Marybeth Heikes

Paintings in Watercolor & Mixed Media

Whimsical Wildlife

Old Coot

Old Coot

November 20, 2011

This is one of my many humorous birds in a series, along with the Love Birds, Cockatoo, Bad Hair Day, Flamingo and Ostrich. This old guy is sitting on an orange rock in the middle of a stream. For the accent color, I used a bright red in the feathers and the top of his […] more »

My Collage Inspirations

My Collage Inspirations

November 16, 2011

My work in collage has been inspired by many artists.  Some of these are Matisse,  Romare Bearden,  Joan Miró,  Edward Betts and Gerald Brommer. The definition of “collage” is a picture built up wholly or partly from pieces of paper, cloth or other materials stuck on canvas or other ground.  Collage as a medium emerged […] more »

Gooney Bird & Giraffe

Gooney Bird & Giraffe

November 10, 2011

This is the fifth wild animal design in my series of Christmas Critters.  This is a whimsical yellow giraffe with maroon spots, a blue eye, orange ears and mane wearing a hat.  Sitting on top of his head is a teal gooney bird with an orange beak and multi-colored feathers, and also wearing a hat.  […] more »

Let it Snow!

Let it Snow!

November 4, 2011

My goal this week was to create an artwork every day, in the tradition of the Daily Painters group. With collage, that’s more difficult. Today’s is a bit smaller than the first two. It features a blotchy ochre/sienna-colored cat watching fat snowflakes drift around him. He’s sitting against a royal blue background and he had […] more »

Sweets for the Baboon

Sweets for the Baboon

November 1, 2011

For this painting, I decided to do the background first instead of starting with the center of interest, as I usually do. In this case, the baboon. I liked his silly expression! And I decided that using complementary colors would make them pop better against the dark teal green. In collage, each color-value affects each […] more »

Kris Kringle Lemur

Kris Kringle Lemur

October 30, 2011

This is an addition to my new holiday designs highlighting wild animals. Animals are very entertaining and I thought a lemur would be kind of different for Christmas. The basic color is a reddish brown with the purple-ringed tail and mask on his face, with blue nostrils. I chose the lime green background to accent […] more »

Alfalfa Butterfly

Alfalfa Butterfly

September 14, 2010

This is an interpretation of a common butterfly. In the past, I’ve completed 4 other varieties and have been popular with customers. In this piece I took liberties using color combinations. This will be part of a series and I plan to use sketches done a few years ago. more »

Painting More Palette Papers

Painting More Palette Papers

August 8, 2010

This week, while working on the Des Moines collage, I started painting more palette papers since I was out of a few earth colors. I got on a roll with painting and decided to do a few more sheets of purples, reds, greens, and blues. In the past, I would lay them on newspapers on […] more »

Panda

Panda

February 5, 2010

This petite animal collage was a special challenge due to its size.  I’ve never worked this small a format before in this media and the difficulty of cutting the shapes was something I probably won’t do again.  The colors and shapes are simple and I think the result turned out well.  I chose this animal as it […] more »

Basset Hound

Basset Hound

December 2, 2009

I used one of my reference photos to compose this expressive-eyed basset hound. I liked his droopy ears, wide jowls, toenails and mournful expression. The tangerine color for his ears is a continuation of the Peppermint Pups’ bright, cheery color. Orange recently came into my palette of color for reasons I can’t explain — it […] more »