Before and After: Still Life with Roses, 9 x 12 in.

 This still life painting has been bothering me for ages...

 

It's uninteresting, lacks vibrancy, and even though I revised the background once before, it just never felt right.  So, I set it aside for a long time...several years...(um, maybe six years...).  Just last week I finally felt inspired to try some new revisions, and here's the result:

I think I love it!  It's lively, vibrant, full of movement and life, and slightly abstract.  I deepened the shadows and added more defined petals on some of the flowers. I like how it's not clear where the actual flowers end and the background begins. It feels more like one of my paintings now, full of texture and saturated colors.

For sale at my Etsy shop here!

Bluebell Forest (2017), 22 x 28 in.

Here is the finished painting!  You may have recognized this painting as similar to one I completed in the past. The clients who commissioned this painting fell in love with a bluebell forest painting I completed in 2010. They, however, wanted theirs to be much larger in size. The final painting has a bit more detail than the original, but contains the same composition and color scheme. Because of it's large size, I did more layering of the paint than with the original painting, which was only 8 x 10 in. and completed in a single sitting. In order to make sure I covered the entire canvas with paint, and no white showed through, I painted an underlayer over the whole canvas and then added a second layer where I applied the paint in thick textural daubs.

New Commission Painting Sneak Peek!

Here's a sneak peek of a new commission I am working on. The painting is finished, but I will wait to post a full pic until the new owners take it home.  For now, here are some close-ups of the brush work.