The Heart of God

I was inspired after hearing the testimony of Brian Welch who was the lead guitarist for Korn ( a heavy metal band). He was mentioning that he got to a point where he reached the end of himself and asked Jesus for help quiting his drug addiction. At that point he felt the love of God wash over him. I really wanted to just paint that; the greatness of God's love and the richness of it.

"The love of Christ is rich and free, fixed on his own eternally" William Gatsby

Dandylion in the Wind

Here is the Dandylion painting. Still have a little bit of work on the background, but for the most part it's done. I learned a couple things while painting this one. I could use Burnt Sienna as a dark shadow for Yellow ochre. I was trying to use the dark brown I have to darken the yellow ochre, but it kept turning grey. I pulled out the Burnt Sienna and it was perfect.

I also learned to smudge and make something look like it's there even though it's not. The white part of the dandylion and the bulb of the stem have this. I had to smudge a lot of little circles and blend them in to create a textured round object.

Cropped Lemon Branch Painting

The painting of this is much bigger and there are two other lemons. My camara made them look like I didn't blend the colors together so I cropped this one.

I really like how my White Rose painting turned out so I thought I'd try something similar with lemons. Black and white with a hint of yellow.

Small Flower Drawings

The Jersey Cow

This is the painting I did today. I painted the whole canvas with burnt sienna so that the undertone would be the red/brown color. This is a 10x10 canvas with oil. It kind of looks like the cow has yellow eyeshadow, but it's just the way the camara takes pictures.

The White Rose

I painted this today. I'm really enjoying this "blended edges" technique. Again, my camara doesn't capture the painting. I was going to make the leaves green, but after I put a black wash on them, I realized how much more the flower would pop if it had black leaves. In the middle of the flower is a pop of pink.

Sfumato

I used a Sfumato technique on this painting of tulips. It's done by blending the edges into the background. I've found it's pretty dificult. You can muddy the colors if you start blending too much.

The Honeybee

This is the Honeybee painting. It's for a friend of mine who loves honeybees. These are facinating creatures. We wouldn't be able to live without them. (can't say enough that my camara does not capture all of the colors. This painting is much brighter and not as white as it appears)

This is the photograph that I rendered my painting from. I wanted to show how I take a picture and paint from it. I decided to make the flower stamens that the bee is standing on more abstract. I didn't want to detract from the detail in the bee.