Latest Painting: Goldfinch

The Goldfinch painting I have been working on this week is all finished and is available for purchase.

Waiting, 2014. 11" x 14", Textured henna style acrylic animal painting on canvas. 

© Bala Thiagarajan, 2014 www.ArtbyBala.com

This is a painting I have re-worked from an earlier version I did when I first started playing with acrylics about 4 years back. I have always felt that the initial one lacked the sparkle, though I liked the composition and the background color. 

The first step in the re-work was to outline the new finch, showing its back with more colors. Then I worked on the branches, adding textured lines in burnt sienna and metallic copper. The buds were updated with a shade of fuchsia & deep rose, and with bright green. I added a lot of molding paste to the finch outline to build up the texture. I want to work more on this line and create more depth in later works. 

Next came the colors and the textures. I left part of the original finch in the painting and thought it would be nice to show the two males as competing (establishing territories) - I am a bio geek, what can I say! But the hubby insisted he needs to go & a couple of friends on facebook suggested the same. So away he flew, leaving the entire tree to the new comer :)

Ready to Fly

Fawkes, the Phoenix is one of my latest paintings, completed just 3 weeks back for my show at the Yahara Bay Distillery. And with this show, I reached another milestone in my art career - I have sold 100+ paintings since Feb 2012. It feels such an accomplishment for someone who is not trained as an artist. It was also great to see all my friends who have been encouraging me down this career path since day 1 at the reception. It was a great evening. The show runs for two more week at The Gallery at Yahara Bay.

 

Horned Owl

Its day-3 of Art Every Day Month and I am happy to be participating. Tonight I broke a long procrastination spell of not painting to finishing this owl in one sitting. I had the outline drawn about 3 weeks back and since then the canvas was sitting on the coffee table, waiting for progress.  And crocheting kept winning for my time and attention these past two weeks. Today, I was having some tough luck with crochet stuff and switched back to painting. I really needed to handle some paint today as I need to finish a commissioned piece that is already late and the reason for my procrastination. 

So, here is to my little henna-style owl, painted with acrylics on a 9x9" gallery wrapped canvas. I picked up a set of 4 of these on sale from Blick about 2-3 months back. The wol is textured with gold on a brown background with black textured lines. The sides are painted too. Now all he needs is a good home :)