New Painting!

I finally finished this piece! I started this so long ago, maybe 2 years ago now? I forgot about it for awhile, then found it again and had intentions of finishing it, until I forgot about it again.. Then a few days ago I found it once again, and so I decided it was finally time to get it done.

It is my own version of one of my favorite paintings, a piece by Gregory Manchess. In my book he is one of the best painters and illustrators alive today and I have always wanted a version of this painting for my studio wall.

And once again, it was cold yesterday and I started this last night, and it was so nice out today I was doing yard work in a t-shirt.. and it's the last day of January! I love controlling the weather with my paintings.

Spring Painting

Here is a new little 3" x 3" painting!

I really think I am controlling the weather with my paintings now though, I did that last big orange oceanscape and it was beautiful that day and the next. Then It got cold for a few days again, and then I started working on this little guy and today is so nice out, and its supposed to be like 45 or 50 all week, in January! I havn't decided how I will use my new found abilities yet.. but I think Ohio could use more palm trees.

New Painting

So we have only had about two or three cold days this winter I feel like, but I am still not a happy camper about it. I needed a big warm painting session to get over the idea of winter actually being here, and for some reason this orange ocean scene never gets old to me. I like tweaking it a little bit every time and changing or adding little things. This time I added some jet trails criss-crossing the sky. The oranges got a little blown out by my camera but this gives you the idea. I have been back in the mood to paint a bunch again so hopefully I'll have a string of new stuff up soon!

24" x 24"

Acrylic

83 Gallery Tomorrow

So tomorrow is gallery hop here in Columbus, and weather dot com told me that it's supposed to actually not be too cold and miserable out! I am going to be heading to 83 gallery to see all the new stuff, here are two of my new pieces that will be up there.

With both of these new pieces I was getting away from only have that really low horizon line and breaking it up into a few basic colors. Making the landscape a little more realistic is fun sometimes, especially in winter when I am cooped up inside all the time.

With this one I just took what I usually do, and reversed it; I put the horizon line near the top and had the waves gently lapping in over a much bigger distance of the canvas.

So these two will be up at 83 Gallery plus a few new triptych paintings and one big still life I did at CCAD. Hope to see some familiar faces there!

New Stuff on Etsy, and Gallery Hop this saturday!

So I finally have some new stuff up on etsy again, two new miniatures and two new mini triptychs! Check those out here.

Also I will have a few pieces up at 83 Gallery this saturday for gallery hop here in columbus! They will have live bands all night and tons of new work up, so come check it out if you can. Wee

Oops it's been awhile..

Man, December went by fast! I hope everyone had a great holiday season and happy new years. I was lucky enough to get a bunch of commissions recently, so I had an extra busy few weeks before Christmas. Things have slowed down a bit now though, so I can finally show everyone what I've been up to!

This was a piece I did for a climbing friend of mine from New York. Her family has a cabin on a beautiful lake where they have always fished, kayaked, and done all sorts of fun stuff. It is much looser and quicker than most of my paintings which I enjoyed doing. Lately I have been moving more and more towards impressionism and a less realistic painting style. One more commission to finish up now, which I will post once it's done, then I can start working on new paintings! weee

Thank You!

I just wanted to give a HUGE thank you to everyone who came out to the CCAD Art Sale yesterday! Thanks for supporting us artists and making the day memorable.

The early morning sun was blaring through the windows when I snapped these photos. The sun actually hung around for the whole day too which I think helped a lot for getting people up and into the sale.

Just incase you didn't get to see my booth in the morning, here it was.

People still really love the mini paintings, which was good to hear because I havn't made any in awhile and this motivated me to start again. But even more, it definitely motivated me to start working on some bigger pieces. So hopefully in a few weeks I'll have some cool new really big paintings to be posting!

So thanks again to everyone for motivating, supporting, and making us artists feel loved!

CCAD Art Sale is THIS SATURDAY!

So I feel like the art sale kind of snuck up on me this year, I can't believe it's already that time of year. I wanted to make something new for this sale, something a little more suited to christmas and the spirit of giving and all. I came up with a fun idea I think; I've been making cards with just some simple illustrations on the front, then a quote on the inside. All the quotes are some of my favorites, so of course they all are somewhat nature related, about simplifying and the likes. Here is one of the most simple cards.

The quote on the inside is "An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day" from Henry David Thoreau.

All of the illustrations aren't as simple as that one though, this one below has a bit more detail and color, but the scene itself is pretty simplified. I let a ton more of the wash underneath show through than I usually do as a way of making it seem a bit unfinished, or letting you fill in the rest yourself.

