New York City – 5″ x 7″ Watercolor & Black Staedtler Pigment Liner

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
– Mark Twain

Copyright Beth Parker Art 2013

New York City – 5″ x 7″ Watercolor & Black Staedtler Pigment Liner

That was fun!  I wish you could see it in real life.  All the windows in my building paintings are done with iridescent paint, so they kinda sparkle like real windows.  The reference photo was provided by MissMouse at WetCanvas.

The large building in the center took me a full hour to paint.  You really can’t see it here, but the pink tiered building on the right even says New Yorker on top.  It’s teenie-tiny!

About Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens, the iconic American humorist and writer, is better known by his pen name Mark Twain. He was born on November 30, 1835 in Missouri. He worked at several jobs, including steamboat pilot and miner. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, and other successful novels. His writing captured a very American vernacular and flavor, and helped create a distinctive American literature. He died on April 21, 1910.

Downtown Weston, MO II – 5″ x 7″ Watercolor and Ink

“When you cannot make up your mind between two evenly balanced courses of action, choose the bolder.”
– William Joseph Slim

Copyright Beth Parker Art 2013

Downtown Weston, MO  II – 5″ x 7″ Watercolor and Ink

I wish I had time to go see this cute little town when I am in Kansas City, but alas… no time.  I love doing these little paintings.  Of course, the street was full of cars in the photo so I made up all the store fronts at street level. 

About William Joseph Slim

The courageous British commander William Joseph Slim, who led forces during both world wars, led an impressive turnaround of the so-called Forgotten Army in Burma during World War II after he trained them how to fight in jungle conditions. He was born on August 6, 1891 in Bristol. He joined the army as a second lieutenant at the outbreak of World War I and was wounded in the battle of Gallipoli. He served as governor-general of Australia, a ceremonial role, from 1953 to 1960. He died on December 14, 1970.

A Little Kansas City Skyline – 4″ x 6″ Watercolor & Ink

“He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality.”
– Anwar al-Sadat

Copyright Beth Parker Art 2013

A Little Kansas City Skyline – 4″ x 6″ Watercolor & Ink

This is a little 4″ x 6″ Painting.  Less time to paint, but oh my, those details are little!  At least I didn’t have to paint any bricks. 

About Anwar al-Sadat

Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat won the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize in conjunction with Israeli prime minister Menachim Begin for the Camp David Accords. He was born in Egypt on December 25, 1918. He participated in the 1952 coup to oust the corrupt King Farouk and became president in 1970. He led Egypt into the Yom Kippur War to reclaim part of the Sinai Peninsula. When that failed, he took the risky diplomatic path, opening the door to détente. He was assassinated on October 6, 1981 by Muslim extremists.

Dancing Kansas City Cityscape – 8″ x 10″ Watercolor & Ink

“Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.”
– Oscar Wilde

Copyright Beth Parker Art 2013

Dancing Kansas City Cityscape – 8″ x 10″ Watercolor & Ink

I am having so much fun doing these city paintings, since I do so many rural scenes.   I hope they go over well at KC show, because I am sure going to have a lot of them. 

About Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde, the clever, colorful Anglo-Irish writer, is best known for the play The Importance of Being Earnest and the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. He was born in Dublin in 1854 but left when his lady love became engaged to Bram Stoker. He was a leading member of the aesthetic movement and embraced its doctrine, “Art for art’s sake.” Though married with two children, Wilde was known to have affairs with younger men and was jailed in 1895 for “gross indecency.” He died in November 1900.

Kansas City Skyline at Convention Center Exit – 8″ x 10″ Watercolor

“Stress is the trash of modern life. We all generate it but if you don’t dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your life.”
–Terri Guillemets

Copyright Beth Parker Art 2013

Kansas City Skyline at Convention Center Exit – 8″ x 10″ Watercolor

My friend Jim “Botee” Meyer supplied the photo reference for this painting.  It was a little confusing, but I had so much fun doing it.  I didn’t realize until later that the Sticky-up thingies with the wires coming from them is actually Bartle Hall, and it crosses the highway, too.  Fun stuff!

Terri Guillemets, U.S. quotation anthologist

Terri Guillemets (b.1973) is a quotation anthologist from Phoenix, Arizona who has collected quotes since age thirteen. Her passion is sharing inspirational, thought-provoking, and humorous quotations with a worldwide audience via her website The Quote Garden at www.quotegarden.com, one of the most long-standing online quotation collections and the first to offer a wide variety of special occasion topics. With a personal, heartfelt approach she shares inspiration and love of words with the world, “spreading quotatious joy” as she calls it. A curmudgeonesque optimist whose inner child will never grow up, she also enjoys nature, photography, cloudgazing, and family.

