Another Parable

This one took me FOREVER to paint!  Outlining all those coins was pretty doggone tedious.  However, I had delightful surroundings to paint in.  Much more so than usual.  When I'm painting these I'm generally alone in our big church sanctuary.  People come and go.  There's a day-care that uses the building, so at least twice a day there's a line of small children that parades through and they all "ooh" and "aah".  They think I'm the BEST PAINTER IN THE WHOLE WORLD!!  Makes me smile every time.

But for this canvas, I was finishing up while our church's worship team was practicing.  It's definitely a rich experience to paint to live music, loud, filling the space, and I could sing along and nobody could hear me!

Funny thing, though.  The sound-man forgot I was there and was trying to give the worship team a better atmosphere so he turned down all the lights!   hahahah!  It's a little difficult to paint in the dark, Scotty!

Red Peonies

I drew this last  night while we sat and watched it rain and rain and rain.  Our exceedingly dry land was drinking it in.  And it smelled SO GOOD!  I am often astounded at God's kindness in creating smells...and color...and our senses to appreciate both.

Today I go back to "work" to finish one of the canvases at Community Church.  Note to self:  take the camera!

Birds of a Feather?

This is a page from the Moleskine knock-off that fell apart on me the other day.  I tore out all the pages, threw the book away, and scanned all the drawings so I can show them to you!

This is a drawing that I did from three different reference pics.  Last year I got to visit family in North Carolina, and my cousin had white lights strung all around his deck.  The birds loved to hang out.  I took the three different pics and smashed them all together.  Bummer that the bird on the left lost part of his beak in the scanning process!!  Ah well.

Happy 4th of July!!

I know I've posted this before, but I couldn't help myself.  It fits the day!

Just today I was thanking the Lord for the wisdom and courage He gave our founding fathers.  This nation is a beautiful place to live, and I am thankful.  Happy July 4th, my friends!

Icelandic Poppies

Summer has finally arrived at my house!  Today, my hubby and I sat out on the deck, under our lovely umbrella (because it was too hot in the sun!), and we talked of many things.  "Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax, and cabbages, and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings!"  Actually, we talked about the world, and our son, our church family, and birds, our work, and the noise that the summer bugs make.  And while we talked I kept looking at my flower pots that are blooming with color.

Quick, get the sketch book!  Sketching and chatting go hand-in-hand.

Eventually, the typical mountain summer squall blew through and forced us indoors.  I love living in the mountains!  It's now beautiful outside again, and I need to return to sitting under the umbrella.  Happy Sunday everyone!

From the Archives

I painted this way back in 2006.  It's watercolor on bristol paper.  I love how sloppy it is, drips and splatters and all.  I haven't done anything in watercolor in a LOOONNNNGG time.

On a side note, the cheap Moleskine knock-off journal that I've been doing my ink drawings in FELL APART!  The pages fell completely free of the spine!  All my artist friends who have been chewing me out for doing art on flimsy paper now have their complaints validated.  I hereby move on to paper of some quality and longevity!

More Parables

I did this sketch today.  It was great fun!  I wanted to do the lost sheep from a more modern perspective, but finding an image of a shepherd carrying a sheep over his shoulders took FOREVER.  There are about a bajillion  paintings of it, but I can't copy someone else's painting!  (my spell check is telling me that I spelled 'else's' wrong....that's puzzling me.)  I finally found one image, and then the shepherd was...um...a touch portly.  I really wanted an in-shape shepherd, for some reason.  So I had my hubby pose in the appropriate stance.  It worked!  I definitely have to "poof" the sheep when it comes time to paint, but this works from a sketch-point-of-view. Can't wait to paint this one!

On another note, I forgot to post pics of the first two canvases I painted in this set.  You've seen the sketches, here are the finished products:

Allow Me To Introduce...

....Mr. and Mrs. Goose.

Or is that Mr. Goose and Mrs. Gander?

Either way, they're a lovely family.  I ran across them in Littleton while visiting the Littleton Historical Museum (or some such name).  They just meander around, across the lawn and around the benches.  They were completely unconcerned by my presence, which made picture taking very easy!

Tonight seemed just right to draw them.  The sun was making the back side of the Peak glow, American Pickers was on TV, and there was a very slight breeze coming in my open back door.  AND I had a brand new pen to try out!  No surprise!

