Update to the second Art Heart

Sisters heart with changes

While I am finishing up another Art Heart, I had this little change waiting on the back burner. I just had a moment to slip this into the schedule.


One of the previous Hearts was for sisters who both were born with truncus arteriosus. At the time I created their heart, I was torn on whether to include some symbolism for a third child who was not afflicted with CHD. As the painting was detailed already, I opted to focus on the CHD sisters. But after some thought, I decided to incorporate symbolism for the third sibling.

I thought perhaps she should be there, looking over them from the background. I envisioned her as a brilliant bird nested in the tree, watching over the girls. 

detail of the nesting bird

Luckily I was able to add this symbolism as another layer over the branches using pastel pencils. The paper still had enough tooth to accept more detail, and I think the bird is just conspicuous enough without overpowering the design. I will be updating my original post to show the changes as well, if you'd like to see the entire process. 

You can read more about the Art Hearts here, and you can support the charity here, if you are so inspired.

Custom Boat Portraits!

I've been adding some new artwork to my website lately - and wanted to include a new page for custom portraits. Now I've always been available for this kind of work, but thought it would be best to get a full page up there to show some samples, as well as a page for pricing and instructions. After all, I wouldn't like to buy something unless I knew what I was getting into. The first series of portraits up is for boat enthusiasts.

Bella Lisa  12"x9" acrylic on panel

Since my husband and I have a boat (26' Wellcraft with sleeper cabin) and it's still boating season, we've been down to the Warwick area quite a bit lately to enjoy the ocean. I love the area, and this particular marina is quiet, with a little beach to walk around when not on the boat. I have quite a few photos that I will be developing into paintings from my explorations there.

Sailing  9"x12" acrylic on canvas

I also created a few new boat portraits to show some samples of my work. If you are reading this and you are a boat owner who must sadly pull your boat out for the winter, it's a nice way to keep her in mind during the colder months. If you know a boat owner, this makes a nice gift for the holidays, birthdays, etc. If you sell boats, it's a nice idea for a thank-you gift to your customers. I'll be making the paintings in acrylic and in pastel over watercolor.

Regatta  7"x5" pastel

For more information and prices on the boat portraits, please check out my website.

Enjoy!

Free desktop wallpapers!

I've been doing some updating of my website lately, and have added a few goodies to the site. If you are a fan of desktop wallpapers, I made a few from my favorite paintings. Here are two new ones you can download from the Multimedia page.

Instructions for download
From the Multimedia page, click an image to open up the wallpaper in a new window. Then just right-click the large image and select "Save image as" from the dropdown menu. Save the image to your hard drive.

Instructions for using the wallpaper
Go to your computer desktop. Right-click and select "Personalize" from the dropdown menu. You should see settings for changing out your background in the window that opens. Browse to the location that you saved the wallpaper, select it and click "Save changes" or "OK".


Enjoy!