First of all, apologies for the late post. I had decided that I'd update this blog every Monday, but due to a few time constraints (namely, I have a friend staying over at my house this entire week) my blog post was a teensy-tiny bit delayed. Excuses, excuses, I know. I'm slacking at only the second update! But, in my defense I did have the piece done late Saturday night/early Sunday morning (depending on how you roll). Now that I have the apologizing out of the way, let's move right along.
When I sat down and thought about what I wanted to do for this next piece I was a little bit stumped. I knew that one of my goals for the summer was to just, mainly, improve my skills in all areas of artistic work that I had available to me (in this case I have acrylic paints, charcoal and graphite). I've already done a piece with graphite (see Study of a Bird) so I decided to move on to painting. But one of my other goals was to create some decent decorations for my dorm room this coming year. I'll be sharing a suite with seven, yes SEVEN, other girls. Which, of course, means a conflict in taste, especially on how the room is to be decorated. While my actual room will only be shared with one other girl, there is a common living space that is shared with the other six girls. Now late last semester I and my other artistically inclined suitemate, Krystal, were given the go ahead to decorate the room as we saw fit. Still, both of us want to make things that all of the girls will like and appreciate. With this in mind I stared at my sketchbook for awhile just trying to come up with ideas.
As I know most of you are aware, I attend a Christian college. So, naturally, one of the things I share in common with all seven girls is our faith. Realizing this, I wanted to make sure I incorporated a religious and spiritually uplifting sentiment in my pieces. I started thinking of different passages from the Bible that would be applicable to college students and I recalled the fruits of the spirit. These are traits that are encouraged and in some ways, required of a faithful follower of Christ. More than anything I wanted to remind these girls and myself of the importance of keeping these traits in the forefront of our lives. This piece is to be one of the main things that I put up on the wall, so I intended to make it big. Eventually I chose to 11x14 canvases to work with.
Doing the sunset for the background was frustrating, but ultimately very rewarding. Learning to work with the paint and to LET IT DRY was challenging, but it was a refreshing change from graphite or even charcoal. Keeping a steady hand to paint the words was difficult as well, but I'm satisfied with the results.
Next week's post could possibly be delayed as well, but I'm excited because I have (basically) my first commission! It'll be for an employee at work who is having a little girl soon and wants a name plaque painted for her. I've bought the canvas for it and I'm looking into a few other things as well. Be looking for the update about it soon!
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