New Commission

I love how this painting progressed, in fact if it wasn't a commission I might have been tempted to stop several times along the way, mainly because I loved the chalky black background layer. But when I did my final red layers I was happy with the richness of the black coming through the red.

Daily Drop Cap

crapity scrap. I decided to start over on the Old Vine painting. It just wasn't flowing. I'm chalking it up to too many distractions and hasty preparation! Also being away from my studio was not helping things :) Anyhoo, since I am not going to be doing much in the painting creation area for the next month or so, I've decided while I'm traveling to take advantage of this time to do a few posts on other artists, creative folks, and sites etc. that I admire. My artist today is illustrator Jessica Hische. I've been researching creative font making lately and came across her site Daily Drop Cap. which is a creative commons site, meaning anyone can grab her insanely beautiful illustrated caps and add them to their blog or website. That's pretty cool.

So I've been taking a little haitus from the studio, and the frozen north :) But I brought along a few projects including Old Vine to work on. These are the latest photos. It's amazing how a photo taken on a cloudy day can differ from a photo taken on a sunny day. The top one is most recent (sunny day photo), I decided to kill the moss on the big dead vine. Now I am contemplating whether or not to put leaves etc on it. Also I'm debating the color of the hills, and I think I still need to make the trees to the right bigger. Hmmmm

New Commission, Chair lift to Heaven

Chair Lift to Heaven. 18 x 20(click on the photo for a close up). Using the photo below as a reference, my client wanted this painting to convey the treasured feelings she had when riding the chair lift up to ski on Big Mountain.

I tried to think of my own thoughts and emotions when riding up the chair and infuse them into the layers. This is what came to mind: anticipation, peace, joy, the historical greatness of this thing you get to partake of, the mysterious nature of snow, the respect for and closeness to nature that skiing gives you... the thrill of speed, and excitement of finding untracked powder, feeling both cozy and tingly cold at the same time... there is a lot to capture there, hopefully I got a little bit of it for my client, but as usual I seem to have very little control over the actual outcome of a painting commission and am crossing my fingers in hope that she likes it!

What I think really came through is the mountain itself, or rather the ski run... When I look at this I get a sense of quite waiting, a glimpse of Tony Matt early in the morning, blanketed in a few inches of un-tracked snow. An intimate look at the run itself before the crowd transforms it with bustling energy and whoops of glee.

Snowstorm

Just finished this Snowy commission. It harkens back to some of my older swirly landscapes. I took a little bit of artistic license here... well... more than a little bit obviously, but hopefully it doesn't disturb any viewers that a winter storm doesn't usually come rushing over into a valley that's socked in with an inversion cloud layer... I don't even really know if that is scientifically possible... but this is 2009, anything is possible right?

Also posted updated images on my Old Vine commission and Sunflowers on Red commission

Land

Every so often I try to do an abstract. It never really works out like I imagine it will, but it's fun.

Lucky 13 Red Horse

The theme for this month's Lucky 13 artist card is "Animals". This of course made me want to embark on an epic work of arc-like proportions. I think maybe reading all those barnyard bedtime books to Jolie may have been an influence. But before I could begin to figure out how I was going to do that on a 3 by 4 inch card, I had a conversation with my sister where we talked a good deal about horses. Right after that phone call I popped into the studio and made this little painting. Click on the image to see it in a larger size.

New Commission, Sunflowers on Red 24 x24 in.

Here are some photos showing progress on my Sunflowers on Red Commission

Giveaway, we have a winner!

Using a toddler, a name was randomly drawn out of a hat and

the lucky winner of the original watercolor "Night Snowfall" is

Rebecca Anderson!

Thanks for playing everyone :)

a Little bit of Press

Hey my painted bra piece for the Save a Sister show was featured in the Flathead Beacon, cool! It is a piece honoring my late aunt Laurie Shonerd, a wonderful person and an incredible artist. I own a giclee of her gorgeous piece Calla Lily Splash which was my inspiration for the lilies on the bra. Read the article and find out how you can be a part of Save a Sister.

The show is at the Hockaday Museum of Art and is opening Saturday Oct 3rd, then it will travel around the country and come back to the Flathead Valley and be auctioned off next August.