The quote in this one says "To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders." One of my most favorite taoist quotes from Lao Tzu. Then of course I have a little bit more from Mr. Henry David Thoreau, the one below says "Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?" I love that quote because he makes such a great insight into the idea of making art, even though he most likely was thinking about something completely different. So I will be selling all these fun little guys at the sale, plus a whole bunch of winter and christmas type landscapes. So if you have nothing else to do this saturday between 10 and 2 come hang out with me at CCAD!

I Miss Robots

One of my one on one students has really been wanting to try sculpting lately, so this week we finally broke out the clay. I havn't sculpted in awhile so I decided to let her choose what to try an sculpt, best decision ever. She wanted to make robots, I don't think there could have been a better choice.

We had our class and she managed to crank out a pretty cool head and body for hers, and I had just finished the head for mine. Time ran out so we decided to keep working on hers next time. I on the other hand was wayyy to into making my robot to stop. When my lessons were done for the day I quickly took out my half finished robot and went to work. Finally hunger stopped me and I had to go home, but I managed to crank this little guy out.

He says " 'Ello from robot land, and I hope everyone out there had a fantastically filling turkey day."

Watercolor Paintings from class

Last week we played with watercolors in my Paint like the masters class. The kids all really seem to like watercolor painting more than anything else so far which was fun for me. They actually sat and focused for the whole time and made some cool paintings. The only requirements were that it had to be a nature scene, and preferably something with water in it. These were two of the paintings the kids came up with.

I painted with the kids too, because there were a few of them missing so they were a little easier to handle than normal. I wanted to try something similar to a piece I did in college where there was a coy fish swimming beneath some lilly pads. That piece had been done in collage and I can still vividly remember how much of a pain it was to cut out so many scales and paste them on. I think the count was over a hundred of them by the time I was done. So needless to say, the watercolor version was much easier and much more enjoyable. This week were drawing a still life, should be fun!

"Being Coy Again"

12" x 12"

Watercolor

Oops it's been awhile

I am still alive.

Sorry about the long delay in posts but things have been pretty busy lately in the world of Quinn. First off I moved into a new house! It's really nice, but it's a bit of a fixer upper so i've had my hands full with that. I just finished painting the living room and the kitchen cupboards and drawers. We built a coffee table last night, and we are in the process of making a saloon style door to get to the basement. Next up for painting is the kitchen walls, then the ground floor will be done enough to start working on finishing the basement! Theres a lot of things I am excited for with this new place, most importantly SO much more space! I can start doing some really big paintings and get away from the tiny 2" and 3" ones I've been doing for a bit.

But with this almost month away from posting I have accrued quite a bit of things to post about, I wont dump it all out on one post but here is a quick fun one. My dad home brewed some Honey Porter this year, and he is hopefully bottling it soon. He went with the classy name, Harry Porter, can't go wrong with that. Here is what I came up with.

The last beer my dad made was pretty good so hopefully this ones even better, but with a name like harry porter how could it be bad.

In other news, my after school classes have been going really well, and that'll most likely be what I post about next so stayed tuned yall's!

Upside-Down Cat is Done

Mr. Upside down is finished and in good hands. It turns out the auction isn't until January, so I've got some waiting to do to see if he does as well as the last one. The previous cat drawing I donated went for over 1500 dollars! All of which went to helping the wayne county humane society grow and become a better shelter. Hopefully this years kitty goes for even more. Cheers.

Artists Row!

What a fun festival! The few days before it were busy, but I got tons of work done and had everything ready once the big day came along. I really enjoyed the whole day, the set up went well, the people were nice, and we were right near the music stage where there were some really great jazz musicians playing all day. And the best part of the whole thing; I won best in show! I got to go up one stage and everything!

Here was the set up in the morning, the weather was perfect and I got to wear my favorite Plaid as I fine tuned all the spots for my paintings.

People also really liked the little paintings again, as well as the big seascape. In the middle of the table you can just about see the first mini vertical trio I've done. Also on the far left you can make out the mini winter scene where instead of three square canvases in a row, I threw in a vertical one in the middle. Small changes to what I was doing before but I thought they were fun ideas.

Close to the end of the day I got the big surprise, I got to go on stage in the middle of the festival and receive the award from Maria Friske, whom the award is named after. It was really exciting, but then they told me to say something into the microphone, and I'm definitely not a big public speaker, so I just said thank you. Hopefully that was enough.

So overall the weekend was a success, plus the Bills won and are 2-0 now, what a year its turning out to be.

Preparation for Artists Row

Artist Row is fast approaching, this sunday is looking to be perfect weather in rochester and I'm getting excited for the festival. I've been slacking on the posts lately because of all the work I have been doing in getting ready for the show. in the past two weeks I have finished about 16 paintings, if my maths right thats over one a day. This is a quick taste of some of the new stuff.

Lately the paintings have become more like illustrations I think, I've been wanting to call them the illustrative landscapes. I think it was all those illustration classes, I can't help but make up stories for each painting as I work on it. I've also started to make a few that are more design orientated by taking the cloud shapes and turning them into something a bit more.

