"LOST in Transition"

18" x 24" Acrylic on Canvas
Available for purchase
$350.00

 
This painting was a challenge indeed. Not just because it is not the painting I started out making, but because I was trying to film it and kept having tech problems as well.

All was going pretty well until the first glitch hit and my phone stopped recording. I lost a lot of the sky work to the gremlins and came back to it with this idea that I was done with the sky when I wasn't.

I then drew on my tree and afterwards realized I hadn't finished my sky to a low enough point. Originally It was just going to be a big green tree against a blue sky, but I had a horizon line to fill in and need the midground trees and bushes to fill that space. Having done that, I couldn't just drop a big green tree in front of them, even if it was good, it would be lost from a distance and we can't have that now, can we?

So this is where I decided to do the color shifting tree and abandon the idea of the summer green tree. Now I know that a tree with this much shift is near impossible, but I think that is what makes it striking. You might see greens and yellows or yellows and red / oranges, but you wouldn't often see all of them together and this is what I wanted to create.

All in all it is what it is and I had a blast doing it. I think it came out great and I hope to be making something new as soon as possible.

There is also a video on YouTube.

 "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.

"Autumn Twins"

"Autumn Twins"

TIME LAPSE VIDEO

     This is a timelapse video I made of the crafting of this painting. I hope you enjoy seeing the process I use in my paintings and can appreciate the time it takes to make something like this.

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.

A new Website appears.

I have been building a new website for my artwork and such,

Working on getting some stuff sorted out, but it is coming along nicely.

Hope you all find it enjoyable.

http://artofjosephfinchum.weebly.com/

The Holidays are coming

The Holidays are coming

Wouldn't a piece of art make a great gift for someone you love this holiday season.

   Every year we all struggle with trying to find gifts you really think the recipient will truly appreciate. We go out of our way to hunt down and search for that perfect gift. Is there a perfect gift? Maybe, but I don't think its that easy to find. Why go through all that trouble when satisfaction could be just a click away.

     How about art? Art can become very personal to the person that receives it. Everytime they glimpse it, it can remind us of emotional context and bring the giver directly to mind. The good feelings they got when the received the gift and all the warm memories they have with you. Art is an excellent gift for anyone.

Art is the only gift you can give someone that is purely from your point of view. Don't give them art they want. Give them art you want and they will like it much better and it will be like giving them a piece of you.

So this holiday season, forget the stale old ties and clothing they might not wear, or knick knacks they will return days later, and get someone a beautifully crafted piece of fine art that will brighten all their days, their home and most of all, enrich their whole lives.

Art Prints available at:

http://dedjezter.deviantart.com/

"Twisted Moonrise"

"Making a Splash"

"Floating through
the Seasons"

"Falling Water"

"Above the Clouds"

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.

Floating Through the Seasons - Time Lapse Video

"FLOATING THROUGH THE SEASONS"

TIME LAPSE VIDEO

     This is a timelapse video I made of the crafting of this painting. I hope you enjoy seeing the process I use in my paintings and can appreciate the time it takes to make something like this.

Open in YouTube from inside video for best Quality

"Floating Through the Seasons"

Floating through the Seasons    by    Joseph Finchum

"FLOATING THROUGH THE SEASONS"

2 X 24" x 18" Acrylic on Canvas Painting

Available for purchase $500

Prints will be made available at a later date.

This is a 2 x 24" x 18" Acrylic painting that is brand new. 

Painting is a Surreal Landscape that depicts floating islands as they travel aimlessly through the seasonal changes, starting and ending with warm Autumn colors.

I will be adding a Timelapse video of me making this painting tomorrow or the next day so stay tuned for that as well.

All comments are welcome, any opinion appreciated.



Don't forget that you can SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/dedjezter100

Follow me on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter
https://www.facebook.com/ArtofJosephFinchum
https://plus.google.com/+DedJezter
https://twitter.com/Dedjezter

As well as seeing my works on Instagram
http://instagram.com/theartofjosephfinchum

Work in Progress

Floating through the Seasons

Work in Progress

     So I have been working on this new painting for about a week now and was wondering what people might think of the progress so far. It is slowly coming together.

      I have had a small set back as I was trying to make a timelapse video of the work, and the camera I was using decided to crap out on me and I lost the last 2 hours of work that I filmed. It was all work done after this point (pictured) but mostly detail work. I am hoping to use my phone to continue this, but it will take some time to get it all worked out.

      As of right now I have figured out how to set most of it up, Deleted a mass amount of stuff from my phone to make room for footage and am eagerly looking forward to getting back to it.

