"Misty Mountains Majesty" - An Expressionist Painting

"Misty Mountains Majesty"     5" x 7"      Acrylic on Museum Quality Claybord

Not For Sale

PRINTS will be available soon from Fine Art America

Only 4 more days left for this challenge, meaning only 4 more days for you to follow my blog as a member and enter yourself to win one of my paintings from my "30 Paintings in 30 Days" Collection. Time is going way too fast for me right now!!!


Oh man, this is the third painting in a row that I've gotten in by the skin of my teeth, where as soon as it published the submission link for Leslie's Blog Post for Day 25 closed. This is craziness!!! But here it is, and I rather like how this one turned out. Actually, to be quite honest, I like it A LOT - it's one of my very favorites from this month! =) It's from our trip to Montana back in 2011, from which I have an extensive wealth of gorgeous photographs that not only need to be made into prints, but also that are just begging for me to paint them. I seriously can't wait to spend more and more time delving deeper and deeper into the possibilities of all the works I can create from just that trip alone. It's a bit overwhelming, but in a good way. =)

MY TIP FOR THE DAY
So this is actually a rather silly tip, but I'll put it up here none-the-less. It's the exact opposite of my last tip, in which I explained that you can indeed use a brush to blend pastels into beautifully soft gradations of color, and keep yourself clean in the process. So, for today, I would love to encourage you to do the opposite with your paints. Put your brush down, scoop up some paint on your finger, and revert back to your childhood for a moment and finger paint with me - trust me, you won't regret it! Your finger is a fantastic blending tool for just about anything, and you can use it to achieve beautiful, painterly strokes in both acrylic and oils, as well as lovely gradients where the foreground fades into the background in an almost seamless manner. And the very best part about it - it makes you feel like a kid again!!! =D I love the feeling I get when I blend with my fingers, for it's a feeling of continuous youth, where the possibilities are endless and where your imagination soars as it did when you were young. It's a wonderful feeling! So, if you're feeling bold and don't mind getting a little (or a lot!) of paint on your hands, I say you should give this a shot. =0)

I have found it especially useful to actually pick up a little extra paint with your fingertip and start your blending from there, so that you don't just pull up the existing paint from the surface you are working on. Then you softly blend it in, swirling your finger around gently on the surface, picking up colors from here and there and adding more paint with your fingertip as you start to run dry, which you will know is happening by the amount of friction created. Try to make sure that your paint is running smoothly, and not dragging and catching or you'll get what I call "skips" where the paint not only pulls up but also jumps around without adhering to certain places where you want it to. Or if you want that to happen, just go for it. That's the joy of creating isn't it - that the sky's the limit?!

Well, I wish you the best of luck with this and hope that if you try it, you would find the little kid inside of you, just waiting around hoping and hopping impatiently to be set free. Because when your inner-child has been set free and you can look at the world from a child's perspective, you will see things completely differently, with great joy and wonder, and you might even be able to find joy in situations you never could have possibly imagined before.

Even the Lord prompts us to be more like little children, to have faith like them for the kingdom of heaven belongs to those like them. It makes perfect sense if you think about it - children are so pure and unspoiled (though they are definitely not without sin just like we aren't, let me tell ya! I definitely have a two year old running wildly about my house every day... =/ Lol!). But the way that they see the world and how they can trust with great abundance and unwavering faith makes it so obvious why God would want us to be more like them. How great would it be to trust without holding anything back? To jump blindly into our Father's arms, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that He WILL catch us and protect us from harm. To be completely devoted to Him and love Him and others without reservation. Oh how I wish I could be like that! Someday when I see Him face to face I know that I won't be able to do anything but that, but oh how I wish that I could be that way now...

"Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked those who brought them. Jesus said, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.' " (Matthew 19:13-14)
 "He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: 'I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:2-4)