot, amongst the 15-20 barbecue pits and dozens of parking spaces, overlooking the rehabilitating sand dunes and Channel Islands in the background.

I’ve done a few paintings with watercolor before, but, never plain aire. Never very seriously. Our vacation to Carpenteria last week gave me the time and patience to try out watercolors again. This was the coastline at the state beach. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone paint in the oil rigs, but I figured I would for historical documentation. I tried to pick out the things that I noticed about the light and the water. Right where the water recedes, on the ocean side, the color is the same as the sky: a perfect mirror.. on the beach side is a dark outline, which fades to the color of the wet sand. Maybe I didn’t quite pull this off in the piece, but it gave me some ideas for next time.