The Church Garden

First block in of my church garden painting

Day 31-35 : Yay! With this set of pictures I have finally cleared the month of December in my picture a year quest. To bad it's March....

Anway, I‘m making a couple of paintings for my church for Easter Sunday and yesterday I finally got started. :)



They want paintings that reflect the nature of the missions they sponsor and take part of (things like Living Water that they sponsors and trips to India and Cofradia, Mexico where people went down to help with various…well, missions). I looked all through the little summaries they had online about the different trips, but nothing really stood out to me. Made me kind of sad since this was the first ‘job’ that I’d signed on for since I’d gotten out of school and I wanted to do something really, really cool. Prove myself you know?

Eventually the words ‘church-planting’ caught my eye and this image went and sprouted in my head (See what I did there? Aren’t I clever today? ….and I think I’ve spent too much time by myself today….oh boy).
If you can’t tell (because this is still pretty much still only half a canvas sketch) It’s a church/flower growing from that green heart-shaped seed. Those orangey-yellowy splotches on either side at the top are more church/flowers, but they’re in different stages of flowering. But all the flowers are going to be linked together by one big root system all linked to the heart-shaped seed.

You can sort of see the beginnings of the root system coming out of the top of the seed here. They're those faint green lines spreading out near the bumps in the heart.

This was a lot more fun than I first thought it was going to be. I guess it’s been too long since I fussed with my acrylics. ActuallyI know it’s been too long because as when I went to open my acrylic palette I was silently hoping nothing had molded because that I hadn’t opened it since I last took painting classes.

That was over a year ago.

I opened the lid away from me - like they teach you to roll over logs in girl scouts in case there’s some kind of poisonous snake sleeping underneath - because I was afraid it was going to explode like some kind of molded paint bomb.

Some of you just laughed at me. I can hear it through the computer screen.

But I wasn’t kidding. ^-.-^

;P Yeah….

Anyway, I’m pleased with my progress and wanted to share the colorfulness and drippy-lines. Oh and that sky? I love that sky right now. Like I’m not sure if I want to even touch it yet love it. And you know, I never really liked drippy-lines when I went to galleries, but when I started working on the sky a voice in my head went “o.O Ooooo! Must have drippy-lines! Do it! Do it! Do it!” So I did. And I think it looks super cool. I think the sky ones will end up fading into the background, but I want to keep the ones falling off the heart. They just add…something. A good something. An excellent something.

Oh! And this is exciting! So I cross-posted my little Stick-formers over on my Tumblr blog (It's called Tiaras & Ballgowns but I'm in the process of renovating it so I'm brainstorming on if I want a different title or not...) and two someones hearted my little Wheeljack sketch! Yay! I’m ridiculously proud of those little guys so I'm exceedingly glad for those guys who luved him. You have no idea how happy they made me! And if you think I’m happy, you should see what kind of state Wheeljack is in. The others can barely stand him right now he’s so smug. So far he’s the only one that’s gotten any attention and the rest of the bots are about to color themselves green. I’ll have to hide my art pens. ;3

Painting when I finished for the day. I'm pretty pleased with it so far. :)

Have I mentioned yet that I love this sky? This one right here. When I was looking at it yesterday it was okay. Okay as any other blocked in sky. But this photograph of it blew me away. I just want to stare at it and go "Ooooo.....ahhhhh...."

And this. This is my favorite part. Totally, completely, definitely my favorite part so far. I like the flow, the way it draws my eye and makes it move around the middle of the canvas while the rest of the 'dirt' (it's a bunch of different colors but it's still dirt alright?) makes my eye kind of swirl around the outer edges of the canvas in an almost unending spiral. Like a whirlpool. My grandmother (who's taught painting at a craft store for a few years) saw it yesterday and she said she liked how there was less motion around the heart-seed so that it looked like it was at the center of storm. I'm going to try and see if I can't retain that quality in the final painting, although I'm not sure how to go about that exactly...

And I think this is my favorite photo of the center piece, if only because the drippy-lines make it look like it's some sort of crescent moon mobile, like what they hang over babies' cribs. You know, those things that spin around in circles and play music? I can picture this playing something to do with Winkin, Blinkin and Nod for some reason...though now that I think about it, I'm not sure if they have a song....