"First Light"

18" x 24" Acrylic on Canvas
Available for purchase
$250.00

I always start with my title. I know that many others go the opposite direction in this, but for me, this is what works best. I thought about it for a day or two and came up with the title...

"First Light"



Once I had the title, I began thinking about what elements I would like to add. 

The challenge called for something astronomical (stars, planets etc) and since I have always loved pictures of space, I immediately thought of the Milky Way as viewed from Earth, which I should add, I have never lived or even been somewhere where this is visible to the naked eye. I have however seen pictures of this thousands of times and I knew what it looked like. I also love the look of the full moon so I figured both should be included.

Initial sketch

The second thing was something that swims, and my first thought was sharks, but that seemed to aggressive for what I was seeing in my minds eye. I gave it some more thought and eventually settled on dolphins and/or whales.

The third thing was something that flies. Since my title was first light, I first thought of something that would glow, but then pondered the idea of the phoenix and its inherent concept of rebirth. This is what lead me to the concept of the moon as the egg the phoenix was breaking free of.

I had been contemplating the idea of painting Undulatus asperatus clouds (clouds that look like the underside of ocean waves) and this I thought could add a new dimension to the painting. I could have the dolphins and whales swimming in these clouds.

Now since I am mainly a landscape artist I knew I wanted elements of a landscape in it and a mountain could also be a choppy wave so those two concepts merged.

Playing off the light concept in my title is what lead me to the thought of the mountain ridge silhouette. I played with the idea of having a small boy or girl pointing up at the moon and phoenix but it seemed a bit too much. So I scrapped that idea entirely.

So now I had my pieces and all my ideas on a pad so it was time to sketch something up.

Spring Cherry Blossoms

"Spring Cherry Blossoms"

This is one of my newest works.

"Spring Cherry Blossoms"

11" x 14" Ink, Watercolor, and acrylic on 140 lb. watercolor paper

Available for purchase $175.00

Prints will be made available at a later date.

Painting is a Japanese style cherry blossom tree. It was first hand drawn with a bamboo brush in ink, and then colored in watercolor, the final step was a splatter / splashing technique done in very thin acrylic paints in various shades of pinks and white to get the desired effect.

Some loose petals were then painted again with a brush to show the free floating petals as they would appear in the real world, as cherry blossoms never stop shedding from the moment they bloom until all petals are gone.

I was really trying to capture the delicate form of a bonsai tree in this piece and I think it came out splendidly.

Tiger Lily Abstracted

Background roughed in

        This is the process I used to put this painting together. I started by roughing in the background parts. They didn't need to to be very finely detailed because they were all going to have an outline around them that will help define and to help hide the rough lines made in the painting process.

Lily blocked in

        In the second part I added the fine lines separating the backgrounds individual panels and used a fine brush to get the lines as straight as possible. I then blocked in the white background of the Lily itself that will act as a boarder around the flower and started adding the orange over it. This being over the white helps keep the vibrancy of the orange, but because of that, it needed multiple coats of the thin acrylic paint I was using.

Minor details applied

        In this third picture I started to add in the flowers details, like the color changes of the petals and the light orange stripe that goes right down the center of each and used some light glazing to bring more orange into the brown and light orange that I used in the petals of the flowers. I also used a slightly lighter glaze to bring in a little bit of highlights onto the section of each petal where they begin to fold over themselves.


        In the fourth image I Brightened the center stripes and add even more highlight detail to make the petals pop a little more from the background orange as I thought that they were falling into this area of being hard to identify.

More detailing and highlights

        In the final composition I added the last of the highlight details to each of the petals as well as adding in those fine little brownish/black spots that naturally occur in every Tiger Lily. I then added in the stigma by fine lining some bright yellow and then glazing over each with a very light green and another glaze of light orange to give each a little bit of depth and reflected light from the petals. The anthers at the end of each stigma were the last parts added. Starting with black, then brown, then lighter brown as a highlight and finished off with my signature to seal the deal.

     I hope you like it and look forward to reading anything you might have to say about it. Enjoy.

Final finished product "Tiger Lily Abstracted"        by         Joseph Finchum

"TIGER LILY ABSTRACTED"

24" x 18" Acrylic on Canvas Painting

Available for purchase $225

Prints will be made available at a later date.

This is a 16" x 12" Acrylic painting that is brand new.

Painting is a Tiger Lily on an complimentary abstracted background.