Koiled

     Okay, so my mom commissioned me to paint a picture for her birthday this year.  The only criteria was that it had to be full of warm fall colors.  I really wanted to paint a picture of a forest path with a woman's figure fading into the haze of the darkening forest path.  This was by far my hardest painting to date and in fact I have taken a month break from painting to mentally recover.  The forest painting took me about four weeks of fairly dedicated painting to have it ready in time for my moms birthday which was at the beginning of this month.  The greatest lesson that I took away from this painting was that it is okay to be discouraged with the way a painting is coming out, but that I must push on and continue to work at the painting until I am happy with the outcome.  I learned very quickly that the devil was in the details.  I was not really happy with the painting after I had blocked all of the colors onto the canvas, it felt very flat to me.  It was not until I started adding detail after detail that the picture grew in depth and contrast.  In the end I was really happy with the way it all turned out, even my fading lady met my expectations. 

     So this painting was finished a day after the tiger painting and I think that it is my best painting to date.  I took a background image off of Google images and then painted a women's silhouette in place of a wolf howling at the moon.  I first got the idea off of my sister in-laws blog were she has several silhouette images decorating her background.  I really liked them, but I wanted something a little darker and mysterious for my painting.  After showing my mother the tiger painting I have been commissioned, without pay, to paint her a large fall painting to be placed in her living room. My lovely wife and I keep painting even though we have little room to hang them up, so I imagine we will be giving some away as gifts to our family as presents.  I sure hope we get better fast for their sakes.

    Okay, so I wanted to try a harder painting and here is the results.  This painting took about four weeks to complete and I learned about a dozen new techniques.  This was the first painting that I painted without a general sketch on the canvas.  I started with a background and then painted layer after layer until I achieved the general clouds and shape of my tiger.  Then it was another several layers to complete the tiger and flesh out the background.  I probably did way to much work to get the picture finished, but hey, that is what learning is all about.  My wife has now started a new impressionistic painting of a tiger with a vivid colorful background.  She has finished the background and now has started the outline and it is really coming out cool. 

     I really don't know what my fascination is with Asian art, but I really love painting Asian scenes.  Okay, this is my second painting and it came with a new set of challenges that I had to conquer.  My next painting is going to be harder still as I am upgrading from 9x12 paper to 16x20 canvas.  This painting I started and finished in one day painting wet on wet.  My next painting I am going to have to grow some patience, as it will be layer after layer, after layer.   I really like painting and it has been driving my nuts watching my wife paint and having nothing to paint myself.  Oh well time to get my butt moving on a new painting.

     A week ago my wife decides out of the blue that she wants to start oil painting.  Now she is not a wish washy person when it comes to her hobbies, so we went out and bought all of the supplies any budding artist might need.  As we sat on the couch last week my wife asked what I thought her first painting should be, and because of my obsession with Asian art I suggested an image of a cherry blossom tree that I had found on the Internet.  The next day she started on what turned out to be a pretty nice tree.  She seemed to really enjoy painting, so I thought what the hell I will give it a try.  I sketched out a picture of a pagoda during sunset and this last weekend we started painting together.  Now it is a very amusing thing to paint next to a clumsy person.  Not five minutes into the project and I look up to see my wife with a red paint slash across her cheek and paint all over her hands.  But the funniest thing was the constant dang-its I could hear from her side of the table as she would inadvertently transfer paint from her hands onto her painting or paint from her painting onto her arms.  We both finished our painting in two days and were both pleased with the results.  Now nether one of us is going to become famous artists, but the experience was fun and we both found a new talent to nurture.