My husband and I are working on a collaborative project. When he takes a photo that inspires me I do a painting of it. The last 2 peices that I blogged about were part of this project as well as 2 others that I blogged about in the past.  I thought you might like to see the photos next to the paintings. We’re going to present our idea to galleries and see what they think. It’s a cool idea because the photos are art in and of themselves and the drawings are art in and of themselves. When you see them side by side you see the beauty and uniqueness of each piece and each style of art. They compliment each other and together become a new and original form of art. So here you go. The photos next to the drawings. 

Last autumn my husband and I were enjoying a beautiful day in the warm sun and noticed a whole bunch of bumblebees dancing around on some flowers. Of course we had our cameras with us and this is one that he photographed. I decided yesterday to draw it and this is a close up of the finished piece.

I think that often we overlook some of the most beautiful of Heavenly Father’s creations simply because they are small. There’s so much to see on this great big planet that sometimes we forget to look down. A whole world of beauty exists just outside our normal range of vision.

The thing I love about doing fantasy art is the freedom it affords me to play with color. I can give someone blue hair and purple skin and it’s fine cuz it’s a fantasy painting. I also like to imagine the stories of characters that I’m creating. This one is called Daughter of the Sky. She’s a person who comes from a world where the sky and everything in it are considered sacred. She wears feathers in her hair out of respect for the creatures that live in the sky and she has a gust of wind tattooed on her face. I imagine that her people live on high cliffs in order to be as close to the sky as they can manage. It’s just fun to play with the imagination sometimes.
The other thing about color in a fantasy piece, or in any piece for that matter is that it can be used to help tell the story. In this one I tried to only use colors that you might see in the sky. I was playing around with the idea of the sky being so important in her world. I also wanted it to feel a little strange and even foreign because those things that are normally warm colors are cool and vice versa. Not only that, I just thought it would be fun to draw a purple and blue person.

I live in the mountains of Utah and one of the amazing things about winters here is that bald eagles come. Today my husband and I saw 7 eagles just sitting in a tree along the side of the road. We pulled over of course and he got some amazing photos. I’m even going to use one to do a painting.

There is something so majestic about bald eagles. They are so stoic and regall. You can see in their eyes that they know exactly who they are and that no one can touch them. They’re not afraid but it’s interesting because they won’t let you get too close. They seem to be very particular about who they will let into their world. Other eagles, elk, deer, but not people. They’re more skittish around humans than golden eagles are or even most hawks. I wonder why this is. I think their just more private. They want to be left alone. I can relate to that.