The Thank You Project

After the tremendous effort that Karin Jurick put into her portrait swap challenge, fellow artist Jill Polsby put together a secret thank you project, where all of us who participated in the portrait swap were invited to paint Karin's portrait and Jill put them together in a book as a gift to her. Here is my submission. You can see all other 118 portraits by visiting Jill's blog, jillpolsby.blogspot.com. It truly is a world-wide community of artists, and Karin has been one of the hubs of the wheel connecting us. Thanks, Karin, and thanks, Jill.

Artist Portrait Challenge

12x12 Acrylic on canvas

The end of the year challenge on the Different Strokes from Different Folks blog is for the participating artists to paint each other anonymously. Here's the photo Karin Jurick sent me, and this lovely lady is painting me!. It's been a lot of fun, and I hope she likes the resemblence. As I was studying her she made me think of Mona Lisa, that glance to her left, and the little hidden knowledge in her look. Am I crazy? Well, that pensive look is what I tried to capture in the painting.
Now on to Christmas shopping, decorating and preparing the house for the holiday guests.
Happy Holidays to everyone!.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Karin Jurick comes up with some great challenges on her Different Strokes From Different Folks blog! This one was particularly fun for me, as I love painting figures, especially with foreshortening, and love the abstraction of the floor. I rotated the image first, so the travelers are walking to the right, instead of towards the right-bottom. They also appeared to be walking towards a black abyss, so I added another skylight spot light so their way is illuminated....and it also balanced the overall composition. I'm really happy with the way this turned out and look forward to the portrait exchange challenge. I just didn't have enough time to jump in last year and regretted it.

A Sentimental Journey

My sister and I have a great relationship and when we were dividing up things at my Mom's house this painting was one of the few things that we both remembered from our childhood. It was painted in 1940 by C.E. Jones, on black velvet. It's about 4 feet wide. Both of us wanted to keep it in the family, but neither of us particulary had a place to hang it in our homes - but it's now hanging in my family room, at least for the time being. As the story goes, she went to my grandparents church and my grandfather saw some of her work and asked her to paint this for him....and now 69 years later it still is hanging!. Wonder if they will say that about my work.

Happy Anniversary Karin

This is Karin Jurick's latest challenge in honor of Different Strokes from Different Folks blogspot hitting it's one year anniversary!. This was a real challenge - at least compositionally!!. By the time I got to view the challenge, several responses had already been posted, and that always makes it harder to come up with something original and not be influenced by the work of the others. Hope this holds up to comparison!

Life has gotten in the way the last few months, my mother got ill and passed away and I've had to take time off to take care of her as well as settling her estate, but hopefully I can press on full steam ahead now with painting, singing, and just getting back to my normal routine.

New Zealand Train Station

I had such fun with the relaxing man, that I pulled out some photos from my big trip down under. We had about a 45 minute wait at the train station in Greymouth so I snapped a bunch of candid pictures. I don't know this girl but I love the huge stack of luggage she was guarding and her casual stance reading her book. Don't know if this is done yet - think it needs a little reworking after letting it rest a few days.

Land of the Long White Cloud

I have finally had a little time to sort through all the photos we took on our big trip down under and did this loose watercolor landscape. The cloud formations in New Zealand are awesome. Everyday we would just be overcome by the beauty and say "WOW!!" This painting may not do it justice, but I think it conveys the feeling of enormity! I bounce back and forth with subject matters, so in between painting the small figure series mentioned in my last post, I'm also going to continue doing some landscapes based on our trip.

Revised Long Day

I was away this weekend but came back this morning and knew I had to fix this painting this morning. The seated man just needed to tell more of a story so I added his yard - just enough to put him on the front porch, cooling off in the shade. Now I'm happy with this and am inspired to do a series of figures on small canvases (8x10).

It's Been a Long Day

Here's my latest work for Karin Jurick's Different strokes from different folks challenge. It's been a very hectic summer so far and I haven't had time to paint as much as I'd like. I had been wanting to get back to doing some figurative work, so I'm happy Karin choose this photo to paint from. I like the way the figure has come out but may rework the background before I send it on to Karin.

Summer veggies

Karin Jurick's subject for the current Different strokes from different folks challenge are summer vegatables. Here's my attempt. It always amazes me at how many different paintings result from one photo. I have had a very chaotic spring and haven't gotten to paint as much as I had wanted to, but hopefully I'll get back on track this summer. The summer program involves exercising more, dieting more, reading more and painting more......now if I just didn't have to go to work I might have time to do all that!!