Elstabo's Canvas

A few days ago I came across a post on invaluable.com on the matter of Art collectors , called How to Start a Fine Art Collection. It got me thinking about my own ideas about this topic. I can not speak much from the art collectors position, but mostly from the art maker and seller. So here is what I can share from the twenty plus years of doing my craft. In my situation there has been two major factors in people who collect my work, those who have shared personal moments with me and those who feel connected or admire the subject of my work. Social functions always played a major role in the sales of my art work, those people who collected my work usually shared some sort experience with me. Example: There was a young woman who would attend frequent art shows I exhibit in, after repeated interactions with her I asked her one day to be part of my art work. Since then she has modeled for me in several paintings and through out that time I have given her 5 of my original paintings ou...

This piece here was 20x24 and an attempt to do an oil illustration with multiple glazes. The main challenge for me here was to fit in multiple figures in the scene with detailed recognizable faces. The faces at this size were very difficult for me, because of how tiny the details were, about the size of a quarter coin. I don't like spending to much time on a painting, so I had to slow down my process. Part of that process was doing the layers of glazes, then having to wait for it to dry before passing over them again. Torture for me, but at the same time rewarding when complete. These photos don't do the painting any justice though, because of the multiple layers, these colors change when you stand in front of the painting.

This piece took about 4 days worth of work, as part of a revamp on some of my pulp fiction themes. This particular painting was done in oil, and here you can see some of the process. I first start with a under painting done in acrylic then I will do a wash over in oil. After laying in key color swatches I will blend the colors in a unified flow. Painting faces and hand tend to be most challenging for me, especially at this small size. The painting is over all 18x24, but the face it self is only 2x3 inches.