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Take Heart

January 26th, 2012

Tuesday evening I had absolutely nothing ready for my demo at Michael’s. Since I had no time to prepare, and since I had quite enjoyed the experience of painting the dove on my ginormous heart for St. Jude’s, I decided to do it again – except this time I chose to do it as one of my Over the Under-Schmeering (OTUS) paintings. Luckily, I had an 8″x10″ ‘pre-schmeered’ canvas ready to go, because I had done the unthinkable and waited until the last minute to grab my stuff and run for the door.

This was the first time I worked on one of my OTUS paintings in public. It was a bit of a strange experience, because people didn’t seem to ‘get’ what I was doing until I was almost finished. I think it was too ‘abstract’, especially in the early stages, for the regular Michael’s customers and associates. We’ll have to see if I decide to do another publicly in the future.

Anyway, here is what I came up with…

Take Heart – 8″x10″ – Acrylic on canvas – Completed 1/24/12

©2012, Don Michael, Jr.

When I got home from the demo and checked the comments on my blog I found that my friend, Nicki Ault, had asked me to show a closer shot of the dove I painted on Hope, my ginormous heart. So, I thought it would be fun to show both the OTUS version and the heart version in the same post…

Hope –  dove detail – ©2012, Don Michael, Jr.

Most of my day today was spent with my good friend, CJ Boisvert, taking lots of photos of Hope from several different directions and angles. (The dove detail is one of those photos.) While shooting we decided that we needed to get me in front of the heart for the purposes of documentation and perspective. Now you can get an idea of the size of the heart…

Hope and the artist – ©2012, Don Michael, Jr.

Thanks for the great photos, CJ.

Tomorrow will be spent applying the final varnish. I’m not looking forward to the fumes, but I can’t wait to see how the varnish will make this thing ‘pop’ even more. Oh, this stuff is fun!

Happy Creating!