Flamingo Painting

So my husband made a comment like, "Hey Woman, with your busy crazy life you are never going to chisel out enough time to paint anything again."

It was true, but it motivated me to prove him wrong... Three kids down for a nap at the same time. SCORE!!- Time to PAINT!!

Fun Step by Step painting changes. - thank goodness for picture texts and my sister who never gets tired of helping me critique during the process. 

This is part of my animal parenthood paintings. The paintings are based off my experiences as a mother and also connect me to my father since we worked in his shop making the frames together. In the painted scenes I love thinking about myself as the parent but also inversely as the child to both my Earthly Parents and my Heavenly Parents. 

This is what baby flamingos look like when they are born and it is not til they have eaten enough pink fish that they begin to get their more common pink color.  

Frames for the Paintings

Four Parenthood Paintings are ready to be hung. Dad and I worked on these paintings out in his shop. It was a lot of fun learning and spending time with him. I love how the dark frames really make the colors pop! I have one more frame to fill; let me know if you have a suggestion of what animal to do!

Painting a Personal Gift

The Initial Sketch

This last Christmas I had the opportunity to paint two identical paintings for brothers. This scene is a combination of 6 different pictures from a camping trip they use to go on in their younger years. 

At a check point with the commissioner even though they gave me lots of artistic freedom.

The final finished product.

Orangutan Baby

 The kids and I recently fell in love with a 2 week old baby orangutan named "Surianna" at the Omaha zoo.View Birth Announcement Now Daphney feels like we have some kind of ownership over the baby and always wants to go back and see how it is doing and growing. She is also my biggest fan, because anytime anyone comes over she asks them if they want to come and see what her mom painted recently.

Both the giraffe painting and the orangutan paintings are getting framed and will go in Demitri's room shortly.

I also painted a jungle like scene on Demitri's wall. Still putting on the finishing touches to finish the wall but here is an updated picture. Stay tuned for pics of the whole room make over coming soon!

 Pictured is the original photo and then my painting that I took a few artistic liberties with .

Chicken Parenting

           This is one of my new favorite paintings and I want to try and explain my sacred and personal thoughts behind it. I envisioned this painting back during Easter. Demitri was learning to sleep all the way through the night still and that is always so difficult for me personally because I just want to snuggle tiny baby rolls at all hours. You would think it would be easy and I would rejoice at the opportunity to sleep all night, but those are the longest nights where I find myself pacing until I am accidentally running because of the ache for my child. Little does Demitri know even though I am not next to him to insert the pacifier and comfort him I am as close as I have ever been in spirit and heart. I remembered thinking to myself, "how will I ever do this?" It took a while to realize that I was so focused on the scene before me that I did not realize that I am often the one inside of the "egg" in which needs to learn how to do things without direct step by step instructions from Heavenly Father. And these experiences helped me to better understand his love and mercy that even when I don't feel his presences He is still near. That is why there is a cracked egg in which the viewer is supposed to be looking out of towards their own loving Heavenly Parents. 

          One of my favorite speeches by Elder Holland is one about the atonement and it had extra meaning to me last Easter as I was pondering these thoughts. This is the talk and a video of him speaking which I would encourage you to watch if you are interested, but here also is a shortened video of the talk if you prefer. 

I don't mean to say I understand completely or to demean the Atonement in any manner, but I feel like because of the blessing of being a parent and having to learn to let children grow from independence and indeed sometimes pain I better understand how a perfect loving Father could let our Savior be crucified on the cross and for a moment allow Him to suffer it completely alone and yet never be closer to his beloved Son.  

This is the section in which helped me:

 “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” ^16. .... Indeed, it is my personal belief that in all of Christ’s mortal ministry the Father may never have been closer to His Son than in these agonizing final moments of suffering. Nevertheless, that the supreme sacrifice of His Son might be as complete as it was voluntary and solitary, the Father briefly withdrew from Jesus the comfort of His Spirit, the support of His personal presence. It was required, indeed it was central to the significance of the Atonement, that this perfect Son who had never spoken ill nor done wrong nor touched an unclean thing had to know how the rest of humankind—us, all of us—would feel when we did commit such sins. For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone." 

Elder Jeffery R. Holland

I hope this painting and message brings hope, peace, and understanding unto those that view it like it has unto myself. 

