I'll get to the giveaway details at the end of the post, I think you'll want to take part in it and hope you'll read through the whole post and leave me some comments.
I started this butterfly on Saturday and tried to remember to take pictures at different stages. I only remembered a few times but you can see a bit of how my paintings take shape.
I forgot to take a picture of my starting sketch, but that's how I usually begin. At this point in the painting I just have things color blocked in. The shading that you see on the flowers is just because I didn't clean my brush and kept adding paint rotating between the purple and white.
At this point, I have most of the final design in place (I later went back and added some more leaves and a few more flowers to get a better balance.) I still haven't done much shading, I was just playing with placement and balance.
Here is the final painting. You can see I increased the depth of shading in all parts of the painting. The lighting on the photo is bad and I'm sorry for that. It's raining here today so I can't get a well-lit shot. I'm pretty happy with this painting. It is done on an 8" x 8" x 1-1/2" gallery wrap canvas. The flowers, leaves and stems continue onto all the sides of the painting. I love that look of continuing the subject onto the sides of the canvas.
I'd love to hear what you think about this piece so please leave me a comment. I'd love it if you would also follow this blog.
So, onto the giveaway. I'll be giving away an original painting-subject matter to be decided on later. This painting will be on the smallish side so that I can ship it at a minimal cost (I'm thinking it'll be an 8" x 10" or smaller!) What do you need to do to enter the giveaway? Follow this blog, and/or follow
Brandy's Fine Art on Facebook
and leave me a comment either here or there. I'll pick a winner (random drawing of all entries) on May 20th. This contest is not restricted to just the US, so all my out of country artist friends may enter!
Good luck and thanks for stopping by!