Moving mountains

This image is painted from a photo I took while traveling in Bavaria, Germany in 1991. I was staying with a lovely family who took me around the countryside on daytrips. I have kept in touch with them and decided what better way to express belated thanks than by making a painting of one of the scenes we experienced there together?

I am feeling more comfortable working with acrylics than watercolors, as you might be able to tell here. The trees came out really easily, and while the structure has a bit of wobbliness to it, it's not half bad, is it? Hazel added the gorgeous golden afternoon light glow to the building and we thought it was good to go until we noticed that the highest mountain peak was right behind the church's tower. I figured this was accurate since it is how it was in the photo, but Hazel and I went round and round about factual accuracy and art. In the end, I caved, moved the mountains (messed up a previously lovely sky), and ended up with this. When I tell you I messed up the sky, I'm serious, there are so many layers of paint under this I'm sure the postage will be increased by $3 because of the weight! LOL.

It's a pretty little thing, though and I like the serene feeling it evokes.

So, the moral of the story is, never put a mountain peak, tree trunk, rock crevice, castle, or other big structure directly behind your main subject. I hope that makes sense?

The Borch Crest

Working from a horrible copy and doing several hours of research, I was able to come up with this for the ex-husband.

I used a sort of tracing paper you can buy at art supply stores to trace the image onto the canvas, and worked from there.

Tackling the Walsh family crest

Growing up, my Walsh family had two things it could count on: chaos and the family crest. I don't know where the original came from, but dad had a copy of the full crest mounted in a large picture frame on the wall, and wore the pierced swan on a gold ring all his adult life. The motto is "transfixus sed non mortuus", wounded but not dead.

My younger brother, Kevin, who knew I was trying my hand at painting hinted a while back that it would be cool to paint the family crest. He even showed me a spot on a wall in his rec room where it would fit perfectly. So, I researched, got the best image I could find to reproduce, and used an enlarger lamp device and copied the image onto a 16 x 20 canvas with pencil. I had seen my BFF Bindy enlarge computer generated images in this way and figured it might just work.

The first day back to painting class for a shorter, 2 week "intersession" I brought in the pre-traced crest image and my acrylic paints. Starting with a very large (1-1/2" mural) brush, reasoning that I was painting a large area, Hazel came by, first told me to work with a smaller 16-round brush and not worry about laying the paint on the canvas in any good order to begin with since I'd be covering and reworking it several times. I had been trying to paint as one would paint a wall, strokes all going in the same way, but she explained that doing that would show subsequent brush strokes that couldn't possibly mirror the same length and style of stroke I was already using so random, smaller ones were better.

This was an absolute b**ch to paint, pardon my french! I had not planned it out too well, the greenery around the shield was supposed to be exactly the same on both sides, and the "arrows" that look like eyes and nose are supposed to be identical in size. So much for perfection. And I do recall Kevin saying he wouldn't be bothered by a loose interpretation of the crest. He just wanted something...

All told, I think I spent more than 20 hours on this, but am very, very proud of the effort. I know I'll have a hard time figuring out how to ship it -- he lives in Virginia, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Sorry about the lousy photo - it'll have to do in a pinch.

I plan to do at least one more crest for another brother, and try to do one of the "Borch" family for my ex-husband. As my son's family name, I figured they would appreciate the effort I put into the research and creation and I knew he'd like it too.

Do try this at home!

At least that is what I've found... Working in my own studio, I feel comfortable and can explore on things that might seem too ambitious for a 3-5 hour class where I have to tote all the gear in, subject myself to Hazel's criticism, and work with limitations of size and scope.

So over this weekend, I tackled this lovely piece - it's a 16 x 20 acrylic based on a photograph I saw recently and just loved because of the colors. I love the simplicity of it too. What do you think?

I am giving it to my older son, Kris, who has a small but bare apartment in Brooklyn Heights, NY. He needs color and I need space! I hope he loves it!