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Saturday  was a beautiful day for the North Richland Hills Community Garden Ribbon Cutting, officially opening up the “Common Ground” Garden.  There were so many people there, from Mayor Trevino to the kids from Holiday Heights, singing some great garden songs. The garden looked really fantastic, all the plots are planted and growing beautifully. The new rain barrel system on the North side will be up and running before long and the rain barrels were painted so creatively by Victoria Barth, they really add fun and color to the garden. The painting I did for the garden  “Common Grounds” was unveiled in it’s new home. It was framed and mounted on the east side of the garden shed and I must say it looked spectacular. It was so much fun face painting and visiting with all the folks that came out for the celebration.

Read more about the ribbon cutting here:

Our Everyday Earth

I actually see the end in site on the Common Ground painting. I have been working on it some over the holidays and I have color on almost the whole canvas. Now the real detail work begins. I will go through each section, finishing all parts, completing all the details that make the painting look more realistic. I actually took a few videos of the process and put clips from those videos together, creating the following video. Wow, do I ever have a new appreciation for those folks that make films for a living. As you watch it, keep in mind this is only my third video, there are a few blurry clips and the music probably only appeals to me, but I hope you enjoy the journey, I’ve created. I’ve also included a few photos of the progress on this ever evolving creation. I’ve put in the sky back ground, I may darken it up a bit as the painting continues to evolve. Would love to hear comments, critiques, or what you think, about the painting, community gardens or whatever strikes your fancy.

Common Ground Painting

Work is progressing on the Common Ground Painting. Working on this piece, allows me to move around the painting depending on what I feel like dabbling in on that particular day. If it feels like a sunflower day, I work on the sunflowers, a tomato day; then I’m knee deep in red; I never get tired of working on this piece, there are so many different components. There are some of my pieces like “Reaching for the Sun”, that have so many leaves, you think you will never finish them all. However, painting this piece, with the large flowers and vegetables, provides it’s own unique set of challenges. The vegetables in particular, being much larger than life, have expanses of the same color, the challenge is making them look three dimensional and not flat. At this point many of the items look very flat, the carrots, onions and tomatoes, for example. Those items only have their first coats, there is no depth or detail to them now. I will begin to add more detail, bringing them to life as the painting progresses. I have started working on some of the bell peppers and the large sunflowers, adding more detail and dimension to them, but I’m a long way from completing this journey, but the path is so much fun. Enjoy the progress, and I’ll get back to my journey.

Putting on the paint

Close Up of Gulf Frittilary Butterfly

Common Ground sketch

This Saturday is a really big day at the Common Grounds Community Garden in North Richland Hills. Together with the Home Depot Team and many volunteers, the garden build out will take place. The weather is suppose to be great and the excitement is rising! I am continuing to move forward on the Art piece for the garden. I did another sketch with some color added to get the composition and color combinations just right and then I started working on the hard board canvas. Although I will tweak it as I go, I am really loving the look so far. This is my first time painting on the hard board and let me just say, “I love it”. The smooth finish from the primer makes the surface excellent for the detail work I love to do. The paints flow so easily; I can’t say enough about this great surface to paint on. Here is the new sketch and the beginning work on the hard board.

Close up

Common Ground the beginning