Sunday, December 27, 2009

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

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