Angel Statue

I've painted a few statues in the past and really loved doing them.  This one is no different.   I started with just a bit of paint to put on a base color of this statue.  Then I just painted all the shadows.  I allowed those to give form and shape to the statue.  After several layers of shadows and a little rounding of the edges, this statue looks like it is 3 dimensional.

I also put on a very dramatic background.  Mixing reds and blues around this statue that has lots of yellow and green in it make the image jump off the page.  Contrasting colors will always make images pop from your paper.

Like I said I had a great time with this.  If you want to see how I did it, take a look at the following video.  It's sped up because the whole painting took me about an hour to do, and I didn't want anyone to have to sit through an hour of me talking.   Check it out, its pretty good.

Statue WIP

So, I got involved in a challenge this month.  The theme of the challenge is "Heavy Metal."  I have a chance to pick from about 200 pictures, each with something else metal in it.  I've painted a few statues before, and rather like painting the aged metal or granite.  I don't care for the background of the original picture, so I decided to take artistic license and change it up a bit.  I want it to look like it is dark around the statue, but the statue itself it lit up.  So, I put in, or am putting in a darker blue/grey background.  We'll see how it turns out  when I am totally done with it.

Angel Looking to the Heavens

SOLD!!

I had a challenge to paint a statue this month.  I looked at what seemed like several hundred pictures of statues and this one kind of stood out to me.  The original picture was really a lot larger and the figure has wings that extend off the right.  I wanted the face to be kind of what your focus was drawn to so I shifted the picture a bit (meaning I had to lose the wings).  I don't really think it matters. I like that you can really see that this person is hanging on a cross, and you can just imaging the robes hanging down from his/her arm.

Finding the reference photo was a bit of work, but once I found it, I immediately knew how I was gonna paint it.  I had a great time painting it and hope you had a great time viewing it.

Fireflies Again!?

This painting currently for sale.   - 9 1/2 x 12 1/2 - $15
Contact Michael for more details

Here is my entry for the June watercolor challenge: "Images of Summer."  As you can see, the sandals are now gone, the eye and eyebrow look better and there is more shading on the picture.  I think this one is miles ahead of the previous post.

I still reserve the right to go back and monkey with this one a bit.  I may put eyelashes on her, and I may put some more shading on her shorts (or skirt, or skorts, or whatever they are) and perhaps the front of her shirt.  I'm still debating, and won't touch it for a week or so to be sure.

Fireflies in a jar

For those of you who don't know, I am a member of a website that is just for artist.  That website holds competitions each month.  Competitions are broken down into different groups.  I attempt the watercolor challenge nearly every month, but I could just as easily get into the drawing, or acrylics, or oils competitions as well.

This month the challenge is to paint something that reminds you of summer.  I didn't and still don't wanna paint a beach scene or sailboats, or flowers.  I chose something that will always remind me of summer:  Fireflies.  I searched for pictures of fireflies until I found a picture I liked, and here is one attempt at painting it.  Its unfortunate that the original size of the picture is very small.  and detail is hard to glean from it, but as you can see it is a girl laying in the grass looking at fireflies in a jar.  I thought it was a great picture to paint.

To that end, here is attempt number two.  Attempt number one is ok, but it is small and very quickly done.  This one is much more detailed.  I am going to do at least one more of these as I am not completely happy with this one.  My biggest regret in this picture is putting sandals on the girl.  In the  next one she will be barefoot.  I do think I got some good shading on here, and I like the way I have done the hair.  If you click on the painting, you will be able to see it in more detail.