A few paintings to show off

It's been a couple of months since I last posted but I haven't been slacking off, I guarantee that!

First off, I've been getting ready for the Fall Issue of Crochet Uncut. I've been having trouble accessing the site, along with Salt City Gifts, and the hosting company determined that there were two scripts being run on other accounts that were taking up all the CPU. So they were disabled. A few days later, the same problem came up and they found another script using up all the CPU. Everything was fine for several days, then lo and behold, it happened again. So the hosting company moved my sites to a brand spankin' new server ... Of course, this has put me behind on the Fall issue, but so far so good on the site access.

I've also taken two more classes from Jon McNaughton and finished the paintings - which you can see below. Click on the images to see larger versions on my Flickr gallery.

This painting is called "Hollyhock Path" and while I still can't get the hollyhock stalks right yet (they're too "lush"), I'm still quite happy with it. There was also supposed to be a little girl on the path, but I decided not to put her in on this one.

Acrylic on masonite, 11x14

This next one, I'm not so happy with when it comes to the aspens (too uniform) and the clouds, but I love the mountains, pines, and stream - so I guess it balances out. This one is called "Mountain Stream."

Acrylic on masonite, 11x14

This next painting I went out on my own, kinda, using a lesson from Inspirations Vol. Two by Jerry Yarnell. I mixed his directions with my own style and some of Jon McNaughton's techniques and, so far, this is my favorite painting. This painting is called "Resting Wren."

Acrylic on masonite, 11x14

The class for September is a Halloween scene, October is a pumpkin patch, November is a Christmas scene, and December is a head study. Jon's also hoping to have a 3-day workshop next year on painting figures and I told him that if he did, I'd definitely take the three days off work to take the workshop.

I've been paying about $3.50 per masonite panel at Provo Art & Frame and while that's not a bad price (especially with my discount), it still adds up. I spent about $35 last weekend on ten 11x14 panels so this weekend, I decided to go to Lowes. There I found 4'x8' sheets of masonite and for a $9 cutting fee along with 4 panels, I paid $44 for the following (odd sizes were from scrap left after cutting the main sizes):

Main sizes:

• 5" x 7" - 48 panels
  
• 8" x 10" - 27 panels
• 11" x 14" - 71 panels

Scrap sizes:

• 4.5" x 8" - 3 panels
• 5" x 9" - 4 panels
• 10" x 11" - 4 panels
• 10.75" x 11" - 4 panels
• 11" x 11.25" - 3 panels
• 3" x 24" scraps

So now I have plenty of panels to do lots of paintings with. I'm planning on using the smaller panels to practice painting flowers on. I figure the small size will let me do one or two flowers without overdoing it. If I had purchased the main panels at the art store, I'd have paid $356 plus tax.

I'll post my progress here as I go and you can also keep an eye on my Flickr gallery to see what's been completed.