A Basket of Fruit and a Jazzy Zen Cat!

Now I'm two days behind in the September 30/30 challenge, but I'm not giving up!  Unfortunately, I will end up even further (farther?) behind this weekend, as I see no, or very little, painting time until Monday!  Ah well....that's why it's a challenge, right?  So I did this mini-painting while sitting the gallery yesterday.

 And then, instead of painting another daily piece, I ended up playing with Zentangles(r).  I intended to just work with shapes, black and white, etc, but then I saw a photo of this cat and decided to see what I could come up with.  It ended up being the cover of a blank notecard.  I'm calling it "Jazzy Zen Cat." I know, I probably should have done another painting instead of the Zentangle, but this is considered art too!  In fact, I just received a set of Sakura pens and some samples of the Zentangle paper...can't wait to try them out.  So off I go!

White Pitcher, Grapes and St. Michael the Archangel

Had to take some time away from daily painting to work on another study for my commission, St. Michael the archangel killing the dragon. But I managed to fit this little one in today--it's a 5 x 7, in acrylics.
       Now back to St. Michael:  below is the study I did--it's pretty rough.  I did quite a bit of research but most of the paintings depicting St. Michael made him look very feminine and unrealistic in the sense that he looked more like he was posing rather than about to unload on a 7-headed beast.  So I ended up using a baseball stance combined with sort of a samurai warrior pose to get what I've depicted here.  I've still got a lot of fine-tuning to do, and I've asked the client to determine hair color.  I may end up changing the outfit too--depends on what the client wants.

 But I feel I've made progress.  I will have to work on both paintings simultaneously so there's a smooth transition from one panel to the other.

So now it's back to the 30/30 challenge until I get the go ahead from my client.  I'm now 12 paintings behind. Oh well....I'm still having fun.