Mural is completed........

We finished this, my wife and I on Monday.  Today it is being hung and we will walk away from a huge project.  We are war weary but we are pleased with the results.

Getting closer to the end........

Miles to go before I sleep.........

Another peek......

Here is a sneak peek of the restored 1906 depot here in Woodward.  The trolley system extended to downtown Des Moines and it is written that they had a trolley make seven trips a day.  I have posted parts of the mural on the net before but really don't want to show you much until it gets in a more completed state.

Here is a early preliminary view of it as we have added so many things since this was photographed. The can and box are there to give us an idea of what things should look like if we painting things into the foreground.  It will be a mural on the inside of the building and it is to appear that you are looking out to see the trolley is waiting for yourself to get on board.
We did change the windows from the sketch below as both of the trolley's had different window treatments.  We have a photo of the windows with the curved portion above the two windows and the trolley is sitting at the depot in Woodward.   More to come.

A sneak peek.....

My wife and I are painting a six foot square mural to be placed in the old interurban train depot here in town. Needless to say, it is overwhelming and we have painted off the first sketch and redrawn it back on again. The rough look of what I am doing with the train wheels is just exactly that, rough sketch. I had to find how all these parts look and I really need to know how they work before I can draw. I even looked at my toy train set to see how the depicted them. The springs drawn above do look like sausages but I was just quickly placing shapes in to get a feel for size. We lay this board down on our counter and work on it and sometimes we stand it up.  Della is doing the sky right now with it standing up.  I am going to buy carpenter's tape before I move on with the trolley paint.   We have a lot of various historic items to place on the dock in front of the trolley and that will be the last of our painting.

We are moving along slowly because of the size of it. My wife and I have painted many murals for our church promotions for missions so we work well together on it.  We both know that paintings just develop and the quality comes from layers of paint and value study. We have more than this painted but it still is in the kindergarten stage so I will not show it to you. When I quit cringing when I look at it I know we are getting closer to the real thing.

Update today, June 9th, we just painted this over with gesso and we are going to start again for the third time.  I found a resource photo that is closer to the photo of a trolley in our Woodward Centennial Book.  It is a classy looking thing and I can see details of the actual trolley. I don't have to guess what is where and how big that it all is. Redrawing it on the board this evening.

Minnestoa Shoreline on Lake Superior......

This is an acrylic painting that was done while sitting on the shore of Lake Superior.  My wife and I use to sit for hours at a time painting that wonderful North Shore.

1986 Woodduck .............

When my wife and I married in 1984, I knew she was a non stop painter.  Mostly she painted portraits at that time.  As a school teacher, I had my summer break each year and by the second summer, she had me painting along with her, in Minnesota.  We lived in a very small rustic cabin along Lake Pokegama, and the boys were probably 7 and 10 in age.  They were out and about and we sat at drawing tables and worked four or five hours day.  We sat in front of a bank of windows overlooking the lake rain or shine.

I painted this Woodduck in oils, just to see if I could pull it off. I had never painted any birds before this one.  I had found a small picture, 4 by 6 inches, to look at from an old National Geographic and I just started painting.  It is in actual size a 16 by 20 inch painting.  I never sold it and I am glad that I didn't. It is one of my favorite ducks and favorite paintings.  Some people get confused about the one leg but it was resting it's other flipper, tucking it under it's wing.

At the time I painted it, an artist, Robert Bateman, a very famous  Canadian wildlife artist, was doing so well in the print business.  He was painting so many different animals and birds. He was an inspiration to me and the background and foreground with plants, remind me that I was studying his  work, as they look like what you see in his paintings. He is 20 years older than be and is still painting today.

I haven't touched a paint brush for a few weeks now but I will be working on a mural with my wife soon as we want to get that accomplished by the end of May.

A painting from my past.

I am very frustrated for not being free enough to get any painting done. I was finishing one to two paintings a week for awhile then it all stopped.
This is a painting I created one summer while I was in Minnesota.  It is acrylic on a smooth panel.  I always thought I would return to it and place an animal in the front right side.  As I have lived with it I really like the vacant feeling and the style of the whole painting.  It is so clean and simple in style and I tend to go to opposite extreme with too much detail. Maybe a chicken or a sheep would work there, huh?
I will continue to share other paintings of my past until I get myself back on  a painting on canvas schedule instead of painting  bathroom walls.

Maine along the Atlantic coast.......

I have not completed this. I wanted to show you where it is at in it's progression. I need to do more painting  until I can look at and not find anything else to correct.  I may let it sit for a few weeks and then return to it.
I have had a lot of distractions that have kept me from painting.  I really want to sit down and do something spontaneously and I have not been able to do that either.  My retirement means I should have moved away from the area as to be able to go into seclusion. Thanks for stopping in and following my creative journey.