Angel 4 " Dawn's Hope"

Angel 4 came in an interesting way. I began this one in September. It was spawned after a reconnection with a child hood friend via facebook. I had 2 friends growing up named Dawn, so that alone means something to me. Also the dawn as in a new day, which brings hope. I hadn't done a green painting yet so i knew the colors i wanted. anyway, the history with dawn and i is such: we were friends in jr high school, and like most school girls we were emotionally immature. the way i remember it was i stole her boyfriend, and therefor we became enemies. i think this is true, and i wish i had been more mature than to do something like that, but i wasn't. i have always felt badly that this incident happened, for more reasons than this blog will entail. i cannot remember how Dawn and i got over this and how it was pivotal. dawn and i worked together for several years and even walked together in graduation. Life goes on and since the world of facebook we have reconnected. I couldn't think of her with out remembering the past, so for her i decided to do a painting. it was titled it "dawn's gift" a two fold meaning. 1) the gift of forgiveness and acceptance of a friend & 2) the new hope the dawn brings.
I did my best to capture dawns features, but the hair turn e d out much darker than hers, but the spirit is there, and that is how she came to be!
UPDATE:: I was re reading another blog I had and found this post. Here is a snap shot of what I was thinking then. I think i will change the names back t o Dawn's Hope. My first idea is usually the better.

from: 10/04/08
This painting has been a long one to finish!
i went about 4 weeks with out getting any work done, i had "painters block"
i guess all creatives are vulnerable to this. remind you i have 2 days a week allotted to paint.
i didn't like where my painting was at one point and not being able to get it past there tripped me up. i have some feelings and there are unseen things at work here too, i can feel them pressing in on me. i got through it and have been painting again, i am getting closer to being done with this painting.
this is angel #4 in my series. i'm thinking of calling her "dawns hope" .

Angel 3...the stumbling block

Okay so here i am on my quest to finish an angel a month. I had an idea for the third one, it was early summer... i was feeling drawn to incorporate the image of an ankh into my painting. I drew out the angel, the ankh, thought of colors and began. When i begin a painting there is a large amount of under painting, I block in colors, create the shape of the wings, and then get the layers going. I was experimenting with a different brand of paint, basically it was cheap paint, which was giving me a difficult time. Because it was summer, the air was humid. This seemed to be making the paint tacky, hard to blend and just plain yuck. I must have wiped the paint off the canvas 3 different times trying to get the right color, and effect. So i had false starts, the work I'd done erased. I was getting frustrated, but at the same time liked the pink and blue colors of the cheap paint i was using. I was tempted to just stop the angel, to keep her static, simple in her stance. This was not to be her destiny. I was going to keep painting, and try to make something happen here that i had not done before. That was symmetry, a forward facing angel with two wings. Yikes, this was turning into several weeks of work, and work it out I did. I had a period of time during this one, i called a block. I had never done a face like this, I had never pushed through so many moments when i just wanted to stop painting and do something else. Persevere i did, this painting took about 7 weeks, and when i look at her now i am glad i did. My most favorite part of this painting is her mouth, just in itself is so sweet. I just look at her lips and i am happy. I ended up naming this angel "carry the cross". In Egyptian times the ankh was used as a symbol of life. It was depicted in hieroglyphs as a cross with a handle, believed to be carried into the after life. I had these things tumbling in my thoughts when i was in my art studio I heard a song called "carry the cross" on the radio. I haven't heard the song since, but it stuck with me, and the title came together. I think of my own life and how i feel at times i am holding onto life.