New painting...."Home for Christmas" (click here!)

I really challenged myself with this painting...it started as a complex illustration, and then because I was creating snow and a night scene (two things I haven't done much of), I found it exceptionally difficult! Finally finished, "Home for Christmas" is a cozy, heart-warming painting which brings out the serene feeling of returning home at holiday time.

The house was modeled after my dad's place, and that's Pike's Peak in the background. The dog is modeled after Dad's dog Beau, and I added the elk into the painting because they see elk all the time up at Dad's. And the girl walking down the drive toward the house is a reminder of me when I used to go home from college for Christmas break. That was always a good feeling to me.

I've hidden my children's initials in the painting - you can't see them, as my photos of this work didn't turn out that great. But each of the two chimney's on the house has my kids' initials faintly embedded into the design. :) They had fun searching for their initials when I brought the painting out of the studio, and they finally found them. :)

This art is 18x24", and it's given me a new passion for creating warm scenes which tell a story. I'm also going to create 2 of what I call "companion pieces" to this. In fact, I'm going to start doing companion pieces for all of my larger works. For companion pieces, I take certain elements of the larger painting and create them up close and personal on a size 8x10, 9x12 or maybe even 11x14 at some point (basically whatever smaller canvas I have on hand at the time is what I'll use! LOL!).

The companion pieces for this painting will be a close up and personal view of the dog Beau (I'm going to use a different pose for the dog, but it's the same dog who I used in the larger painting) and I'm also going to create an up close and personal painting of the elk.

Companion pieces can be displayed along with the larger art, or be sold and displayed fine separately as well. Since I like doing up close and personal views of things, I decided this would be a way I could satisfy my yearning to create the full scene paintings as well as focus on the details of some of my favorite features within the painting.

Jai