Paintings from 2022

 I didn't update this blog even once in 2022. Truth is, I did do some paintings, but I didn't think they were good enough to put here. I showed them on my main blog for my review of the year, and my grandmother said she liked all of them. So I'm posting them here now.

This is my granddad at his second wedding. I did it when I was grieving about his dementia. I felt that the end result wasn't a bad portrayal of a person, but it didn't capture the essence of my granddad. My grandma said she knew it was him instantly though.

In the photo I was referencing, my granddad has a genuine smile, but in this image he seems gaunt and his smile doesn't reach his eyes. My grandma suggested that since I was grieving, my feelings about his medical status might have come through on the canvas.

That could be true. Another factor could be that the image I was referencing looks like it might at one point have been black-and-white, but it faded into shades of brown. When I was painting the browned image, it looked like it was coming to life, so I sort of colourized it, but maybe I didn't quite pull it off.

The reference image was also a printed copy of a digital photo taken of the original picture, so it was a recreation of a recreation, and maybe things get lost in translation.

Only the image of the bear is new, but I really think it only looks good as a set. The elephant was done in 2020 and I uploaded a picture of it to this blog. I did a few iterations of the bear before this one. At first, I tried putting a full moon behind the tree, with the parts in front of the moon in black and the parts outside white for kind of an x-ray look, but I didn't like the end result. I also tried doing a harvest moon with light radiating from it, starting with a lighter blue that fades to dark at the edges, but I had a hard time getting the yellow of the harvest moon pale enough that it wouldn't translate as a sun. Also, the background has to be REALLY dark to justify a white silhouette. I played around with the idea of working moon craters into it and did some rough drafts but eventually decided against it.

In the end, I went pretty simple, aimed to contrast the elephant sunset. Both have the silhouette of an animal walking to the left toward a tree with a source of light above it, but one is a cold environment, the other is hot, and one is colourful, the other is black and white.

I did like this painting enough to display it, I'll say that much.

We managed to grow three sunflowers last year, and they had five flowers between them. I decided that I would paint the most vibrant one. I did a purple background to contrast the yellow bloom. It almost looks good, but kind of plain. Almost unfinished, but I didn't know what else to do with it.