Owen's Mural

Doing a marine theme for my friend Kaye. Her son Owen's birthday is in October (he will be 9). This is his birthday present.

DAY 1: Chalked out the sketches first. The dark blue made it super easy to see. Owen wanted a hammerhead shark, sting ray, sea turtle, Morey eel, coral, puffer fish, clown fish in anemone, sea snakes, and jellyfish, I added the octopus. The room has great wall space to work with and high ceilings. You can see today's progress. I wanted the shark life size. I really like the effect. His bed will be just below it.


The sting ray and coral are above his desk.

DAY 2: Finished! There are sun spots in some of the photos.

New Commissioned Paintings

Here is my initial sketch for the two 36"x48" canvases. I will be using the top sketch. The other canvas hasn't been started yet.


This is the top sketch set on it's side and cropped. I decided to add more flowers when I chalked it in on the canvas. I prepped the canvas with a grey base coat. It will add depth when I do the lighter colors on top. I will leave some of it showing around the flowers and leaves.


Here the flowers and leaves have been roughed in. I have started to go around them with creamy white. I will add more washes of color on top of the white later. And also add more highlights and shading to the flowers and leaves. I also enlarged the red tulip so it would point more towards the left of the canvas and not straight down. It seemed too similar to the smaller coral tulip to the right of the yellow flower. And I added a couple more leaves.



The client likes the art of Kim Parker so I am doing homage to her style with these two paintings. I am loving the colors and loose brush strokes.

I have decided since the client is going to hang this horizontally that I need to do a bit of editing to make the painting's composition more balanced. First of all, I am going to remove the sunflower closest to the edge of the canvas. Did a little photo editing below.

Here is today's progress (below). Colors are still needing to be tweaked. I think I like the basic shapes now. I changed some of the flowers today to balance the composition. And I added some more leaves and stems. I will probably start on the other painting Monday and then do the final touches on both of them at the same time.


Here are the two finished paintings. Several changes were made as the paintings progressed. The painting on the bottom here is the one shown above in the other photos.

Swaptree.com Contest Entry

Here is the same painting (above) reworked to make it a bit more colorful..


One of my favorite websites is swaptree.com. I use it to trade books, cd's, dvd's, & video games with other users. They are having a special contest this month to help get the word out about their site. This is the painting I did for their creative contest. Hope to win a Wii!!

More Butterflies in Progress

Here are my next two butterfly paintings. I'm excited about all the colors in these. They are a clipper (top) and a sunset moth (bottom). I know, I know, a moth is not a butterfly, but I can't resist the colors!!
Here is the finished Clipper. It is for sale at the ASI Gallery in Little Rock.

Arkansas Studies Institute Gallery Opening

The new gallery is now open. I love the tall ceilings and the light is great. The new building is amazing. I'm looking forward to a great year!

New Nest Painting

Here is my newest nest painting. I wanted to experiment with a different colored background. It is a deep honey, amber color. The eggs have just a hint of blue in them. It is a nice combination I think. This one is being sold by the Arkansas Studies Institute Gallery that will be opening this Friday, May 8th, 2009.

"Amber Nest"
24"x 30", Acrylic on Canvas, $599

www.angelaandersonfineart.com

Butterflies Finished

Here are the butterflies all done. I like the end effect making the background more like aged parchment. I may mess with Jezebel a bit more tomorrow. I will have to look at it a while before I decide. Sometimes it takes me a few days before I know if a painting is done the way I want. I don't think I like the "perfectness" of the lines.

Here is the edited, finished version (above).



I changed the body of Jezebel and I like it much better. I also added some fuzzy hairs to the Swallowtail. They are off the the gallery in Little Rock tomorrow.

Butterflies 1,2,3

My butterflies are started! I decided to do three small 6"x6" canvases to try out the techniques with the interference paints before working on a larger scale. I think they are going to be really cute. You can see the effect of the iridescence in the last photo. I used blue/green, blue, and green interferences to make the color change even more interesting. It's hard to photograph though.



I still need to add some spots to the bottom wings, but this one is almost complete. I am thinking I might add the names of each below as well. Not sure if I can find all the proper names though!!
I have just about finished with the first two paintings. I think I will still play with the background a bit, maybe "dirty" it up and add shadows. The Painted Jezebel is just started.

I'm finding that the interference colors need several thin coats to be most effective. It's tricky on black because they are milky so the color gets dulled.

Finished Pooh Mural

Here are photos of the completed Winnie the Pooh nursery mural.








Here are the completed curtains made by Dianna Hill. So cute!