Seasonal Inspiration

Every Christmas I enjoy painting holiday decoration. It helps to justify the amount of effort it takes to hull out and assemble this stuff. The forest of mixed matched trees that grew up on the table in front of the window. I hung one of my favorite Christmas paintings in the window. I had no wall space so the window worked, it fit well with the table top trees. The above image shows the finished painting and the table top inspiration.

10" x 8" oil on board

Here is the finished painting showing that strange little snowman guy placing an ornament on the tree. The little puff of tinsel on the green ball looks a little like a lit bomb, it gives a different spin to the narrative this image invokes.

8" x 8" oil on board

This painting is of this years green tree with it's multi colored light. This is a tall skinny tree, so I used a lot of long pointy decorations. The beaded garland was literally thrown to give it a extremely casual, drippy look. I tend to be attracted to unusual vintage holiday decorations. This tree gave me a place to display some of them, like the cluster of white plastic holly leaves with a couple of balls and tiny santa head. I find the complexity of a Christmas tree a challenge to capture in a painting. It seems so enticing before the tree is up, and so overwhelming once the painting begins.

more of my Christmas images are posted at: db-artist.blogspot.com

gold fish

8" x 5.5" oil on board

The above image is a quick study I did while teaching my painting class a month or so ago. Having little time to work on my painting, being busy making the rounds assisting my students, I had to leave my still life unattended for most of the session. Yes this was a still life. I have tiny carved fish, smaller than the figures on my painting. Often during this class I returned to my easel to discover that my fish were rearranged. Adam it was not funny! if you were within reach my paintbrush would have left it's mark upon you.

Apx. 7' x 3' pigment on glass

This image is another from Artful Living the design showroom/fundraiser that was set up in Modesto this past month. The goldfish painting on glass, was a first for me. I used the small painting above and the tiny carved fish as my subject reference. It is painted on the reverse side of the glass. The image is flipped when viewed. The very heavy glass make it difficult to lift to view the other side while working on it. I worked alongside Kristi Hughes as she painted a similar sheet of glass. Unfortunately I did not get her painting in this photograph, only the steel wall bracket shows on the upper right edge.

more pods

apx. 5' x 2.5' mixed medium on canvas

This photo is of a painting of mine on display at a designer's showroom in Modesto. It is a departure from my traditional oil painting. This was painted with layers of varying thicknesses that I sanded through to achieve the finished effect. The pods are the same as the ones shown in the following post.

pods

10" x 8" oil on board

I do not know what these pods are. They grow on a tree in big clusters and will turn a dark coppery brown when left on the tree. I harvested these a few years ago in late spring when they were still green, they have dried to a pail sandy brown color. As they aged, some have opened up revealing the seeds inside. These were painted on a white cloth with a direct light sourse creating strong contrasting shadows.

8" x 8" oil on board