Apr 292010
 

I just finished a new painting in acrylic called “After the Rain.” It is one that I have been wanting to paint. I have not painted mist in the air or fog before so it was a challenge. Being a self taught artist every time that I try something new it stretches me. I can remember the first time I painted water, I thought that I would never be able to get it, now it is second nature and only takes a fifth of the time it did the first time with better and more realistic results.

The afternoon that I took this picture it had just stopped raining and the sun had just come out. It was one of those moments that you just grab the camera and hope you get out there before that fleeting moment passes. This time I happened to get there in time. So often it is just a passing moment, that last only for a few seconds, that you wish you already had the camera in hand and didn’t have to go get it. This painting was inspired by one of those moments that I was able to capture with the digital camera.

After the Rain 800

This painting is 18″ by 18″ famed. I will be offering signed and numbered limited originals prints on canvas with the retouch done my myself. Each signed print will be protected by two isolation coats of a Acrylic soft gel and then two top coats of a polymer varnish with UVLS protection. If you are interested please contact Fred by going to the link Contact Fred to the upper tight hand corner of the blog page.

Apr 282010
 

This is a new release that I have been working on for a year and a half. I started it in November of 2008 and put it away for a wile. After painting the last twelve paintings for this season I decided to pick it back up again and finish it, really for my wife. She has been on me for years to paint a spring scene with lots of flowers. This is a natural for me since I love, and have always loved, to garden. Not vegetables as much as flowers. I used to do both but a few years ago when I got so busy, I had a decision to make. I gave up the vegetable garden and only do flower gardening now.  I have a great love for gardening that I got from both of my grandmothers. At this time I have five separate flower gardens and a couple other flower beds. One of which is a garden room that has a bench and a table and chairs. I also have two and soon three breading beds for daylilies that I have been hybridizing. With this years intros there will be a total of over fifteen hundred unique seedlings from the three year total. As you can see painting flowers is something that I have always wanted to do and comes natural for me.

A Perfict Spring Day. 800

This painting took between 250 and 300 hours to complete. I enjoyed doing it but, just like any rather large painting that you are painting almost entirely with a paint brush the size of the head of a sharp pencil with this kind of detail, it was challenging and time taking. The house that inspired this painting is in a near by town but I took a little artist license. It was beautiful with all kinds of flowers and flowering treas around it. It had three trees in full bloom in front of the porch almost blocking it completely. It was also in a town with houses all around it that you could see on both sides. I changed the color of the house from green to taupe. The large tree to the left of the house and the ones behind the  house were there but I added some of the pines and the two dogwoods on the sides. I also added the rhododendrons and azaleas in the garden that surrounds the house. They were taken from pictures that I took of the rhododendrons and azaleas that are in the gardens around our house. I took photos of them in bloom a couple of years ago for future reference.  The wicker furniture was on the porch of the original house but not in the same position. I added two robins from a photo from our yard taken the day I finished the painting and also a bird feeder with three gold finches.

You can’t see the detail much in the photo above so I will add a cameo of the painting below.

A Perfict Spring Day. Cameo #2

I will be offering Limited Original Prints, signed and numbered, on canvas of this painting in two different sizes. There will be 125 the same size as the original 24″ x 32″ for $395.00 each and 250  that will be 18″ x 24″ for $249.00 each. If you are interested please contact me with the contact Fred link to the right of the post. They are called limited originals because I take the print on canvas, apply four coats of spray to lock in the ink, add paint to it in such a way that it is different than any other print, sign it and number it, then apply two isolation coats of an Acrylic soft gel medium and finish it off with two coats of a polymer varnish with UVLS protection. It should last for generations. When I saw a Thomas Kinkade limited original print a few years ago it was retouched by a different artist than Thomas Kinkade. The retouch on these prints will be done by myself, personally.