June Painting Notes

My daughter posted a picture of her canoe and I thought it would make a great painting to give her for her birthday. I'm in the process of glazing in the shadows and working on getting the color right on the trees. I have to redo the water on the lower left and reglazing the reflection. What do you think? Maybe I'm glazing and using too much oil!!!

My art instructor loves events of the Civil war. He makes statues of both Confederate and Union Soldiers and gives us a history lesson on the era while we paint. During the last session he became obsessed with painting Abraham Lincoln.  A town in CT had a Lincoln painting stolen that was painted by John Denison Crocker in honor of Lincoln's March 1860 visit to Norwich. The frame stood empty in City Hall until the town decided to have an art contest to see if the painting of Lincoln could be reproduced by a lucky artists to again hang in City Hall. The grand prize was $8,000. Marc entered the contest and was one of the 10 or so lucky artists who made it to the finals, but through some controvesy and disappointment of many artist who submitted their paintings in anticipation, didn't win.

To get a more compelling story you can read about this at  Artist's re-creation of Lincoln painting earns $8,000 prize . Any way...point being Marc started painting a collection of other Civil War soldiers and Lincoln.

                                 Marc's copy of John Denison Crockers 1860 painting of Lincoln

                                  Marc's traditional portrait of Lincoln painted after the Crocker one above

Marc working on Geneal Sherman

Oh and this is so cute! A new student on her third week who never "painted" before wanted to paint a pug! I think she is closet painter!! What a great job she did! She only paints in acyrlic and can't be swayed yet to paint with oil. We'll see if we can pursuade her before the end of the term!!