I wanted to show you this last week, but I couldn’t. I wanted to have a chance for Laura to receive her copy before I showed anyone. Now that she has hers, I can show you mine.
This, my original painting from Laura’s photo, is one of my favorite paintings. Within just a few weeks of completing this piece and making it available, the original painting was marked sold and I wondered if I would ever be able to have a copy of it even for myself.
At 18″ x 36″, the painting is massive and took nearly 10 scans at 300dpi, painstakingly pieced together over hours of waiting and praying that my virtual memory wouldn’t crash my system. My critical eye saw areas that needed smoothing, better blending, balance, and when something didn’t match up quite right, I scanned that area again.
It took me several hours, and several Tylenol. The end result is a file. One single huge 90MB file records every little brushstroke that I invested in this Heron.
Finally, I was able to have it put it to print. On canvas, even. Gallery wrapped canvas. It’s not quite the original size, at 15″ x 30″ it’s a few inches smaller than the original painting – but it’s wonderful, and I’m so pleased with how it turned out. It’s not as crystal clear as my painting (of course I’m very critical, it is my work I’m looking at), but it is good. It’s better than any of those other joe-shmoe prints at Target, the quality and durability FAR surpasses any of those.
Of course I had to have one for myself, and it is only right that since Laura permitted me to use her amazing photograph as reference material, she get a print as well.
Now he’s a focal point, of course, right beside the piano, you see him when you walk from the kitchen into the living room and family room. When I pull Chickeymonkey’s hair back in the morning she has two places to turn her head toward while I do her hair. First her eyes are on Jesus (a framed print), and then she turns to the Heron.
“Look at the Heron”, I tell her. And we both do. He rocks.
(I have not decided yet whether this print will be made available to the public.)
