Monday, January 23, 2012

Traveling to France.....in Paint!

"Provence Lavender"
10"x 8" Acrylic on Canvas

$150 unframed, $200 Framed
Email me at justin@justinholdren.com if interested


Here is the first small study of a new series I am working on. This view is from an elevated view with a field of lavender and brightly lit field and mountain in the distance.

A collector of my work and friend was kind enough to let me use some of her photos from France to do a series of paintings. She owns a lavender farm here in North Carolina where I go to paint during their annual Harvest Festival.
She had recently taken a trip to France and I was blown away by the pictures of Lavender in the Provence region and the beauty of the places they visited.
Now I am breaking my unwritten rule to paint a place that I have not been to, for this series anyway. I usually paint places that I have visited to absorb the view in person. I feel I can do the paintings more justice when I have observed a place firsthand.
 I still create paintings from my imagination too, but they are usually based on a place that I have been to, although I couldn't resist doing some new paintings based on the reference photos that my collector friend let me use.
Be looking for some larger ones here soon that include some other "French" scenes!

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Back from Florida

The park at Marineland along the Florida coast

The coastline at Flagler Beach, Florida


The castle at Disney's Magic Kingdom

I just returned from a family trip to Disney World in Florida. We had a great time with the whole family, which included all of my wife's sisters and their families and her parents too. Normally on a family trip, to not take away from family time, I get up in the morning and do some plein air painting and sketching on location, but we were up early and back late every day on this trip, so I just had to get a bunch of photos. I also did some sketching of the views out the van window on the drive down.

We hit one Disney park a day the whole week and headed home yesterday via Highway A1A to take in the coastline scenery. I will be working on some paintings of the Flagler Beach area soon so look for them here!