Nursery paintings

My husbands friend came over to watch football, and asked if I wanted my first paying customer....I later decided, that with an upcoming baby shower, how nice it would be to paint them a picture as a shower gift rather then purchasing them a gift off of their registry. I always love a handmade gift. So with it in mind (that he was going to be paying me to paint them a picture) he thought he would send me some pictures of things they liked, and sent me a picture of basically this painting. It was on wood, and of course different as its a different person doing the job. So this is mostly a copy of someone else's idea, but the colors were right for their room, so I couldn't think of changing it any other way. Their room is blue and tan, so a red background was definately needed. Little Fireman, and then personalizing it - and really what other then a fireman hat could you personalize?? (I debated about what number to put on the hat, since they had no favorite number. Ideally, I'd want to put the number for the day he is born, but since that hasn't happened yet - there's not telling what day that will be, my husband - said to put '09 for the year - I wanted to do 11 since he is due in November - you can tell who won!)

Now, because I was doing a painting as a gift for that shower, and two of the moms-to-be knew eachother, I thought, well I should probably paint them both pictures. And then my other friend who is also having a baby is actually a close friend, so I decided to do paintings for them all - even though all three showers were in an 8 day period.

So the next set of nursery room paintings are based off of this nursery room bedding. I wanted to do something that didn't match it exactly, but not knowing what color she was painting her room, I decided it would be best to just paint the pictures to go with the bedding exactly. So the next four photos go together.

The next set of paintings are for a boy's monkey room, the bedding incorporated, greens, browns and blues. I personally thought the monkey in the bedding was too cutesy, so I decided against painting the monkey from the bedding. I researched different monkey images and monkey paintings, and blended a couple of styles together.

The background of this painting, is a copy of a another painting/print - with the only real difference being the color of the vines - It need some blue. The monkey image in the original print I was borrowing from had a lifelike looking monkey, and I had found a photo of a real mother monkey kissing her baby monkey on the head, and thought it would be cute to make a cartoon version of the two for this painting.

This painting, I also borrowed from another print, of a monkey looking up at a banana hanging from a string. The background colors are different, and the monkey is a little different too - of course I wanted these two pictures to work together as they were going in the same room. And since the other painting had only a little amount of blue, I thought it would be nice to make the background of this one blue and add the leaves as well.

After painting the above painting, I was looking at the plain blue bottom, and I thought, how cute would it be to paint his tongue sticking out for daring to look at the bottom. I think it gives a cute and humorous touch.

My landscapes

These are still in progress...

This was my very first painting, so it still needs some work, but not bad work for a first painting done in less then 48hrs. I did this one for my sister's Christmas present - so I still have time to modify. She loves dolphins, and I loved the clouds from the original photo.


This painting went through several renditions before turning into this painting. I had originally tried to make an attempt at abstract art, but I think I failed. This is a painting for my own house, and I wanted to pull in the red from our cabinets, and the black and white from our furniture. I tried boxes and stripes and various colors. Then one night, I had this vision of a red sky, with trees and a full moon and this is what I ended up with. What I love about this picture, and you can't see it from the photo - is it has great texture, but also, there are hints of other vibrant colors peaking through the red, even stripes (which you can see in the lower left corner of the picture).

This painting, still needs a little tweaking. The photo of tulips I had found were very long and slim pointy petaled, and I just loved the flower. But after painting them, the shape of the petals don't look very natural. But - I love the background on this painting, I used two different shades of red and brushed them on at the same time - it gave a very nice effect.

This is a painting I did for my mom's birthday. Its of Haystack Rock, I normally wouldn't add people to a painting- aside from the portrait, but I had to add Grammy, Pops, Caden and their dog. Whats picture if you can't say- thats me in the painting, and my grandson, and my dog, and my hubby, and my daughter painted this for me...

I was looking for pictures of storms and trees, and came across a photo of this tree, with these great big black clouds, and just a hint of light in the sky. I am still working on this one, as the white seems to lay over the black clouds in some areas, and I want you to be able to see that the clouds are actually black rather then the sky is black with white clouds. I love the colors, but its still a work in progress as well.

My portrait paintings

This first one is my very first portrait painting, second painting all together. Its my son, 7mo old at the beach. In the actual photo, he was in my front pouch so I had to change the background a bit. This painting has been editted since, but being that its at my parent's house now, I need to get the most recent version - only the background has been slightly adjusted.
This picture, is my son lying in the grass in our backyard. I still have a little bit of work left on this one, his lips and I'd like to add a little more depth to the grass.

This is a picture of my mother-in-laws three grandkids. I still have some touch ups to do on this one - Both Caden and Michelle's cheeks just need a little bit of tweaking, but you get the general idea of it. Even considering, it captures them pretty well. For this one I took three separate photos of the kids, and then set them up in the painting to look like they were actually sitting together. I changed their backround and shirt colors to go with the red-white-and-blue theme my mother-in-law decorates with.

This next one, I wanted to make a painting of Caden for my own house, but kindof couldn't see having a life-like looking painting of him in my own home. So I decided I wanted to do a profile picture of him, but incorporated different colors and give it depth of colors. So this is what I came up with.

This one is for my brother's Christmas present. I honestly didn't know what to paint him for Christmas. I know he loves Anime - but what kindof Anime picture do you paint??? What anime does he like??? And then I thought, I could make him his own anime character, and since he is in the military, I thought I'd do a military anime. Other then the accidental two tones of skin, this one is done. But I have til Christmas to modify so leaving it as is for now.