The Painting is finally complete!

Ok, so in all reality, I finished this painting back in May/June, but clearly I've fallen off of the blogging bandwagon. I have to say that as I painted, I really liked certain parts of this painting, but really wasn't pleased with others. While I still like some areas better than others, overall I really like the whole effect of the painting. Part of the reason that sunsets are so fascinating for me to paint is because they are so vibrant in the sky and different each day. I generally paint from a badly taken iPhone photo of the actual sunset along with the impression that it left me with as I saw it.


I really like the reddish yellow fiery portion of the sunset at the bottom of the painting as I felt that I got the vibrancy of the colors right as well as was able to add some texture while playing with the consistency of the yellow paint. The clouds towards the top of the painting were really nice as well, but I still love painting with a mixture of colors and black and playing with the streaks that can be created as a result. This is perhaps only the second time that I've ever actually signed a painting that I've done. This time I'm actually pleased with it. The colors blended well with the work as I don't want my initials to stand out too much. I also wanted the style of signature to blend with the painting, so the streaks that make up the signature are similar to those that I use in the sunset.


All in all, I'm definitely pleased with this work and hope that my friend and her new husband are too.

Painting Progress

I started this painting as a wedding present to a friend of mine quite a while ago. Almost a year to be precise. Now that the weather has been nicer recently, I'm finding more time to work on finishing it. I turned the painting upside down to make the blending process a bit easier so the red you see should be the bottom of the painting.

Honestly, I really have no technique that I use to do this blending. I mess around with adding water to paint to make it lighter and easier to mix with other paint on the canvas. This might be the right way to do this, but I really have no idea. It worked for my needs.

I finished this painting session with the light blue on the very bottom before the white. Next time I sit down, hopefully this weekend, I will be blending this light blue region with the darker blue region that will be the very top of this painting in the end. Finally, I will add a few gray clouds to create some depth in this seemingly flat picture.

My favorite parts of this painting, so far, are the yellow streaks through the red at the top of the photo as well as the brilliant green/yellow spot in the middle left of the painting. The blue colors that I have left at the very bottom of the photo to paint are some of my favorite colors. Hopefully, they will add some depth and bring this sunset to life a bit more.

I need at least one more sitting to finish this painting, so you'll see at least one more update about this before the finished product.

A Painting Adventure...

So, it's been a VERY long time since I've blogged. I apologize for my radio silence. It's been a busy part of the semester. I finished school, had finals, started training for my half marathon in October, and started my internship. The commute has left me with little time for much else. However, I have started painting again.

I have a friend who recently got married and she requested that I paint something for her for her wedding present. I got into acrylic painting a few years ago in an attempt to put some nice art on the walls of my post-college apartment. I generally only paint abstract art because I am not great at drawing. This time, I branched into the slightly more realistic realm by trying to re-create an awesome sunset that I saw one night over the Puget Sound. Check out the cool clouds and sky hidden in the darkness.

For those of you out there who have never painted before, I thought I'd include photos as I make progress on the painting. Of course I thought of that brilliant (insert sarcasm here) idea after I started painting, so you're going to have to start by imagining a white canvas.

The dark bluish-black-gray at the top of the sunset was the easiest for me so I started there by mixing some almost royal blue paint with some black paint. One of my favorite things to do is not quite mix two paint colors together to give depth and artistic touch to the painting. You'll see some brighter streaks of blue along with some almost black streaks.

After starting with the top, I moved on to the bottom red portion of the sunset. I happen to already have a tube of the perfect fiery red color from my first ever painting endeavor so that's an easy one for me to add.

If you look really closely at the white portion of the canvas, you'll see that I've sketched a bit to help remind myself which colors need to go in which portions of the canvas. Of course all of this will change as I paint, but I thought I'd leave myself with a bit of direction.

At the moment, this is all of the progress I've made on the painting thus far, but I will continue to blog as I add colors and work more on it. For those of you readers who have been there for me when this started as a food blog and then became a business school blog and now continue to read as this becomes a bit of a painting blog, I appreciate your continued support and I hope you enjoy the temporary diversion from my other topics.

P.S. Perhaps blogging about my half marathon training will be coming soon as well.