Superman Bedroom

This is my nephew's bedroom.

Even though painting the windows on all those buildings was incredibly boring, this is my favorite mural to date.  I've had a life long crush on Superman and I've always wanted to have a superman room in my house.  I love how this turned out!

I keep joking that one of these days I'm going to paint an addition on the opposite wall of Lois Lane hanging from the top of a building in distress.  If I ever actually do it, I'll be sure to post pictures.

Granny's Smile

My sweet mother died on March 24, 2012 after a valiant 10 month battle fighting pancreatic cancer.  I painted this in her memory and in honor of her one month anniversary of leaving this earth.


"Granny's Smile"
24" x 24" acrylic on canvas

She had been strong and healthy prior to her diagnosis and the news of what was to be hit the whole family hard.  She was 75 years young and I wasn't ready to lose her.  I wanted a portrait of her to hang in my house that would maintain her presence in my life.

I used a method of painting that I learned from Gary Max Collins and John Collins, well known local Utah artists, during a volunteer project that they did with the kids at The Children's Center where I work.  It was an honor to be able to work with these two incredibly talented men for a day. In their process, you size a photograph to scale and divide it up into one inch squares and cut it apart.  Then you measure out the equal number of squares on your canvas and use painters tape to isolate each one.  The painting is created square by square and since the painters tape covers details of all the adjoining squares, you can't see how the section that you are working on connects or relates to the rest of the painting until after you are done and remove the tape.  It creates a pretty cool effect.  I now lovingly refer to this method as Gary squares.

Here is the painting Gary and John made with the kids that inspired my project.

"36 Children Paint Spring" acrylic on canvas 36"x36"
The original photograph that the painting was made from is in the lower right hand corner (click image to enlarge) and the painting was made by children in the Therapeutic Preschool each painting one square.

I chose to do the single color of purple because it is the ribbon color for pancreatic cancer.  To learn more about pancreatic cancer, or to support the cause, visit www.pancan.org.

Here is the original photograph that I created the painting from.

The quality of the original photo is blurry and terrible, but it remains one of my favorites because I love the expression on my mom's face so much.  It is total and complete happiness, exactly how I want to remember her.  I think my painting totally captured the spirit of my mom and I love having it hung up in my house.

The Princess and the Frog

Just playing around with Photoshop and my nieces prom pictures.

 



Paint by Number

These pieces doesn't really count as art in my mind because I didn't actually "create" either of these paintings.  They are just Paint by Number projects purchased from the store as a fun thing to do with one of our nieces.  The design is already printed on a board and the colors predetermined by little numbers inside the shapes that correspond to little paint containers that come with the kit. Still, they were fun to paint, and I had never actually done a paint by number before, let alone two.  I liked how they turned out well enough that they hang in my bathroom.

So, even though I totally feel like it is cheating, here are the finished products:

"Dolphins" 8" x 10" acrylic on pre-printed paint by number board

"Butterflies" 8" x 10" acrylic on pre-printed paint by number board

Kitty Portraits

We have four cats.  Two of them were mine and two of them belonged to my friend Kristin before we moved in together.  Now, they are just ours.  She wanted drawings of the cats to hang in the house and had been asking me for years to make them.  This year I finally did it as a Christmas present for her.  Here they are:

This is Sparks and Sooty or "The Boys."  This picture was drawn from a photograph.  They were the cutest, sweetest brothers and really did curl up like that to sleep.

This is Kitka and Annie or "The Girls."  This drawing was created from separate photographs of each them.  These two are not blood siblings (in fact Annie, the orange one is 9 months older than Kitka) and although they have learned to live peacefully together, there are never any cute kitty piles between them.

Here are the finished pieces framed on our wall:



"The Boys"
8"x10" oil pastels and colored pencil on watercolor paper

 

"The Girls"
8"x10" oil pastels and colored pencil on watercolor paper

This gift ended up being very timely because, unbeknownst to us, it would be Sooty's last Christmas.  He died the following spring from renal failure as a complication from a rare kind of lower urinary tract disease that he had been battling for years.  These portraits are a nice way to keep his sweet presence in our home and we will continue to enjoy them long after all of our fur babies have crossed over the rainbow bridge.

Family Tree

I designed this fun little treasure as a birthday present for my friend Kristin.  We have a bunch of nieces and nephews between us that have grown up as cousins and some of them were constantly asking how we were related.  Even though we met as adults and had no reason to assume that we were relatives at the time, we were thrilled when one day, through a crazy coincidence, we discovered that we were actually fifth cousins once removed!  Small world!

This hangs in our house and now when the kids come over to play, not only do they "think" they are cousins, we can prove that they really are.


18" x 24" digital print on sentra board

I'm happy with the way this turned out and love the overall look and feel of the finished piece.  It's hard to see in the photo, but the text and frame are dark brown and the tree is a sepia.  Against the textured background the finished product has a little bit of a burned wood feel that is really cool.

Psyanka: Various Designs



The Wikipedia definition of pysanka is a Ukrainian Easter egg, decorated with traditional Ukrainian folk designs using a wax-resist (batik) method. The word pysanka comes from the verb pysaty, "to write", as the designs are not painted on, but written with beeswax.  The plural is pysanky.

Yup.  That is pretty much the process of what this is.

I made this set to donate to a charity auction for The Children's Center where I work.



Set of 6 decorated chicken eggs