Plagiocephaly

Recently our son was diagnosed with Plagiocephaly which is basically having a flat spot on his head. This has many causes one of which is that when he was born his head was in the 98th percentile and his neck muscles had to learn to support his head. (Interesting Fact: Daphney's head was in the 5th Percentile). Other reasons include the fact that he was always laid on his back and he is a happy relaxed baby who did not bother moving out of his blanket cocoon at night. At first I was devastated at the fact that I felt like I had broken my son who was only 6 months old, but now we are doing much better and I feel just lucky to have a healthy happy son. Feel free to ask me any questions, because I would love to prevent this for other babies. Website

This is a picture of his head while he was at the doctors getting scanned for the helmet. The  back left and front right were protruding. The flat spot was then mostly on the back right. Because of the location of the flat spot not being directly on the back of the head it is believed that it might have originated when he had some bad colds this winter that caused the neck muscles to tighten on one side of his neck. Anyways it was not terribly noticeable especially because of how much hair he has now and he might have grown out of it, but if we didn't do anything while the head was growing then we wouldn't have a chance to fix it later if it didn't correct itself. Below is a picture of the white helmet that applies pressure on the two protruding corners to let the other corners catch up in growth.  

So I did some research online and found this design and painted it on his helmet. It made having a helmet much more fun and now he always looks like he is having a blast day dreaming about flying! 

Okay so I loved every picture and had to snap and share every flinch... Sorry.

Second New Artwork of 2014

So here is the second artwork in this series. First I did Demitri's Giraffe and now I am basically finished with Daphney's Bear. Here is the current picture!

When I was working on the quick pencil sketches for the painting she came over and signed bear. I clearly underestimated her love for bears! I always worked on it while Daphney was sleeping and she would come down so excited to see the bears after her naps. Lately she has been laughing when she sees them; I am not sure if that is a good or bad sign.

New Artwork of 2014

Giraffe Painting

So recently I had someone ask me if I had worked on any artwork since Demitri was born, and I responded no. But then I got to thinking about it and decided it was time to roll up my sleeves and get to work. I had to sacrifice a lot of precious time while Daphney was napping to work on this painting.

Daphney did not understand why she
 could not sit on it while I took the picture.

We are still saving up some money in order to decorate the kids rooms, so it was so nice to be able to get started on a painting for the nursery. This will go in Demitri's wild animal room along with pictures of him with his Giraffe.

A recent picture of Demitri by Daphney's giant gorilla; not the Giraffe pictures (you will have to scroll back through my blog to see those adorable smiles.) However, I love this picture too because he hardly ever has his tongue out because it is so attached or he is just too classy... And really try smiling with your tongue out it will simply make you happy. :D

Fantasy Flowers

This is my latest painting!! I am starting to get some artwork commissioned and I am super excited to begin working on those projects! Let me know if you are interested!

"Fantasy Flowers"

More Realism

"Raspberry Blossoms"

The Raspberry painting is based off of a photo I took back in 2009 and I am finally getting around to painting it. I love it! But, I feel like it needs a little more so I am thinking I will do it as a diptych or a triptych. It is a little smaller than the paintings I have been doing lately. (11-14 inches)

"Train-Bridge"

The Train-Bridge was worked on in many parts because I would try and squeeze in time to work on it while Daphney was sleeping, but I would never get too far before she would awake. (16-20 inches)

Two NEW Paintings!

Koi Fish-   2ft by 2ft

Paintings over the Summer

     Wymount found out we had a huge fish tank, and threatened to charge us 10 dollars per day per fish. Needless to say we quickly dropped the fish off in Idaho for a while, but this painting now hangs where our fish tank used to be in our living room.   : D

Price Canyon-   2ft by 3ft

 

 

 

 

 

 

          

           We were able to go down to my cousin's graduation this summer, and on the way home I was amazed by the beauty of the canyons around Price. So I began snapping tons of pictures. Shane offered to stop the car so I could get some good pictures, but I knew if he did we would be there all day, and I knew I wanted more of a fantasy feel to this paining. 

           I often try not to tell others the meaning behind my paintings, because I love hearing the opinion of the audience. I feel like it leaves room for the painting to mean something special to everyone individually. 

          However, when I look at this painting I love to think about my life and the journey I am on. It helps me gather perspective and realize that when I am in the trenches of life that it is important to remember the big picture.  

Let me know if I am wrong and you all have a different meaning to the painting... : D

Painting #1: Kansas Landscape

I need your help finishing this....

I just finished this painting, and I took the pictures 2 years ago. : D
It is nice to have time to finish projects.

I need your help let me know if you think it should be improved in any way. I would love the criticism!!!
Thanks!