Phases of the 12" x 24" Painting Called "Night Movers" and Three More!

 Hello and welcome (back) to another blog post showing the evolution of several different paintings

Recently I made many additions to "Deep Forest Light".  Shown below is the new version "Deep Forest Life", with its many fine line drawings of insects and animals:

"Deep Forest Life"  colored pencil with acrylic varnish on canvas  40 x 24

This painting is on display and for sale at the Oliver Art Center in Frankfort, Michigan from December 8 until the first week in January 2024.  It's much easier to see the intricate drawings in real life.

Now on we go to see the changes made to another older painting: 

In this iteration the painting is called "Turbulence" and is a mixed media painting of acrylic, oil, pastel and marble dust.  

Working with oil paints I just had fun painting pretty blues, clouds and some light lines.  At first this was going to be a moonscape with a silhouette of conifers along the bottom.  But then I did the last painting, "We're All In This . . . . ", featured in the previous blogpost.  It was so much fun and so rewarding to use oil paints precisely and carefully and have all the entities in the painting that I decided to make this painting in the same style.  

Here is the somewhat planned moonscape painted with oils and then colored more using pastels and casein fixative.  I added new lines, curves, etc. with white pastel and sealed it again.  Next will be the drawing of animals, plants and whatever else happens to appear.  It's at this point that I began calling the painting "Night Movers".  We'll see if that name stays.

We begin with a larger than life-size Little Brown Bat and  and two moths.  The moth drawing is from a photo taken of sleeping moth on our door.  Every evening if you look to the east between our two huge Norway Spruce trees you will see tiny little bats flying from tree to tree.  Adult size is a body about 4" long and wingspan of 8 to 9".

The progression of the drawings.  The images are drawn with pastel pencil, sealed, then painted with a mixture of acrylic and water soluble oil paint and sealed again with casein fixative.  The painting is now ready for the intricate oil painting of colors and light/dark.

The oil painting has begun!

Below are the three other paintings I am working on at the same time:

"Intelligent Light"

Many details have been added with graphite and pastel.

I love the details but this is a small painting - 10" x 16" and it seemed too busy.  So I started blocking in areas with translucent color.  We'll see how it goes, as always.

More color was added and it darkened the painting overall, which is not what I want.  So I started painting the "details I love" back in with light lines.  Love always finds a way. :)

"Intelligent Light"  10 x 16    acrylic and pastel on canvas with casein fixative and acrylic varnish

I do believe it's done!

I added more details - a figure for one - and subtle color changes.  And now it is done. 

Or so I thought.  Below is the final version for now.  I wanted to make it more colorful, beautiful, sparkly.  Also, the name has been changed to:  "Soul Lights".

Also working on "Watchers" which used to be "Winged Watchers":

14 x 24

The old painting.

After a thin layer of marble dust applied to the surface.

Color added with pastel in a new design.  More entities and lines added, too. 
 Everything sealed with casein fixative.

Brightening, balancing and keeping the white line images.  

This layer of color was done with colored pencil.

I added many more animals, insects and other beings.  The entire painting was then painted 

over using thin layers of oil paint.  It is finished. Maybe.

And, the third one: "Star Castle Home"  32 x 22

This one has been done entirely with water soluble oil paint.

At this stage of the painting it looks dark and messy. The image I am working from has a 

lot of dark in it and I like the brighter, more purple painting that I started with. 
I'll work those aspects back in with the next round.

After a few months of working on other paintings and doing lots of other things I started working on this painting again.  Today is May 23, 2024 and this is what it looks like now:

It's still called, "Star Castle Home" but it's now a mixed media painting on canvas.