My Paintings

#1 for 2026. Started 01JAN2026 and completed 07JAN2026. Acrylic. 12x16 inches. Study for a larger painting of a bald eagle landing on a dead tree. Reference photo from an unknown source. For some reason, I mistakenly thought this was primarily a blue, gray, and violet picture. So, my goal was to use a limited palette of gray colors. However, this didn't work. The grays didn't accurately reflect the colors in the reference photo.

#2 for 2026. Started 14JAN2026 and completed 30JAN2026. 11x14 inch. 

My 2nd watercolor. Reference photo from an unknown source. 

Limited Windsor-Newton palette: white, lamp black, raw umber, and yellow ochre. I had trouble finishing this because I painted in this order: background, antlers, and body. Next, I outlined the face, and it looked like Bullwinkle! I wanted a realistic moose and not a cartoon. So, I didn't do anything for 7-10 days.   

#3 for 2026. Started 07FEB2026 and completed 12APR2026.  Acrylic. 9x12 inches pre-stretched canvas..

The painting above is of a Rocky Mountain Toad. The reference photo is one I took in Ben's backyard. Ben was working on a garden bed, and the background shows some weed barrier and yellow clay soil. The background is nothing like the picture and isn't supposed to be realistic.

My original goal was to create a painting using a hyper-realistic style. The standard beginner reference photo is a human eye. But I didn't know what I would do with a giant human eye.

I watched several YouTube videos, and there seem to be two hyper-realism approaches:

• Paint every square inch hyper-realistically, or

• Block in the colors and then add the hyper-realism on top. 

I did the second approach. However, I was very disappointed after the block-in. You can see the block-in in the rear end of the top photo. I thought it looked like garbage. So, I stopped working on it for several weeks.

But, I have an irrational love of toads, and couldn't stay away.

With a hyper-realistic style, one reference photo isn't enough, and copying it "as is" misses the point. The point is to make it more real than it is in the photo. 

In the finished painting, you can see an extra toe on each left foot. I spent almost 4 hours getting the eye right. It isn't like the photo at all.

original work

Original Watercolor 2025: I used chatGPT to apply a watercolor style to an original phograph of a mountain lion to get a reference photo. 

My version of Willem Kalf's still life with Roemer, 2023

Spiderman: Adam Cartwright

original work of Washington DC in winter

Elizabeth Cartwright

original work

My version of Vermeer's, "Lace Maker": 1977

Completed at Art Camp about 1973

White T-Shirt is me; Guy with side-burns is Keith Ginsburg; So, this would have been done when I was in elementary school

original work

I've done this painting (colored pencil drawing here) by Willem Kalf many times. This is from a photo in the Time-Life Library of Art

1/3 of fish: whereabouts unknown; Perhaps, 6th grade; about 11-12 years old

pelican painting, 2023

close-up of pelican

My version of Young Woman with a Water Pitcher by Johannes Vermeer. The image is poor and was captured from the background in a ~1978 photo of my work at an art fair. Whereabouts unknown.