Two Trees...

...plus a couple of branches to go! And the best part? I get to paint in the last of the leaves today, wrapping the trees in their bright bits of color and suspending them in their respective spaces. More pics to follow...



- jb boyd

Five Trees...

...to go!


- jb boyd

With The Bulk Of Leaves Completed...

...I thought the hardest part behind me. Alas, I forgot that each branch requires two lines tapering towards a finite point, and so I could not put away the little brushes.


Each section is also a maze of lines requiring one to be painted on top of the next, creating depth on one hand, but also creating the puzzle of how not to drag an errant finger or palm through a wet branch while painting another.


So I continue to plod along, but with each area completed and each night at the easel (the detail above being one of both), the painting steadfastly moves towards its completion.


- jb boyd

Delinquent Post

Unfortunately, my hard drive crashed and I have been busy getting it back up to date. But in that process I found a few photos that were meant for posting, but got ignored.


This is a detail from the bottom-center-right of the painting.


This is the same section, after a solid day's work.


Once again, the same section after three days in the studio. The pace is grueling, but at least the leaves are finally almost filled in.


And here they are filled in. Now I am off to paint branches!

- jb boyd

Once Again...

...I go back to painting leaves. The last of the background trees was finished tonight (pictured below in the center above a green piece of tape on the frame), and I have one more big push of leaves, excepting the fun final last few hundred.


- jb boyd

Print Sale...

There are three reasons I am going Crazy Eddie for the month of April! First, an update to my website www.jbboyd.net has made navigating my prints wicked easy. Thank you, Ian Jones! Second, doing taxes forced me to go over the books and I realized that I am really close to the threshold I set for raising my print pricing. Finally, I have to pay the tax man! So, an extra large will be the price of a large print ($600), a large will be price of medium ($400), a medium will be the price of a small ($200), or you can purchase two small prints for the price of one ($200). 

And because money can be a drag and not all of us get refunds, you can pick your payment plan! Divide the total up into as many monthly payments as you can comfortably afford and once you have paid off half, your prints will go into production. The turn around time is two months from the date of order to delivery. But you have to order in this month, after that my prices will go up, and yes, with prices this low, I must be... INSANE!

The Fun of Blogging...

...comes in when you get to compress a bit of work into one post.


Here the painting is still a jumble of unfinished lines, but each tree dropped in makes another become more defined.


After looking at an insurmountable mess for so long, I only have five more trees to fill in this round, then one last big round of leaves.


The puzzle is coming together!

- jb boyd

Delinquent Blogging...

...I have been suffering from of late. Apologies to my few faithful readers; I have no defense except to say that it is hard to come up with interesting things to say about leaves. Now that I've had a month plus to think about it, I still got nothing.


But plodding forth undaunted, the above image is from my last post, just to get back up to speed. Typically I paint one size of leaves in a section, but here there are little ones in the background and larger (and mostly red-ish because they are in shadow) leaves of a more foreground level. By building like this the tree gets wrapped, and everything begins to look a bit more three dimensional.


Stay tuned for more riveting news on leaves...


- jb boyd

There's A Light...

...at the end of the tunnel. But I am not on a bullet train or even the Model A in "A River Runs Through It." Most often, it feels like I am manically pumping one of those hand carts in an old silent film ahead of a steaming locomotive and getting nowhere fast.


But there is a light as the background trees start to fill in. The detail below is roughly 15 x 20" and located in the right center of the painting. The bright white dots (again in the right center) are leaves that I missed on the first pass of yellow.


So now I get to paint, you guessed it, more leaves!

- j.b. boyd

In case you were wondering...

...this is what my next show will look like:


Of course, these are only the foundation for my September show, but seven months will go by faster than I would like, and it will take a couple of weeks at least to fully prepare these panels (drying time on oil grounds is a test of even my patience). But in the meantime I get to look at the shapes and start to imagine what will fill them. The boxes in the upper left will be studies for the three large pieces in the bottom of the frame. And because I will be painting them in the mountains of Wyoming, it would be a safe bet to expect a healthy amount of snow, rock, and trees. Speaking of, it is time to paint some:


-jb.