New Political Art

I finally finished my several month project in wax of war protest art. It is a flag design that I titled Bush's Folly Flag. The blue star field says "George W. Bush's Folly in Iraq" at the top and "Over 4,000 U.S. Lives X'd Out." at the bottom. The flag has stripes consisting of the red and white background X's and there are blue X's between the stars. The overall work is 32 x 42 inches on 4 panels glued down to a firm platform. The current casualty count in Iraq is 4169 and the flag contains 4366 X's as I anticipate this being the 2008 total at least, maybe even the total by the election. Of course, I could also talk about the thousands and thousands of Iraqis killed but this project took several months total making the wax X's to get to the 4,000 plus. Now I need to find a venue to display the work. Any suggestions appreciated.

Wax Magnuson Park Version

This is a 6 inch by 6 inch wax painting of one of my Magunson Park scenes. I really love the texture the wax brings and need to continue to work on this texture in my oil paintings. Also, I lightly buff the wax works so they have a nice shine which makes the colors glow, something I only get in varnishing the oils.

New Flower Paintings

Finally working and taking a break from watching Olympics. Have 9 of my Magnuson Park series finished now. All are 8 x 10 oils. Here are a few not shown before.

New Drawings

Have been out of town competing in the National Masters Track and Field championships in Spokane, Wahington so only sketched for a few days. Posting some drawings from the life session today. Also started 5 more Magnuson Park paths and flowers paintings and should have these done by the weekend and will post some of these. Not sure if the result will be any major paintings. Also took some photos of Spokane Falls and will see if any are workable for paintings.

New figure drawings

I took a break from my figure drawing sessions lately while traveling and deciding what to do with them. I have been however sketching almost every day to work on developing my own style I like. I'm working toward "light" pencil touch that may be finally working. Here are some of today's results. These are 9 x 12 or 8x 11.

Fourth flower painting

This 8 x 10 oil is the last of my current series of flower paintings of Magnuson Park. I also did a couple of mirrors using the same designs. Usually for the craft items I don't use original paintings but do interpretations of impressionist work, especially Monet but these floral paintings had a similar feel so I did them in acrylics on the mirrors.

I'm also still working on a time consuming project in my political art realm and realize it will take about 60 hours total time for a 32 x 40 work that I'm doing in wax. Will it be worth it? The image is a US flag with small X's for each fallen US soldier in the Iraq war. I see it as a protest rather than a tribute as I believe the war was unjustified from the start. As a Vietnam era veteran, I could see a false justification from the start and didn't think the Vietnam folly would be repeated in my lifetime but I was wrong. The artwork will be my attempt to shout about the needlessly X'd out lives.

Magnuson Park Flowers continued

This is another 8 x 10 oil of the flower gardens at Seattle's Magnuson Park. I have one more in the works to finish up.