finished commission

Finished size 36 x 24 without frame. oil on canvas. Still not happy with the way the color is processed on the camera...it shows too blue, but you can still get the idea

Entry for LDS International Art Competition

I can't believe that the deadline for the 9th International Art Competition of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons) is here again. The entries will have a two round judging and elimination phase. If the painting makes it past the first round of cuts in November, then I will get it professionally framed and ship it off to the church art museum for the last round of cuts. The entire process takes about six months, so its a long time to wait.
This painting is titled Receiving Divine Grace. My concept is that the woman is living in a modern world full of challenges and adversities (represented by the rough textured and splotchy dark wall behind her). The flowers represent the Love of God. There are many evidences of the Love of God falling around her, and yet she has been oblivious to them. Some of them are easily visible, yet ignored. Some of them are more in the shadows and harder to see. One Divine touch comes in direct contact with her hand and she is overcome with the sacredness and the utter profoundness of feeling the Love of God.
The painting is 24 x 30 inches. artists acrylic on board

updated cherries

At long last here is phase two of the silver pitcher and cherries.

Cherries in Pitcher

Second stage oil on glass-like gessoed masonite. I'll let this dry for a couple of days then glaze in the table cloth. Then I'll finish the pitcher and the last cherry.

Manito Park Finished

8 x 10 oils on canvas

Manito Park stage two

working in two layers: a washed in thin layer to establish value and hue, then a thicker impasto on top. Background and middle ground nearly done. Its a very Thomas Kincaid subject, but I'm trying not to go there. The foreground will be large strokes of paint and I'll use palette knife and watercolor brushes for the lawn to give variety to the brushwork.

two new step by steps

It's time for a personal challenge. I'm going to post two paintings that I am starting and post the progress steps on them here. The first one is a landscape from a local botanical gardens. This one will be done like the last two landscapes in oils on canvas. The still life of cherries in a silver pitcher is on masonite with an extremely smooth finish. I haven't tried oils on masonite yet, and it is very different so far! Its like trying to paint with mayonnaise on a chalk board. It will be hard to blend wet on wet on this surface, so I will have to lay the paint on side by side and do soft brush blending, working with out medium and keeping things on the dry side. I'll have to let it sit between sessions and dry out, too. The smooth surface makes the paint 'lift' if you repeatedly stroke the brush, so it will be interesting to see how I like this support for the oil medium. Piece of cake with acrylics, but totally different with oils. The idea is to have very little surface texture to deal with.