Another Finished Painting.

Today I finished up another new painting. This is to be a gift to our good friends Marty and Diane who live in San Diego. A short while ago we went to their wedding and from the many photographs I took that day, I have composed a painting to commemorate their wedding.

It is on a 16 x 20 inch canvas and shows head and shoulder poses of them looking at each other. As is common for me, the image was derived from several photographs. No one image had exactly the expressions that I needed to capture. One of the advantages that an artist has over a photographer is that he may improve on nature. Or at least choose the best parts of several shots.

Hopefully this coming week I will be able to drop it off at my photographer for him to take the usual high resolution image, and then I will mail it to them.

A Special Painting Project

I have just coated a finished painting with medium. For me this is almost the last step when completing a painting. When the coating is dry, I will scan it (it a small 10 x 8 inch painting - otherwise I would schedule it for photographing), and staple a printed label with my contact data to the stretcher bars. It is already stamped with my copyright statement, titled, and wired for hanging.

When it is scanned I will show and talk about it on this blog page.

Including this painting (a tiny portrait of a good friend looking at his wife) I have three paintings in progress. This is about typical. The others are a large 40 x 24 inch three-quarter length portrait of a man and another small portrait of a young woman.

The young woman is a bit of a rush job. A few days ago I realized that a painting was due to be submitted towards the end of next week.

For some three years I have promised to donate a painting to an annual October silent auction to help fund a worthy local non-profit, The Art Fund of Santa Barbara. They ask for a small 10 x 8 inch painting on almost any subject.

Two years ago I did a gouache on paper postcard of a young lady in a swim suit lying on the sand (that year there was a postcard theme - "Wish You Were Here.") Nobody bid on the painting, and I never did find out to where it disappeared.

Last year I submitted a rear view full length portrait of a very young boy standing at the edge of the ocean titled "Thomas." Several people bid and the painting sold for $250.

For this year I wanted the subject to be a young female child or young woman. Plus it had to have some special appeal to draw the bidding. As usual I started to scan my reference images and finally selected on a teenage young woman with a waif like expression. I had captured her during my trip to Patzcuaro, Mexico early last year.

Hopefully I can continue to bring out this lost sole feeling that I see in the original image. I have been working on it for a couple of days. You will be the judge when I have finished the painting and show it here.