Little Girl With Pink Umbrella

It seems like every portrait presents new challenges. In this one, it was the shoelaces. The little girl with the pink umbrella is now in middle school. She is even more beautiful now.

The Three Princesses, Seguin Parade Series

Seguin is renowned for it's grand Fourth of July parade, touted as the largest small-town Fourth of July in Texas. I love to walk the staging area as the parade participants are awaiting their turn to enter Austin Street and begin the long journey to the Coliseum parking lot. I have met so many interesting folks, and I wish I could take photos of them all. Not possible, but I do what I can….

Here are three lovely young women in their royal regalia. One sports a watermelon theme, promoting Luling, the watermelon capital. Another has a strawberry ensemble, which everyone knows must be for the city of Poteet, with it's famous Strawberry Festival. The third gal, the one in blue, features the bluebonnet, and let me tell you, folks in Texas are proud of our bluebonnets.

Anyhow, once I started painting this parade scene, I was inspired to paint several more. So, I will share several of them in the coming days, mixed in with more individual portraits.

Two Girls and an Open Bible

Here is the third in the "Open Bible" series. The two sisters have grown so much since I painted this. They are still just a cute, though. Also, they have had an addition to their family, so now, there are three little girls. It sure would be nice if I could find time to go back and do another painting of them, this time with all three cutie pies.

Chuck and His Dog

This is Chuck…

Yes, he only has three fingers on his right hand. Chuck spent most of his adult life as a professor of theology to graduate level students and as a missionary, teaching pastoral topics in third world countries. Once, when in Albania, he fell from a ladder and lost his little finger. He jokes about going to the Albanian hospital and hearing the ER doctor tell him they didn't have any novacaine to deaded the pain as they operated on his hand.

Chuck never liked this painting, though it hangs on his wall in his home. He always said he needed more color in his skin tones. I keep that in mind as I paint, now. He might be right, but I never went back and changed it.

Carlos is the first dog I ever painted. I think I got his "skin" color spot on.

Oh well, I look at this painting and try to see what I got right. You can't start out a Rembrandt, but you can keep striving to improve. That's what I tell myself.

Sunday's Best, One of My Open Bible Series

In the early days of developing my own voice and style, I painted people sitting with an open Bible. This is the first of the series. When I saw this darling girl running around church in her gorgeous Sunday dress, black tights and eyelet white shoes which were unbunckled, I instantly knew I wanted to catpture that look somehow.  

Kim and Jonathan Are Among the First

This is the second portrait I ever painted. After being stuck in the house for a while my super-cool, super-fast, super-undependable hunter green corvette was once again super-broke, I decided to go through some of the portrait sessions I had done in the past to see if I could find a photo I could use for painting practice.

This is the photo I found:

I took some artistic license with the painting….changed the background to include some blue sky, and painting Kim's face where it is more stylized than an exact rendering, but overall, for my second attempt at painting faces, I was pleased.

Somewhere along the line, I realized I love painting people!

Dear readers, please note that I did not begin to paint until well into my fifth decade of life. For those of you who feel like it is too late to embark on a new journey, I wish to say, "Balderdash." It is never too late. If you have a yearning to attempt something new, GO FOR IT! What's the worst that can happen?

Praying for Rex

First of all, let me assure you I am still alive and I am still working, even though I have turned my back on my pour little blog for so long. You may be forgiven for thinking that Wild About Texas was a thing of the past.

Nope.

The main excuse for no blog posts is that I have moved from being mainly a photographer artist to become more of a portrait painter artist. So, with so little photography to share, the blog moved to the bottom shelf of my work desk.

Now, I want to reconnect with my readers, so I am going to start sharing some of the art I have been working on.

Here, I introduce you to Rex and Katherine. They posed for me, one Sunday after the morning service, and I took their picture. That was quite a while ago, maybe three years? Well, Rex is now 90 years old and in terrible, terribel health. He needs all the prayers he can get as he deals with life-threatening respiratory issues. His sweet wife, whom he adores, as you can see in this portrait, stays at his side while he struggles for life.

I love them both, and pray for God's grace and mercy during this difficult time….your prayers would be appreciated also.