...dont let Sigmund Freud get ahold of this... all those phallic symbols lol my goodness.. lol I like this great interplay of shapes and colors..

I guess the thing actually turned out alot like this amazingly enough. Might scan it some time if I feel like it.

Thanks yall. :)

Oooh, more pictures of the home of my heart! You have a real gift for rendering this kind of scene, Cindy! :) There are two points that I have to question, though, for future reference (again, not that I could do this myself, but I can tell that these two points don't look quite right -- my eye being better at this than my hands, as yet, at least).

First, the ripples in the dry wash of the path seem to me to be too consistently angled, instead of following the curves of the path, the way I'd expect them to, if they were caused by water running over the mud during flood time (which is what I think of when I see that kind of image). They'd make more sense if there were a way for the water to have acted on the land outside of the path, the same way, but with the wall there, I'd expect the water to be restricted to the path more, and curve to follow it, during flash floods.

Second, the tufts of greenery on the bush don't seem to have a correlary set of darker areas, within the shadow of the bush, so it looks to me like the shadow is of a bush that doesn't have as much foliage on it as this one does.

These are both fairly minor points though, which I offer only in order to point out directions in which you can continue to work on advancing your work, which is already spectacular, and VERY evocative of the landscapes you've been painting. <smile> As you may be able to tell, what I've seen so far has been enough to spur me to go back through the pictures in your user board, in order to see more of these pieces! <grin> But even great artists can still grow, and I hope I've offered some useful suggestions for your consideration, here. :)

sure, always, I appreciate all the helpful suggestions. (Actually, it doesn't rain often where this was taken from and it's very windy, so I assume the ripples were caused by the wind since the sand changes rapidly - although the rain does a number on this wash when it does happen)

one of these times..you have to tell how you make these figures look like this.. I love that This is apparently Ferndinand the Fence cutter? lol love these

Well this is actually the bootcutter from the picture you saw earlier. I had to make an advertisment for class so I drew the pictures on here. As far as making them, I put colors on the paper and then I use real small brush size and just draw like I would normal but wit the blend on.

...I will try it..but I bet it doesnt look like yours! lol

lol they must be singing "spirituals!" lol I love your pictures...and I want to know too how you do that... I have played and played with the tools and I cant make anything that looks like that texture.....secrets!!!

no silly, she just took a mean ass fart.....no really, she's just celebrating April 20th a lil early.

lmfao.....damn i wished i looked that sexay whenever i took mean ass farts....then ide always look sexy :)

This is really cool... the background has a sort of 60'ish look to it and I like the skin tones you used. And practice won't do it for some, Marcello, I could practice singing all day long and the coyotes would just start howling, or chemical engineering and just blow us all up... some ppl just got it and some don't.

Yes, I know. 800kb (or even 6 or 7) for this board and 1mb for the advanced board would be perfect. Everyone would be ecstatic.

great idea..great draw laureal... I agree.more contrast between the sky and the birds... also.. I would like to see more random sizes and colors of the twigs in the nest.. I love what you have, but it looks a bit unnatural being all of smooth uniform sizes of the same color..(almost like they have a nest supplies departement at Home Depot lol) ..I am sure one of the mods will move this up to a bigger space board for you..its a great pic and deserves to be finished!

"Ha ha davinci...you are 'so' funny..."(O.M.) That's what I was going for(sarcasm) Wow...home depot sales are great, aren't they?

awesome work so far...its beautiful! yes, real flowers muchly needed! hehe. and awesome detail too!

I love this flower... nice cool colors and i like the way you did the background to bring the flower to the front. Very pretty.

This makes me long for summer even more. We've got snow down here.... [color: blue] I'm blue...[/color]

Hey thanks a lot everybody :) clouds! hehe

wow, this version is the best. Love the strokes you added. Makes it look more watercolorish.

<melts> Excuse me, I'm moving into your pictures. At least when I'm having dental work... ...I have favourite mental places I go when they're working on my teeth (I don't tolerate local anaesthetics, so I *have* to use those sorts of techniques...), and your pictures have now become the first paintings (by *any* artist) to make the list. You may take that as the high compliment that it is, and well-earned, at that, Cindy. <smiles with sincere admiration>

I've never looked out from the Mesa Verde ruins at sunset (those ladders are scary enough in daytime, and that's BEFORE I became acrophobic), but this looks just like the kind of thing I'd expect to see, so you've got the feel you describe, dead on, with this picture. *impressed smile*

I hope there are more pieces of this type coming... ...and at this rate, I may have to ask you if I can save some to my hard drive, as I'm not sure I can stand to part with them! *wistful grin*

On the useful suggestion side of things, I thought you might like to think about using a glow similar to the one you used on the horse and cowboy, to edge the ruins (should you work on this further locally, or do more pieces like this, since I see that this one is marked as "finished"), and give an indication of the light pouring up and over their edge, from the sunset, because I think it would have that same almost magical effect that it did in the cowboy picture.

And, as an extremely minor detail, there's a stone that appears to be sticking out toward us, about 3 rows below the bottom of the window on the viewer's left, beneath the middle of the window, which gives me the feeling that it's about to pop right out of the wall toward me, and cause the window to cave in. It could be intentional, it might not, and it's perfectly believable either way, but it gives me a loss of the feeling of tranquility that this piece otherwise conveys, and instead creates a sense of dramatic tension, as though something in me is waiting for the remainder of the wall and window arch to collapse. I thought you might want to play with that, in future works, since your paintings tend to have a very emotional impact on the viewer (to judge from my own response and that of others), making that emotional effect into one more tool in your palette, so to speak.

P.S. to thug: Cindy is not alone in putting in 3-5 hours at a stretch on a single piece of artwork; I do it too, (and though I don't compare my work to hers, so do many of the *other* artists whose work I like) and that's not allowing for interruptions. How did you think that her pieces got so good, anyway? *grin* Good artists aren't *necessarily* speed demons (though they can be); what makes a good artist, IMHO, is that they're just good at being expressive, whatever their medium of choice, regardless of how long it takes them -- which is reassuring to those of us who take longer on our own pieces, even when we aren't at Cindy's skill level. :)

I hope this comment has been useful, and not *too* long, this time... *worried look* I tried to cut out anything not directly related to *this* picture. I don't see anything left I can leave out.

About 5 hrs in one sitting is an avg. for me here... some I worked on for 8 or more at once, because they usually take up so much space that I can't get back in to edit w/out asking for more space.

Gee, thanks alwayslearning... maybe you should have a job as a writer? lol And yeah, the rocks that appear to be about to come out are intentional... these things are barely standing as it is and crumbling as we speak. I'm so glad that someone recieves the feeling I try to impart when I paint (or draw). That's what makes it satisfying. This place has inspired me to bust my real paint out again.

you always do the coolest skies. :)