I will probably have one more post before the show, once I get all these little guys framed up and I have all my stuff together. wee

Lots of new stuff on the way

There's a new company opening up here in Columbus, it's called Colors & Bottles. The concept is pretty simple; an artist brings in a painting and teaches people how to paint it. And since it's geared for adults and a party type of theme, its BYOB, so that should be a good time. The painting below is the one I will be teaching, and if all still goes according to plan, I should be teaching a whole group of people all my secrets of painting in a few weeks.

Also I will be doing the Artist Row art festival in a few weeks! It was kind of late notice on their part, but it will be sept. 18th, yup thats next sunday. So instead of relaxing for a couple weeks and climbing every weekend, looks like its time to paint my face off and do some serious CCAD fashion last minute work.

Spirals in the sky

16" x 20"

Acrylic

Paintings by Aishu

So at my job we do a lot of work with younger kids, as well as kids with disabilities. I've been working with a girl named Aishu for a while now, she has autism, and she loves to paint. When she started she mostly drew cartoon pictures of things she likes, characters from Lion King or palm trees. She has made a ton of great progress though, especially the past few weeks I think she has made some amazing paintings. She did this painting about two weeks ago, I helped her mix the paints but she drew the house and did the painting all by herself. She called the piece Happy House, then when I told her to sign her name she started to write Name. She did this one just yesterday, I asked her to draw a tree, then paint it. Again I helped her to mix the paints but she did the rest by herself. This is my favorite painting she has done so far, she really liked it too.

Next week were going to try to paint a sailboat!

Upside-Down Cat

The Wayne County Humane Societies annual auction is coming up in a few months, and I'm gonna draw all sorts of kitties for it. The last time I donated a cat Illustration it sold for over 1,500! so hopefully both the pieces I am planning on giving go for even more. The Wayne County Humane Shelter is a great organization, they never put down animals and give them an amazing facility to live in until they can find a permanent home. All the proceeds of the event go to improving their facilities and increasing awareness of their organization, so to everyone who goes and supports the auction, you are awesome.

The World Famous Upside-Down Cat

10" x 10"

Colored Pencil

Back from the Adirondacks

So I just got back from another great trip to the Adirondacks, but of course I didn't get nearly as much painting done as I was hoping. It was a week and a half of mountain hiking, biking, and swimming, and most importantly seeing some of my relatives I don't get to see too much. I did ticked three more mountains off my list of 46 high peaks though, so thats always a plus.

Even though I really only did one painting, I probably took more than 100 photographs. So I got as much reference as I can handle for at least a few weeks or so. I really liked a few of the early morning pictures I took out on our lake with the dense fog making a mysterious scene. I took this panoramic photo below with five separate photos, then stitched them together in photoshop. You can faintly see the bridge my family has jumped off of into the water for years on the left hand side. The marsh in the middle is also the home to beaver family that has lived there as long as I can remember.

This is one of four large scale panorama's I've taken in the town of Newcomb. The full size of the photo's are all around 72" by 24", so someday I want to get them printed large scale and have some really cool, amazingly big photo's of one of my favorite places in the world.

Its My Burffdayss

So todays my birthday! 23 fine years on this planet of ours. It's kind of a weird one though, 21 was awesome, 22 was still kinda sweet, then 23? but hey a birthdays a birthday right? There's nothing to complain about when theres cake and presents about.

To celebrate, this weekend my family and I are heading up to our place in the Adirondacks to do some hiking, fishing and relaxing. Im planning on staying up there about a week and a half, so I'll be doing a bunch of mini paintings from all around that region. So there should be some cool new landscapes for ya'lls in few. In the mean time here is a fun painting I just finished and put up for sale on the Etsys.

(3) 8" x 8"

Farm Sunset

Acrylic

Climbing Trip This Weekend!

So it's been a few weeks since I've been able to take a climbing trip outside. This weekend we are headed to the New River Gorge in West Virginia to do some free water soloing! The weather is supposed to be in the nineties all weekend so swimming, climbing, and relaxing sounds like the right idea to me. Anywho, even though it seems like I have been lazy and not posting lately, I have been hard at work. I have been editing photos for etsy and taking care of shipping and stuff all week. Plus I had to re-do my site a bit and add a link everywhere. I wasn't quite ready for how long it was all going to take but I think I got it under control now. Way too much computer work this week and not enough painting. That's not to say I wasn't able to crank something out. Here is a winter scene I did while pretending my apartment wasn't a hundred degrees.

Winter Farm

7.5" x 3.5"

Acrylic

I liked the idea of putting a taller one in the middle of two squares. This gave me a bit more room for the details on the house and foreground, but the outside two kept that tiny amount of land that I like. Hope ya'lls like it too! And now I'm off to West Virginia.