2024

An acrylic painting of a spiral galaxy in blue and purple.

Spiral Galaxy - 30 June 2024

I was thinking about trying to do an acrylic version of one of my space pixel pieces, and here's the result. If anything, this made me realize that I really need more pigments rather than trying to mix unique colors.

This took about 45 minutes on a 4x4in (~10x10cm) canvas.

2022

Acrylic painting of purple clouds over a yellow sky. There are black mountains in the foreground.

Arizona Sunrise - 08 January 2022

This is based on a doodle I did back in June 2019. It took around 70 minutes over the course of several days.

2020

An acrylic painting of a purple nebula.

Purple Nebula - 17 October 2020

This was technically a speedpainting - it only took twenty minutes! I'd just bought a new paint color (dioxazine purple) and wanted to test it out. And what I came up with was this pretty nebula-ish thing. Of all the acrylic paintings I've done, this is one of my favorites...a twenty minute doodle, basically.

An acrylic painting of a circular, yellow and orange galaxy.

Galaxy - 7 March 2020

My first attempt at painting a galaxy.

2019

An acrylic painting of the side of a mountain with trees. The sky in the background is green and black with stars.

Night - 29 November 2019

Eighth acrylic painting! This originally started out as a yellow & green nebula/galaxy. I ended up not liking the yellow at all, so after I was done painting all the clouds, dust, & stars, I painted the painted the mountain over the yellow part. Then I painted some trees on the mountain to make it look less boring.

A black and white acrylic painting of the moon behind clouds. The moon is reflected in the water below.

Moon Reflection - 24 November 2019

This actually started out as a painting of a tree on a hill. When I was done painting it, I wasn't very happy with it, so I left the tape border on for about a week while I thought about what I actually wanted to paint.

I only used black & white here because I wanted to focus exclusively on values (light & shadow) instead of colors. The paint is actually slightly bluer than what you see here, even though I didn't mix in any blue to the black & gray tones. It's such a subtle shade that I think it might be part of the black pigmentation, and not the colors of the previous painting showing through.

An acrylic painting of clouds at sunset.

Sunset Clouds - 12 November 2019

This is the sixth acrylic painting I did, and the first that I actually liked. I didn't actually set out to paint a sunset or clouds - I originally intended to paint a galaxy using yellow/orange/red/black. I didn't work, and I started painting clouds instead.

I made a ton of mistakes with this painting - not using enough water, not blending the colors well enough, and not having a plan on what I was going to paint. Unlike the previous paintings I did, I wasn't frustrated with this one when I finished it. I liked it - and still do like it - because I this was when I first started to get the hang of acrylics. All of my later paintings are much improved compared to the first five.