Merry Christmas!!

After 23 hours (not all contiguous), it is finally finished: Mom's Christmas present! After two marathon painting sessions the past two nights (notice I'm posting this at 5am CST) I have completed a painting I promised my Mom for Christmas this year. I really underestimated the time it would take to complete a picture with these dimensions, but I am pretty happy with the outcome.

You'll notice that I used a brush for this one. For the subject matter, I figured brushes were the way to go! It took me awhile to get the hang of the way the oils flow from brush to canvas -- I almost messed up one flower beyond repair -- but I feel I got the hang of it after a few hours of painting! Take a look! I would love to know what you think, so feel free to post!

Merry Christmas!




P.S. I'll try to replace this pic with a better one sometime tomorrow. I had to sneak around the house to position the painting so I didn't get too much glare!

Sunflower

Finished a small piece over the weekend. This is a 12x12 painting of a sunflower, again with a knife. I'm not so sure I like this one. Maybe it will grow on me.

Poppi - Finished!

Here is the finished version of "Poppi." It's not totally finished, as I still have to add a little bit of shadow under the bottom of his beard, but this is the last image I'll post of this piece. Hope you enjoy.

Indolence

“I like the word 'indolence'. It makes my laziness seem classy.” - Bern Williams

Now that I've finished working on "Poppi" (A completed pic is coming, I promise) and I'm just waiting for it to dry I seem to have hit a streak of laziness...er, I mean indolence. In the time that I've been waiting on "Poppi" to dry I've completed two sketches; gave up on painting one before I started; and began painting the other, just to quit after 30 minutes. However, in those 30 minutes I learned that it is extremely difficult to paint small faces with a knife. And the face looks even worse when you scrape the paint off and the dyed canvas reveals the flat, distorted remnants of a once-promising piece of art.

Poppi - Update 4 - Almost Finished!

Okay, all that's left is to paint Poppi's shirt, and fix his right eye. I added a little bit of a highlight around that eye that ended up being too much of a highlight. So I need to soften that up a little bit and maybe give a little highlight around his left eye socket. That should do it!

Poppi - Update 3

So I got some time to work on "Poppi" tonight and thought I'd go ahead and post the progress. Still a little uncertain how well this painting is going to turn out, but I like the progress so far. Tomorrow I'll start the eyes and mouth .