A funky doodle and a few old landscapes

Well today I was studying this artist's work, Yellena James.  She is an illustrator and I love her use of color and form.  It's funky.  So I painted and drew with pens in her "style" this strange piece:  (the water was another experiment in itself)

And here here are some landscapes that I painted around 2007ish.  They were painted in acrylic paint, except for the 2nd one, which was in oil.

This is a random one...  Started off as a simple moon painting, but it was boring so I added flowers. 

My daughter just saw that I was posting that piece that I did today and she was like "OMG, where are you posting that?" And "YOU have a blog?"  So yeah, I don't tell people about this.  HA

Wildlife Painting Phase

Ok, so I went through a wildlife painting phase in 2006, which was the year I quit my real day job.  What an adjustment that was!!!  I tried to feel useful and productive, but it was hard to be "on" so much of the time with painting..  I have to be in the mood to paint.  It's not an easy thing to do for hours on end.
Anyway, here are some paintings from that period:

I sold this elk to a woman on Etsy.com who was so nice and sent me a photo of her holding the painting.  

This is supposed to be a dingo...

And that was that!!  

Experimental Bird Phase

Back in 2006, I experimented with different subjects, wildlife, still life, birds, wildlife, etc.  I settled on the dogs mostly because I could get commissions of pets easily.   So here are some bird paintings I did back then.

This was a big canvas.  Back then I was selling a lot of paintings on eBay auctions.  I sold all of these on auction except for the purple swan painting below. That hangs in my bedroom.  It's very soothing to me! 

I love the peacock colors!  I wish I had used more vibrant colors. 

This was an oil painting as you can see the glossy glare in the corner.  I must have been in a spooky mood. 

This one is in my bedroom.  Something about it really calms me. 

I loved doing this "stained glass" look.  I have several more paintings with this look.  I will post them next.  I'm sure no one is thrilled.  

Out of my Comfort Zone

Ok, so back in 2006 I did some commission work for an eye doctor who was apparently attending a lot of weddings.  These were way out of my comfort zone, but I did them anyway.  DO NOT LAUGH!!

You may not be able to see the people's faces, but I'm sure that they weren't thrilled with the interpretation!  I certainly wasn't....

The background of this painting is actually a famous one that the person who commissioned it wanted me to copy.  Then family in the corner is not famous.  And look - there's a puggle!  And they probably don't like the way I made their faces pretty darn ugly!! HA

Ok, I actually enjoyed doing this one because of all of the detail work on the building. But not so much on the people...  Probably doesn't look a thing like them! 

Then I was nervous about painting this wedding scene.  This was the last one I did for that doctor. 

And then I painted a baby, which turned out ok...

After this I decided to stick to taking only pet portraits! 

Horse Paintings - mainly in oil

So I've never really "known" a horse so why do I think I can paint one??  So my attempts are below.  Starting from most recent.  This first one (oil painting) is above one of my fireplaces:

This next one is also an oil painting and was a commission of a horse named "Peppy":

And here is another oil painting done is about 2006:

Here is an acrylic (and I've always liked this one because he seems sassy and the blonde hair is cute):

And another oil painting of two horses:

And then here is the first horse I painted and it's also in oil: 

This acrylic painting I did when I was in Arizona and we were painting outside where the paint was drying VERY quickly!

Oh and there are few more, but the photos are bad, so I'll bypass them for now.  I think I'll post some acrylic landscapes next time.  Thanks for looking!