Sunrise Pansies

It's pansy season in South Texas. These valiant little flowers love the
winter here—high 20s - 30s at night and even during the day. It doesn't
snow here very often but when it does, their little faces look happy
peeking out from a snowy blanket. I have no idea how "pansy" became 
synonymous with "delicate" or "fragile."

Galveston Wharf Building 3 and 4

Same building in Galveston as the previous post . . . this building
has different architectural elements and many windows, some of
which are arched and some a hybrid arch. Some areas of the facade
are pretty clean while others are dark, dirty and rusty. It's one subject
that can be cropped so many ways to look for different compositions,
colors and to play with scale. This old girl probably has a lot of
interesting stories to tell.

Galveston Wharf Building 1 and 2

These are two 8 x 10 studies of an old neglected building in Galveston,
with 2 more in the works. I've been working on several larger canvases
but am not yet satisfied with how they're developing. Switching gears
usually disrupts whatever single-minded obsessive rut I seem to fall into.
There are several layers on these, some where everything is spelled out,
then scraped and softened, then repainted. Sometimes I get too focused
on what I'm observing and don't pay enough attention to what's happening
on the canvas. Working in layers feels natural to me but it was mostly to try
to get things more "right." Now I'm watching the layers create optical grays
and a skin or patina so that the paint itself seems as important as the
subject. These may need more work but they'll be set aside for a bit and
looked at again later. (The other rut I'm prey to is overworking and ruining!)

Stripe

This was a fun challenge—because there are so many items and the
abrupt shaft of light, I could think more abstractly and not fuss too much
with individual objects.