In this photo, you can see that I have cleaned up the image and put in the shadows. I also worked on the highlights. Now, to start the butterflies...

Here is Invocation 1. I masked off the butterflies and splattered the background to look like granite. The problem I encountered was that I lost all of the information I had put in first. The pentagram was painted three times. What a waste of time. Nest time I will draw the butterflies and then mask them off and splatter...leaving the pentagram and symbols until last. I can draw on top of the egg tempera!!! Why do I always forget that?

OK, here is what they look like today-

New Paintings

Here is the drawing for the new series of paintings. I am calling them "invocations". This is stage one of the process and it is carbon on traditional gesso on wood panel. It's a very difficult surface to do a drawing on because it smudges. Here it is...

Old Photos

Swimming, Plantation Key

First Halloween

Bath Time

Here Is Eve

Here is the final Eve painting. My plan is for Adam and Eve to be looking away from each other. I recently placed an order for more prints. My goal is to have at least 25 of every bird and didn't realize that my bill was pretty close to $2,000! With these last two birds, the bill will be even higher. I will now have to get busy and sell some of these...

Adam

Well, I finished the painting of Adam first. The painting of Eve will be done in the next few days. I am sort of distracted with trying to get all of my "stuff" organized at the moment and that is why I haven't finished both paintings...yet. I am hoping that the real gold paint reads as gold instead of brown. I am contemplating changing all of the gold in Adobe Photoshop into a gold color (instead of brown, which is what happens when you scan real gold) when I work on designing my book. At the moment, I am trying to decide whether or not to turn the birds into a book or try to find a publisher to do it for me. Of course the difference is that one pays more and doesn't cost me up front. Look for Eve in the next few days.

Eve

So, here is the Eve painting with the background done. I finished the drawing and then masked everything off (except the background) and sprayed it in using an airbrush. I did the Adam painting at the same time so the backgrounds would match. I then started painting the garden of Eden. This is still an early stage...