At the Dallas Aquarium, the finished oil painting!

So this is the real thing, I brought a HUGE canvas, it’s 2 meter by 1,5 meter. That’s 80” by 60” in inches.

I usually start of with a grisaille base painting.

For lack of an easel, (my stuff had not arrived yet) I hung the painting on the wall. Not ideal, but it worked. I had different sizes of steps to reach different parts of the canvas. Luckily I didn’t fall off any of them, although there have been some close calls! Unlike the water color sketch I now started out with working on the Water world. This is because oil paint is a different medium,  so requires a different approach. I really wanted the colors to stand out, and of course the foreground had to stand out really crisp and sharp so had to be finished last.

So here it is: the finished painting. it’s official title is:

At the Dallas Aquarium

Or why you should stop playing with your smartphone and pay attention

My stepdaughter and her daughter gazing at the underwater miracles.

I really love this painting. It was a lot of work and took a lot of time. But I think the monumental size works very well for the subject, And the subject… only very rarely does one get such a special vision, something so unique. it really happens only every ten years maybe.