Bella's Full Height Chart

Here are all 5 pieces assembled together to demonstrate the layout of the piece on Isabella's wall. The colour of the water is consistent from central piece to the satellite pieces, it's just all the pieces were photographed at different times of day in different rooms over the last week.

This will certainly be my last completed piece for 2009, I'm almost done my second player from my Original 6 Hockey series, but he's still a ways off and I wouldn't be too surprised if I do another painting or two before I get back to him. Thanks for checking the Blog out and leaving comments, I wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2010. ~M

Depth Chart

This is the central piece to the 5 paintings I've been working on for Isabella. As you can see it's a height chart for her wall, and seeing how the little monster is growing like a weed, this may only work for her for a few more months.

I had the four colours of blue for the different depths of water, and each of the satellite pieces is painted in one of the four colours. The painting is 30" X 10" and it took about 24 hours in total. I really like how the Sea Turtle turned out, and I really like the expressions on the Shark and the Fish at the bottom.

Pufferbelly

This is the last of the satellite paintings around the larger piece. I chose the name Pufferbelly as a nod to a song my Mom always sang us. In the song pufferbelly refers to steam trains "see the little puffer bellies all in a row", but I thought the name fit for a blowfish. I tried spraying paint with a toothbrush for the first time to try and achieve the speckled texture. It worked I guess, but my thumb got all paint-covered and I had to run to the sink to wash it on a few occasions. The painting is 6" X 6" and it took about 5 hours.

8 Hugs

This is my favorite sea creature I've painted so far, he turned out well and the dry brush highlights and purples really made him look slick and wet and 3D. This piece took a solid 7 hours, and it is 6" X 6". I find I'm not too comfortable painting at this small size as I feel very clumsy with even a small brush.

Nite Lite

I always love seeing pictures of new deep sea fish. They look positively alien with their own light sources and nasty mouths full of crooked teeth. I can only imagine Noah's reaction when he hauled a pair of these fish up into the Ark's saltwater tank (Noah would have understood that a downpour containing enough freshwater to flood the entire Earth would have adversely effected the salinity of the oceans enough to kill almost all life adapted to the briny deep).

This piece is 6" X 6" and it took 4-5 hours.

Isabellyfish

Happy Holidays.

This piece is the first of 5 paintings that will all go together as an underwater scene for Isabella's room. There will be one central canvas with 4 little canvases around it (if a Triptych is 3 paintings will this be a Quintych?... spell check says no!).

I will post these over the next few days in the order I've painted them. Jellyfish first, and I'm hoping to have all 5 pieces hanging in Bella's room before the New Year. The canvas is only 6" X 6" my smallest painting yet. I was hoping that the small size and relatively independent nature of the pieces would lend themselves to me being able to start and finish a painting in one or two sittings, but that proved a little too optimistic. This one probably only took 4-5 hours.