His latest painting is a portrait of Jim Livingston, our neighbor who owns Hartwood Winery. The painting was a surprise Christmas present for Jim and his wife, so we have had to keep it under wraps until now ... we gave it to them on Saturday night, so it's okay to show it to you now.
The painting looks WAY better in person than it does in this photo.
This portrait is a great example of teamwork and technology. In June, I snapped the photo of Jim at a wine festival. It perfectly captures his look and personality, but the quality of the photo itself left a LOT to be desired. Jim's face was in heavy shadow caused by the top of his golf cart and the background of parked cars and outbuildings was very unfortunate.
I knew this would be a great portrait if we could lighten Jim and put in a new background ... a vista of his vineyard would be perfect. Over the course of the summer, I took photo after photo of the vineyard ... from different angles and at different times of day. Finally, in late August, I got the shot I was hoping for.
In addition to being a genius-computer-guy and a super artist, The Husband is also a whiz with Photoshop. He says that it was a simple matter to lighten Jim and his golf cart, clip them out of the original photo, and lay the clipped image onto the new background. It didn't have to be perfect ... he just needed a combined image to work from for his painting.
Here is the painting and the photo side-by-side.
This is absolutely my favorite one of his paintings to date!! What's even better is that Jim and his wife love it more than I do.
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I'm going to shift gears and show you another one of my husband's artistic talents ... he loves to draw with kids. It was a wonderful activity that he enjoyed with our three girls, and he continued the tradition when our first grandson was old enough to draw. (This was a fun way to keep the kids busy and entertained, especially while waiting in restaurants.)
When our grandson lived with us, he and my husband would spend hours drawing together. These sessions developed into a series of superhero drawings ... the earliest of which are cherished mementoes. My husband decided to pass these lessons along to other families, and over the past two years he wrote and published two books to teach children to draw characters using a few simple shapes.
Book One shows how to draw Super Heroes.
... and Book Two is about the Villains.
Do you have a child on your holiday gift list who likes super heroes? My husband's books may be just what you have been looking for. The page to order the Super Hero book is HERE, and the Super Villains book is HERE.
If you would like to see more of my husband's paintings, click HERE to visit his web site.