Gold Coast Australia

“Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Copyright Beth Parker Art 2011

Gold Coast Australia – 4″ x 6″ Watercolor & Sharpie

This was painted from a photo of the Gold Coast in Australia by Christine (Crispur2005) at WetCanvas.  As I was working on this, I kept thinking of the old Jetsons cartoon.  Funny thing is that when Christine saw this, she also thought of the Jetsons with no hint from me.  I used to love that cartoon when I was a kid. 

About Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson helped spark the transcendentalist movement with the essay Nature, which described his belief in the spiritual essence of humanity and the natural world. He was born in Boston in 1803. He was a Unitarian minister until he resigned in 1832 to become a philosopher and writer. He suffered the untimely deaths of many of his loved ones: three brothers, his first wife at age 20, and his eldest son at age five. Emerson died in 1882.

Funky Street Lamp

“Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.”
– Lin Yutang

Funky Street Lamp – 3″ x 5.5″ Watercolor

I had a lot of fun painting this.  The funny part is that when I finished it and showed it to the hubby, he said… “That would have made a better Christmas card.”  This was a mere 18 hours after I dropped 45 Christmas cards in the mail… with a magpie sitting on the head of an elk in the snow.  You know… snow… Christmas…     Gotta love him! 

This was cropped from a large night  city photo from Phlugel at WetCanvas.

About Lin Yutang

Chinese author Lin Yutang wrote more than 35 books in English and Chinese, including My Country and My People and The Importance of Living, which brought him international fame. He was born in 1895 in the Fujian province in China. He created a Chinese-American dictionary, an indexing system for Chinese letters, and translated many classic Chinese texts. Written in a humorous, accessible style, his books bridged European and Chinese cultures. He died in 1976.

Belize City Street Market

“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves.  The process never ends until we die.  And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”
–Eleanor Roosevelt

Yeah!!!  That’s what I was talking about yesterday! 




Belize City Street Market – 5″ x 7″ Watercolor

This reference was super busy, with cars and junk everywhere.  I wanted to practice people, in the simplest form, so I eliminated a lot of stuff.  I have the buildings and perspective all wrong, but it was the people I was after.    I had a great time with this reference by KreativeKay at WetCanvas.   Oh, I added the dog and chickens from two of Kay’s  other photos.  They just wanted to be in the painting, and since I removed the cars, there was no danger of them getting run over. 

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt  October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband’s death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international author, speaker, politician, and activist for the New Deal coalition. She worked to enhance the status of working women, although she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment because she believed it would adversely affect women.

In the 1940s, Roosevelt was one of the co-founders of Freedom House and supported the formation of the United Nations. Roosevelt founded the UN Association of the United States in 1943 to advance support for the formation of the UN. She was a delegate to the UN General Assembly from 1945 and 1952, a job for which she was appointed by President Harry S. Truman and confirmed by the United States Senate. During her time at the United Nations she chaired the committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President Truman called her the “First Lady of the World” in tribute to her human rights achievements.

Active in politics for the rest of her life, Roosevelt chaired the John F. Kennedy administration’s ground-breaking committee which helped start second-wave feminism, the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. In 1999, she was ranked in the top ten of Gallup’s List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century.  (Wikipedia)

Montreal in Color

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
– Andy Warhol




Montreal in Color (Stage 1)
10″ x 14″ Watercolor & Acrylic on 140 lb cold press paper

I drew the buildings on watercolor paper, then painted all the lines in with black Golden Fluid Acrylic paint.  It took 2 hours from blank paper to this stage.    I couldn’t wait to fill in the color.  I felt like a little kid with a brand new coloring book!




This is the painting after I spent approximately another 3.5 hours filling it in with watercolor.  It was so fun!!!  If you want to see the original image by EllZee, go here to the WetCanvas WDE.

About Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol, the American pop artist, is probably best known for his silk screens of Campbell Soup and Marilyn Monroe. He was born as Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh in 1928. His style borrowed from comic books and advertising; he wanted to remove the separation between commercial and fine art. His studio, the Factory, became a hub for the New York art scene. He was also a prolific filmmaker. He was shot three times in the chest in 1968 and narrowly escaped death. He died in 1987.