My, it has been awhile since my last post. Not that I haven’t been working away, but my internet activity has dropped off a bit, which isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes it just feels healthy and head-clearing to stay logged off. Wouldn’t you agree?

Also, I had to travel back to the United States to see family in August. We spent most of our time in New Mexico, but visited Ohio and Kansas, as well. The most memorable moment was when I got up early one morning (jet lag) and took a little walk by myself at the Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque. I got to see not one, but six hot air balloons taking off over the city. It looked as if Albuquerque was blowing bubbles.

Speaking of brightly colored things that make me happy, I was fortunate to come home to a large commission in progress. My patron wanted a large painting of marbles on a blue background, about 30 by 30 inches in size.

I must confess I was daunted by the task at first. I’m an old hat at painting marbles, but I’ve never painted so many and on such a large-scale before. It has also been a while since I tackled something that large. Since I’ve had to relocate twice in the past two years, once overseas, I’ve naturally moved toward making smaller work. The frequent moves of a military dependent are simply not conducive to creating (and storing and transporting) large paintings.

Just a reminder to anyone considering how steeply prices sometimes climb when you look at larger painting versus very small pieces of artwork, the compositional difficulties and question of light and color increase exponentially the larger the area of the canvas. I had forgotten that. It took many more hours to finish this piece than I expected!

Still, it was a fun challenge for me and I was very happy with the results when I finished. Here are some photos showing the evolution of this commission piece.

And here, are some pictures of the finished product:

If you have an idea for a commission piece on any scale, please convo me personally through my Etsy shop.