The last time I was in Florida I was out in the Everglades and I took photos of plants and some critters (I wish I had a better lens for photographing birds!).

I started painting some of these photos--more my impressions of them than actual attempts to duplicate the photos in any exact way. I do not excel at that sort of duplication obviously. The piece above is postcard sized, while the one below is, I think, 7 X 10 inches.

When I paint from photos, from now on, I will also post the photos. I cannot recall WHICH photos I used for these two. I also took a shot at doing some mangroves. THAT one really looks nothing like the photo but turned out, in my opinion, well.

I am judging these by progress and what I wanted them to look like more than anything else. I may try to do more realistic but tho

This tree was painted specifically for a Chilean. I was going to have a bottle of Pisco sitting by the tree but I thought maybe that would be obvious.

I purposefully did this differently than other paintings, blurring lines, applying and reapplying water to the paper to diffuse the details. MAINLY, however, I was trying to get perspective...which...as you may notice...I never did get.

But who cares about reality? I like how it looks anyway.

I don't have this painting anymore so I cannot take  a better shot of it. I like it. It is blurry, fuzzy and very primitive. It is one of those paintings that maybe didn't turn out exactly as intended. I also really wanted to keep painting but decided to leave it be and not ruin it!

The second of the gothicorn.....

These are some recent tree paintings. I sort of like the sky in the dark sky prairie one. I sort of like the whole painting but only sort of. There is something cartoony about it that appeals to me. None of these are from anywhere but my head.

If There Were Trees On Mars was initially the product of extra paint. I painted the leftover orangeish paint on one side of the and the blueish on the other. It sat there for at least a week. The first thing I thought of was; "It looks like mars." But how do you paint anything on Mars? Hmmm What if there were trees on mars? You see my line of thinking.

The Gwendle Bug Tree is one I painted specifically for someone. I am not sure they wanted THIS specifically but this is what they are getting. I am painting stuff as practice and if I get anything good I make an effort to disseminate them outward!

This is my first gothicorn. They are mythical beasts that, for some reason, flock to the northern part of Broward County Florida where there is a dark presence that draws them.

I liked this one so much I almost kept it instead of mailing it to the dark one.