My Summer Painting is Finished!

                                                                Acrylic on Panel
Just like the title says, my newest painting, Summer, is complete! She's the first in my Four Seasons series. I'm really looking forward to working on Autumn, Winter and Spring! The orchids in my painting are all ones from my garden and the poppies are some that I saw in Monet's garden when I was in France this summer. I love incorporating things that I've seen in real life with the things that I see in my head.

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Often when I paint, I'm either painting the things in the world around me, or I'm painting the things in the world inside my head. Typically I don't want the two worlds to meet too much, but it IS nice to be able to use things from the outside world to enhance my imaginary worlds.

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I love how the colors pop in this piece! She will especially make a nice statement when hung next to the other three. I think that I'll begin work on Spring next. I really enjoyed painting the flowers and don't want to stop. :)

                                                                            detail

In other news, my appointment with the rheumatologist is this Tuesday. I've been killing myself with "what ifs" despite my best efforts to avoid doing that. Oh well. It will be nice to get it over with. I'll be sure to let everyone know what's going on as soon as I know.

Until then, have a blessed and creative day!! 

Painting to Help Others

 Everyday I count my blessings and see how truly rich I am. We are bombarded now with photos of the horribly malnourished and suffering people of Somalia. I can't help but think that this could be any one of us. We have no control over the conditions that we are born into. It just breaks my heart to see how horribly these people are suffering!

I have finally finished my Butterfly Faerie and have placed it for sale in my etsy shop. 20% of the proceeds from this sale will go directly to UNICEF. They have launched a massive scale up of their operation and are using all avenues available to get supplies into Somalia. I want to help them with their efforts in any way that I can. I am honored to have the gifts that God has given me and hope to be able to use them to help others less fortunate.
I am also donating another 10% of the proceeds from this sale to Compassion International. I have been a member of Compassion for almost 6 years and find them to be an honorable organization who helps families in poverty stricken societies.

I plan to have prints available soon and will donate a portion of the proceeds from those as well.

Thank you so much for supporting my art! 

Painting a Butterfly

For the past week, I've been hard at work painting a portrait of a butterfly fairy. She loves to lay down and let the butterflies fly about her and land in her long, beautiful hair. They have such wonderful stories to tell!

I have always loved butterflies. They seem to live two lives. One as a caterpillar and one as a beautiful, free and majestic butterfly. I always associate them with rebirth, much like a phoenix.

Each of the five butterfly families (papilionidae, pieridae, nymphalidae, lycaenidae and riodindae) have been represented in this piece. There is still quite a bit of work to do on this painting before it will be complete, but I wanted to share what I have done so far. I also wanted to share my latest video installment on youtube, "Painting a Butterfly". I still have some work to do on my video skills, but I'm not too terribly disappointed with this one. :)



Enjoy and have a wonderful day!!!