2 new hockey paintings posted

The two hockey paintings that I previewed in this work-in-progress post, are now finished, and they've been photographed and posted to my website:

 

They're 24" x 24", making them the largest hockey paintings I've done to date.

Is it finished?

Here's the painting with the underpainting all finished. The next stage is the top painting, or whatever that's called, but I often get to this point with a painting and think that it looks pretty good -maybe I could just leave it there? I never do, mainly because the pasty top layers are fun and juicy and freakin nerve wracking and they usually make the piece look so much better, but hoo boy it sure would save me some work!





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Hockey painting in progress

Here's the same piece with the underpaintiing partially finished,
And the sketch behind it:




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Studio photos

Hey folks,

Now that I've finally entered the mobile age , I'm trying out posting work in progress photos using my iPhone . Here's a hockey piece in the pencil stage:




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Hockey paintings in progress

Here are photos of a couple of hockey paintings that I'm working on:

Toronto Art Expo and Email List Promotion

As you can see on the Events page on my website, I'm going to be exhibiting at the Toronto Art Expo this year. The dates are February 25 - February 28. (If you're on my email list, I sent out the wrong dates last night. The Art Expo apparently changed the dates on their website really recently and I missed that.)

I'm really looking forward to the show and I'm working really hard to get some new paintings done for it. For the first time ever I'm going to do a promotion for the people who are on my email list, as a token of my appreciation for their continued support. My plan is to send an promotion code-word type of thing in an email to everyone on my list just before the show. If you come to the show and give me the code, I'll apply a 5% discount to any purchase!

In other news, I've also had some gallery requests for more hockey paintings, so I'm also desperately trying to get some of those done at the same time. I'll hopefully be able to post something soon about that.

New Hockey Painting Posted

Click here to view larger.

This painting was a commission that I did this past fall. It was a Christmas present and it went over really well with the recipient, who was apparently quite moved by it. I was really pleased with how it turned out, but knowing that the person for whom it was done is so happy with it is an even better feeling.

To me the process plus the painting kind of feels like one of Stuart Maclean's Vinyl Cafe stories, which is cool because my paintings are normally a little emotionally remote, whereas Maclean's stories are always about the emotions. His stories seem like they're dead simple, but really in most cases they're entertaining, funny, and heart warming, and seem to touch on the emotions that we all share. I don't know how valid the comparison with my painting is, but I think I've managed to do something that goes at least a little bit in that direction, so I'm quite happy about that.

Website Update: Tweaks and View Larger (yummy!)

I've just finished posting an update to my website, here are the high-lights:

• I've added a 'View Larger' option, which will show up under an artwork's image when there's a larger image available. I used the very handy Fancybox javascript plugin to do this. So now you'll be able see a much nicer larger image for some of the paintings, especially for the newer better ones. I'm all super happy about this feature. Awesome. Check it out here!
  
• Reset the size of all the thumbnail images. I could've downloaded them all and then run a batch job in Photoshop and then uploaded them all back, but I decided to write programming code to do that instead. Now I have an admin page where I can reset all the thumbnails any time I want, and the application will resize them all. Yippee! (I figured I'll probably keep changing my mind, so I needed something that was easy to redo over and over again...) Tech Geek note: I used asynchronous multithreading for what is a long running process on the server, with an AJAX feedback in the admin page to track progress. Yes, I found that fun to get working, and yes, I'm a total dorko nerd.
  
• Updated a bunch of the text on the site, and added an Ordering Info page.

Wow, that feels good. Now I need to get back to making paintings for the upcoming Toronto Art Expo!

New Painting: Red Scarf Expedition

I've posted the painting from the previous work-in-progress post, and it's called 'red scarf expedition'. Click here to see it in more detail. I'm really happy with it and I think I might concentrate less on landscapes and canoes in the future and focus more on this type of painting. Enjoy.

Paintings to end the decade, and website update in the pipeline.

The painting from my previous post is now all finished. I haven't taken proper photos yet, but I will this week and then I'll post it to my website. I finished it on December 31, and there's kind of a nice symmetry to having no partially finished paintings in the studio at the cross over from 2009 to 2010. Everything that was started is finished, and I have a clean slate starting point for all the new ones I'm going to do in 2010.

The other thing about this painting is that I think it might be one of the best paintings I've ever done. It's a good feeling to finish a painting and realize that I still haven't hit my limits, that I'm still making jumps in my skill level. Even if I'm getting older, I'm still getting better at this painting thing and that I still have things to learn and paintings to surprise myself with.

In other news, I've also been working on some minor improvements to the website, and those should be going up this week as well. I'll have more details on those soon.

Happy New Year!