What else have I been working on?

So, here are two more finished canvases!  I think I'm happy with the skin tone on both of these.  It was tricky though, especially since I'm using house paint.  I have cans and cans of not-true reds, and sickly yellows, and mixing those makes for some strange peaches!

These took me four solid days.  Nothing else got done.  My hubby cooked (or we ate out), the laundry piled up, my flowers almost died from neglect, and the bills got ignored.  Murphy was at Camp all week, so I could focus, focus, focus.

Four more to go!

From the Archives

A little over a year ago I took a brief (weekend) road-trip with three girl-friends.  We drove down to Taos, stayed one night, and then continued on to Santa Fe.  It was great fun!  We ate yummy food, talked until our mouths were tired, visited galleries for hours on end, stopped at all sorts of beautiful spots, took an amazing amount of pictures, got lost looking for Julia Roberts' house, found an bakery with really yummy cream puffs, and generally had a fantastic time.

The New Mexico landscape is really different from the mountians of Colorado...beautiful in a whole new way.  There's definitely a lot of sky, and the wild flowers seem to go on forever.  I painted this from one of the pics I took.  It's oil on masonite.

Two More Parable Sketches

These are the latest sketches for the set of parable paintings I'm doing for my church.  I haven't the least idea what to do for the backgrounds.  Clearly I'll have to decide that before the deadline!  And my markers make skin-tone very difficult to nail down.  Clearly I'll have to decide what to do with that, as well!

The first one is the parable of the persistent widow...you know, the one who kind-of nagged the unrighteous judge until he finally gave her what she wanted.   Then Jesus compares our Heavenly Father's care for us, and how He gives us good things.  The idea is that we need to persevere in prayer.

The second is the parable of the talents.  I kept changing my mind about this one.  I even had the reference shots all done and ready to go, but at the last minute I didn't like them.  So I had to go scrounging.  These are loose interpretations of three different pics of family members.  I thought I had altered them enough, and then my nephew recognized his grandmother!  Oops!  Sorry mom!  Did you ever wonder how you would look blonde?  I'm still not sure about this one.  Does it communicate?  Does the man to the right look sheepish over his lack of wise use of his talent?  Do the other two look like they're rejoicing (which would be reasonable), or gloating (which would be bad!)?  Who knows...I may change this one again.

There you have it.  My angst!

For Sarah

I just finished painting this for the daughter of a friend.  Rumor has it she squealed.  I think that means she liked it.  And that's a wonderful thing!

My friend provided me with the reference pic, which is a tricky thing.  It took me a really long time to wrap my brain around that whole bottom section just being BLACK.  And if you look closely, you'll see that I cheated.  It's not ALL black.  I just couldn't do it, for some reason!

One-Liner

 

I have a friend who is sick.  I wanted to send her flowers, and her hubby told me that she loves roses.  Five days went by and I never managed to get my act together to actually SEND the roses!  Pathetic!  She was going to get better and I would have never sent the flowers (haha....the nerve of her....to get better before I could do something nice...hahahah!!)!

So, last night I dug through all my references and pulled out three or four pics of roses.  I used to believe that you had to have a reference photo that was exactly what you wanted to draw, but over the past several months I've been learning that it's POSSIBLE to combine several pics into one drawing.  I have an artist friend who does this all the time, but I believed it was a skill that was beyond me.  Isn't it fantastic that we can LEARN??

This card is drawn with all one line and then filled in with colored pencils.

What else have I been working on?

These are the preliminary sketches for the next canvases at my church.  The final paintings will be slightly different....color choices will change, the finger tips of the father hugging the son will change...things like that.  As it turns out, I won't be painting the camel, but the sketching of it was great fun!  I'm not going to tell you what parables these go with...if I've done my job well, you'll be able to tell!  I'll be painting these before the month is out.  I'll post pics when I'm done.

It sometimes amazes me how much time goes into the PREP of a painting.  These three have consumed me for weeks now.  I had to get reference photos.  Then I had to get more reference photos because the ones I had weren't quite right.  In some cases I combined several photos to come up with what I wanted.  Sketch one.  Not quite right.  Sketch two.  No, that's bad.  Sketch three.  Wait a minute....this is all wrong and needs to be completely changed!  Sketch four!  You get the idea.

Even with all the angst and re-drawing, I LOVE doing this!