Christmas Painting

I painted this as a Christmas present for my Grandmother. It recreates a scene from when her daughters were young.

Cow Family Painting

I painted this for my wife for our recent wedding anniversary. Our family as bovines.

What I've been up to lately...

I've been busy with several projects lately, I've been painting for Homearama (I'm doing a Alice in Wonderland playroom, more on that later), I've been working a lot for Shiraz Mediterranean Grill (that's not ready to show yet), and I've done some other freelance work that I probably shouldn't show yet either but I have done some other very neat smaller murals that I can show you and here they are. Thanks. See more work at Stivers Art.

This boy was crazy about castles.

This little girl wanted a peaceful beach view she could wake up to every morning.

A fun nursery mural that picks up imagery from the bedding.

A foyer faux-finish.

A very cool way to personalize a child's room.

Daycare Mural

I had the opportunity to do some work for a local daycare recently. It was a fun job and the kids really enjoyed seeing the new mural.

New Murals

Finally, posting some more of the work that has been keeping me busy the past few months. This first one is for a girl's bedroom.

A very tricky space to paint in. This is a deeply curved niche that got a custom non-figurative painting with lots of metallic paint and a plaster base coat.

A giant teddy bear eating some ice cream.
A map for a nursery.

A ceiling inspired by the ceilings at the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Long Time, No Post

It has been a really, really long time since I have posted anything but I have not been idle. I thought I would share some of the projects I have been busy with instead of blogging.

The first is a metallic silver faux finish for a master bedroom I did several months ago. It has a layer of plaster and then various paints and metallic glazes over that.

An Arts themed mural in an elementary school auditorium. It measures about 60' by 6' 6". I have a lot of progress and detail pics I will try to post soon.

A happy tree with a happy little squirrel eating ice cream in a nursery.
A mural for a home theater. The figures aren't quite caricatures but close. The client wanted it a little more fun than a straight up representation.
That's it for now. I have a few more things that I've done to show. I will try to be more regular about posting. Thanks!

Counting Sheep

The sheep paintings are finally complete. As you can see from the pics I painted the two to work as one continuous scene, however, they are going to be hung on opposite sides of an entryway so I focused the composition more on the individual pieces instead of the whole. I normally wouldn't have had a big tree right smack dab in the center of the painting but I wanted to close in both sides of both paintings so, there you go. I really enjoyed working on these but I was starting to see sheep everywhere. baa!

New Spring Play Painting.

I finished up another of the spring play paintings despite spending most of my time working on some other canvases for a client and being incredibly distracted by college basketball. A great start to the tournament yesterday though not a good showing for the Big East. I don't know how much I'll get accomplished today, at least Louisville doesn't play until tonight, so maybe a little.

The Spring Production

With spring nearly upon us and green stuff starting to peek through the ground I felt the need to go back to my sketch book and revisit an earlier idea I had for a series of children's paintings of a school play about spring. I had abandoned the idea because of time but after going though all of that old artwork and remembering how small I was working because of time constraints I decided to try the same thing with these. So instead of working on 12" x 16" canvases these will be on 5" x 7" birch plywood. I think the format is perfect for the concept and I am really excited to get work this way for a little bit especially because I have some fairly large canvases I have been working on for a client lately. Anyway here is the first one, " The Bluebird Forgets His Line."

Ghosts of Artworks Past

I have spent the majority of the day and now well into the next photographing and editing old artwork on the computer. It's been awhile since I have seen some of these. I am debating opening a second etsy shop to sell prints of some of my other art but I'm not sure. I guess if I didn't then today then would seem would like a waste of time. Anyway, here is a taste of some of the random stuff I dug up.

Progress....

Well, I made some progress today, but not much. With my wife at work and my 5 year old son and 2 year old daughter running rampant throughout the home like wild beasts as I try to paint, I'll take what I can get. I had to paint in bursts. During one of my breaks chasing the kids down I got sidetracked by some older work I came across. I shot some pics and will post some later. Very different than the murals and kids art that I've been painting but I am interested in discovering how that older work informs the stuff I'm doing now. Anyway, here is a pic of what little progress was made on "The Ice Skater and the Ermine."

Shiraz Logo Painting

I got the logo put up at Shiraz. After I finished their menu at their Frankfort Ave. location I took down their old one and painted their logo on the back. Here it is.

More Christmas Art!

Christmas paintings are complete! Finally. I am waiting on a couple of things so that I can start printing them out as Christmas Card sets. I'll post when they are available, either through etsy or if you are local, at the St. Gabriel craft fair on Nov 21 or at WinterFair! at Thomas Jefferson Unitarian on Dec. 4 and 5. It's great to be making so much progress on stuff but it also means that now I've got to go back and finish painting that bear in the winter woodsman painting.

Santa Claus Painting

I worked on another Christmas painting today. It seems awfully early to be thinking of the holidays but I have a feeling they are going to be over before I know it. I think I will do a couple more of these and then try to to finish that last woodsman painting. I think it will then be time to tackle a series of paintings for girls.

Nighttime for the Woodsman: Winter (in progress)

I'm working on the last season. I haven't taken many pictures. I really just thought about it and took this one. I'm well into the painting though and will hopefully finish it up soon.

Nighttime for the Woodsman: Autumn (in progress)

The third season. A good year to paint this one as the leaves were particularly vibrant around town. If you didn't notice I got kind of lazy about taking pictures.

Nighttime for the Woodsman: Summer (in progress)

The next painting in the series. Trying to get enough contrast between spring and summer has been giving me difficulty, but I'm liking the way it's looking.

Nighttime for the Woodsman: Spring (in progress)

more pics of the of the process. I made a lot of minor changes mainly to do with color in order to get enough contrast between this painting "spring" and the next one, obviously, "summer".

Start of a new Painting

Back in August I posted some sketches for my new "Moany and Lalla's" series "Nighttime for the Woodsman" I finally got around to starting on painting and took a bunch of pics of the process. Here are the first few.

Underwater Mural for Boy's Bathroom

I finished a boy's bathroom recently. It has an underwater theme as you can see.