      Hope you like what you see so far and any comments or questions or suggestions are always welcomed.






Don't forget to Share, +1, Like, subscribe to my email newsletter, and YouTube channel

https://www.facebook.com/ArtofJosephFinchum
google.com/+DedJezter
https://twitter.com/Dedjezter
http://instagram.com/theartofjosephfinchum

• www.linkedin.com/pub/joseph-j-finchum/3a/152/481/

Visiting the Past Again

This is another look back in time for me. This painting is another one of my first works. It is titled "Lady with Ribbons" or just "Ribbons."

Recreated in Photoshop and Illustrator

Original Painting done 21 years ago

I did this painting just after getting out of high school in 1993. It was one of the first paintings I ever did that was not just a typical landscape and had elements of the abstract and symbolism involved in it. Time unfortunately, has not been fair to this piece. The whites have all faded into a dull yellow and mix into the yellow of the stained glass effect I was going for. It has bad line work and some connections of the ribbons do not line up to the counterparts on the other side. It was painted using liquid watercolor paints, used like acrylics, since I had no knowledge of what I was really doing. I am a self-taught artist and this was one of those times when I was trying to get the feel of paints and how they worked. I didn't know that these paints were even meant to be used with water or that they would not stand the test of time.

In this painting, I was trying to get a feeling of movement and energy. To show that I could use my imagination to bring something to life that was only in my head. To me it represents my first real success with painting as well as my first real defeat in painting. I say it is a defeat only because my mother has always been my biggest fan and she didn't like this one. She just didn't feel it so to speak.

 It is to me, representative of my life at the time that I did it. I was trying to go with the flow and the ribbons were meant to represent that. They flow in and out while twisting around the figure in a tornado of mixed emotions. The woman represents the fact that all my friends were out there with their significant others while I wasn't. Being a bit on the antisocial side I have trouble with relationships and found myself feeling alone a lot of the time. The stained glass effect was depicting my rigidness in life. Unwilling to change myself for better or worse and my inability to put myself out there with my art, something I still struggle with to this day. But the colorful paints are showing that deep down inside there is a warm person that is trying to emerge. To break free of the glass and the ribbons that keeps me locked inside of myself. One day, I will finally shed these things and move on with my life.

Twenty-one years later I find I still feel these ribbons holding me in place but they are certainly becoming looser. I am just now truly finding myself and letting go of the things that have held me back. I often think of revisiting this painting and either doing a recreation using what I have learned over the years, or just re-imagining it all together.

I hope you enjoyed this painting and reading a bit about me and my struggles. After all art can be tormenting to the individual and it is only in overcoming these torments that we can really be free.

What do you think of it? Do you think I should redo it? Should I re-imagine it? I would love to hear from you all. Your opinions and feedback are always appreciated.

Joseph Finchum

"Art Supplies Contest"

Who doesn't want a chance for free supplies... Free you say?

Well they could be. Artist Tim Gagnon is having a contest and the prize is worth taking a look at. Anyone can enter by going here.

Tim Gagnon Art Supply Giveaways

Visiting the Past

       When I revisit this painting, I have a tough time looking at it and all I can see are the glaring mistakes, improper technique, and bad decisions. But to the person that owns it, it's on of their favorite pieces. I can't explain their attachment to it any better than I can explain why someone doesn't like peanut butter.

"Winter Hideaway"  by  Joseph Finchum

What I see is...The streaks in the background sky. The bad perspective, the not so perfect lighting and the muddiness of it all really show the faults I had at the time. There are many bad choices in this painting. Of course there are. I was just starting out and had limited techniques. Mixing colors is a skill you need to master, especially when dealing with oil paints that get mixed with a bit of or a lot of white. Using to much medium can get messy quick and this is a lesson I learned while creating this piece. Leaving to much paint on the brush would lead to either putting too much on the surface or pulling paint directly off the canvas and just smudging the detail. A gleaned a lot of information on layering and blending paints together that I would not have learned otherwise. Looking at it again now, I think I would have went back in and cleaned up a bunch of things just to make it a little crisper. A few more touches of highlights and properly colored shadows wouldn't hurt either.

Can these little mistakes make us better artists overall? Absolutely it can.

With every mistake and every stray mark we make, we can learn something new. Whether that lesson be a negative or a positive one, is all in our point of view. These are the things we as artists have to think about while we are painting and creating. If we become stagnant, we lose direction and focus. We have to own our mistakes and be humbled by them.

So go out today, pick up a brush and make some mistakes, good ones. Let me know if you have ever made a mistake that taught you a valuable lesson. Something stand out that changed the way you have done on every work since. I look forward to your responses.