Chris Fullmer . com

Hillside in Fall Creek Canyon, Swan Valley, Idaho

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:41 -0800

On vacation I had a chance to get away and take some photos of the Swan Valley area. This was taken up a canyon on the Fall Creek. It was a beautiful day, and the plants all had on their yellow flowers. The top of the hill is dark lava rock, which really worked nicely with the light yellow and the blue sky.

I might keep posting photos to this blog for a while. Its what I've been working on lately. I also keep many photos on my Flickr site, but I'd like to have some here too so this site does not sit completely stagnant.

A Barn and the Tetons

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 10:35 -0800

I have not been posting enough! I have done a few things recently, and I have a bunch of things that I did a while ago that I never posted, so maybe its time I get it all together and posted. I'll start with this, since its recent and I can recall the details on it. I was commisioned to do a painting of a barn. So I chose to put it on the Idaho side of the Tetons. My dad's uncle's family (I'm not sure exactly who owns or runs it currently) has a barn near Tetonia. I could not find a photo of their barn, so I found something in similar in the region and used it as a base. Its obviously onthing too fancy, but I tihnk its nice. I've enjoyed painting in this style. It feel happy to me. I hope you think so to,

Chris

Polka Dots and a Lady Bug

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:04 -0800

Fenna's been making hair bows almost every night for the past couple of months. Turns out that she has made nearly 300 bows just for fun. She has given many away to friends and family, but now we've decided to take the plunge and try to sell some online - woohoo! So I have been playing with making a logo and banner for her website (http://fennabug.etsy.com). This was my first attempt (well, second attempt really, but the first one was so fast its not worth posting - that ladybug had some serious proportion issues!). So after my first try, I did a few quick pencil sketches, came up with a much improved ladybug, and just started painting. And this is what I came up with. Its not too fancy, but I think its pretty cute. The green background is a little too busy and detracts from the ladybug a bit I think. So I made another one, which I'll post later, and then I'll post the final banner image I've got on the site after that.
Chris

Ivins Red Mountain

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:03 -0800

This is the view from my parents backyard! I don't know that I captured it 100% (or even 10%), but I think it still reflects how beautiful the landscape is in Ivins, Utah. I probably worked on this for two hours or so. Maddie sat outside at my table and worked on plenty of her own paintaings too. She definitely has better technique than I do,
Chris

6 Post-Its

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:09 -0800

I haven't posted anything new for a long time. I do have one or two things I need to post, but I have not gotten around to scanning them yet. So this is something that I was not necessarily planning on posting, but since I have it scanned already and I am currently avoiding doing work for a few minutes, I thought I'd take this time to post these incredible post-its. I think they really highlight my talents. Or more specifically, my lack thereof. The rule to these was that I would do one everyday (except I stopped after 6 days because I forgot to keep doing them). They each took one minute to draw (or less). And it had to be something I could see from where I sit at work. I'll list what they are since it might not be obvious :) Top to bottom, left to right: my computer speaker, computer monitor on a ream of paper, old tape at the top of my space divider, a silverfish on the top of the wall where it meets the ceiling, my mouse, a pushpin holding a piece of paper to my cork board wall. My favorite is the monitor. It truly demonstrates my complete inability to draw straight lines, and shapes in general that resemble monitors. Hope you enjoy this silly post. Oh, and I do plan on doing more in the future. So look out!

Chris

Rocks and Flowers

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:50 -0800

I wanted to paint a few nights ago, so I sat down and tried to think of a subject. I fell back to my usual rocks and grass and flowers. I also remembered a little bunny I had done in an earlier sketch I put on this website. So I decided to do a quick little scene and include that bunny again. Its nothing fancy, but I really like it. I enjoy working in this style. I don't know what to call it - children's book illustration or something? I could see these images being in a kids book, so maybe that is fitting. It would be a lot of fun to do a coherent series in this style and put together a book someday. I'm quite proud of this on, hope you like it too.

Chris

Crissy Field Warming Hut

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:31 -0800

I left the house early one Saturday morning and headed over to San Francisco looking to do some plein air painting. I ended up at Crissy Field (mostly because I don't get too lost trying to find it, and if you get there before 10:00am the parking is simple). I think I was gone about 20 minutes total, but Fenna insists it was actually 4 hours. However long it was, I sure enjoyed it. I watched the crab fisher people on the dock pulling up big crabs and fish. I saw some jellyfish, a seal and way too many dogs. After I was done walking around the park, I settled down on a cement amphitheater space and decided to paint the Warming Hut (which had previously sold me a cup of hot chocolate and a croissant. I wanted to make sure I could get the site right, so I started sketching it out on my test pad of paper. Then I kept sketching and kept sketching and completely forgot I was on my cheap paper. So I inked it and started painting and remembered that I had better paper I wanted to use. So it is on fairly inexpensive paper, oh well! The whole time I was there it was fairly overcast, but I caught a glimpse of the bridge a few times. So I sketched it in. After I had finished I noticed that the bridge actually has more height segments than I painted. So it is inaccurate. I also smudged the paint on the cables, which made me sad. I did it after I got home somehow. I have no clue how I did it. Anyhow, overall I think this is a very successful painting and I'm quite proud of it. I hope you like it too!

Chris

Two Cypress

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:14 -0800

This painting was done because I wanted to work on two new tree styles. The Italian Cypress was something I had worked out in Photoshop first using a Wacom tablet. After I had made a bunch of them for a different project, I thought I should try it in watercolor. So this was that attempt at doing this tree in watercolor. I like how it came out. The Monterey Cypress is something I had watercolored earlier in the day at the warming hut in Crissy Field. I liked how that first attempt came out overall, but I wanted to practice it again. I learned some things about that shape of tree I wanted to work on re-creating. So this tree was my second attempt at a Monterey cypress in one day. My next post will be of the warming hut. Then somehow I always come back to these hills and a path. I love California's rolling hills, so I keep painting them. And something about the path moving fromt he foreground to the background makes the hills seem more tangible to me. I even tried a non-blue sky. It came out good enough. I really need to work on my color blending. I always feel like I mess it up somewhere. Overall though, this piece has a nice relaxing, whimsical feel to it that I enjoy. I hope you do to,

Chris

Tilden Park Panorama

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:15 -0800

Here is a panorama I did of the view from the backside of Tilden park looking out toward Orinda and Mt. Diablo. This was for Chip Sullivan's LA 135 class. I think this was the first or second time we used watercolor in his class, so one of the first times I had ever really used watercolor at all. It came out well. I am especially pleased with a few parts in the foothills of Mt. Diablo and some of the color of the golden hills. This image has all three boards stacked on top of each other, but they actually are three separate boards and they should sit next to eachother in a 3 panel panorama. I sketched and drew them separately, one at a time. So it really is amazing that they match pretty good on the edges and the color is about the same. CLICK HERE to see a full size (48mb) of the painting arranged side by side, instead of stacked.

Chris

Tree and Fence

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:58 -0800

This was done for fun one night. I was sitting around trying to think of something interesting to paint. I had been playing with these stone pillars in ink the day before, so I thought it would be fun to do another stone fence, path and tree and color it up. I like it overall. The sky didn't come out as expected, but I like it now that I've looked at for a long time. The tree trunk also gest lost behind the stone pillar a little bit - they blend into each other. I hope you like it!

Chris