I had a fantastic and productive year. In total, I completed 26 paintings with 21 paintings being available for my first-ever shop launch on January 6th at 4:00 pm, which is SIX!!! days away! I've never done something like this, and leading up to this point in my life I didn't really think something of this scale could be possible, but with the assistance of perseverance, people who love me in my life and a fantastic therapist I am achieving some big goals and dreams.
I had great fun setting up this still life! I've been slowly building a collection of still life props - like the above fake grapes and orange pot from Michaels and the velvet pumpkin from Target - and wanted to give them a spin. For the month of November I was kind of "accidentally" only painting still life set-ups from my studio and I'm glad I got some good practice in. What started out like a normal still life painting ended up morphing into a 5-hour-long painting that took me multiple sessions to paint. This painting really brought me out of my comfort zone and I am really pleased with it. I even love the velvet look of the pumpkin! I will say, though, that I've never tried painting grapes before and went into it blind - and I'm glad that I had the opportunity to try to figure it out myself. Here's to continuing to learn and grow!
This painting will be available in my first-ever shop launch on Friday, January 6th at 4 pm CST! All available paintings will have an active link that will re-route you directly to the painting on my shop.
I first started this project because I wanted to see if there was a way for me to manipulate the finishes of my paintings without sacrificing the values and clarity of the paintings themselves combined with my lack of experience in photographing my art. Anytime I would photograph my artwork I would be battling against the glare due to my high-gloss varnish and I just wouldn’t be pleased with how it looked. My fiancé said that he likes the glare because it shows off paint strokes in various areas and while I agree, it still doesn’t feel like it renders well in photographs. I even had the idea to add to every one of my paintings in my art shop a short video or GIF of me rotating the painting back and forth to give a better feel of the paintings - and while I still plan on doing this before my big website launch, it’s still something that kind of frustrates me.
