New Painting “Easter Lily”

See oil painting “Easter Lily” from blank canvas to finish

This video is a segment from the Easter Show 2022. It shows live painting in real time and then the footage is sped up via time lapse (to shorten the video time). This painting is currently still wet on my easel. It will take several more days or weeks to set completely. You can see me looking down as a I paint. I’m looking at a lily to get the general shape of it. From there I can just go with the flow, but I like to get the botanical aspects right so that the flower is identifiable as an Easter Lily.

Personal update: After yesterday’s depressing house hunting experience in which we looked at a house that was nothing like its online photos, and was instead a house of horrors that would take a lot of money to make livable, today’s experience was amazing! We put an offer on the house we saw, so we’re back to hoping and praying that we get it. May we win this time! I’ll tell you more about this later. It’s been another whirlwind day. We have less than three weeks to get an offer signed to be able to close before we are forced to vacate. It’s nerve wracking, but Faith over Fear, right? Oh how I hope we get this one!!! We have a wonderful real estate agent who is helping us every step of the way. We are giving it our all, our best fight.


Show on YouTube

Please share with your family, friends, and social media connections.

My Easter Painting Variety Show is now on YouTube, for those who prefer that platform for easy sharing. The best video quality is here on this site though, so you may want to view it here if you’ve not already seen it. I’ll make smaller clips soon of the individual segments so you can view/share your favorite parts.

Moving update: still no word on whether or not our offer on the house will be accepted. Waiting on pins and needles! Meanwhile our move out date looms ever closer and it’s feeling scary. Faith over fear. It will all work out, because it has to!


It’s a No

Watch this “Lion and the Lamb” oil painting come alive in 2 minutes (time lapse)

The update to yesterday’s post “Feeling Froggy?” is: no. No, the home owner is not willing to extend our lease by one month so that we can rent a house that isn’t available until June. We must be out by May 31, period. They want to sell and are concerned they’ll miss the housing spike window. Understood. So, I’ll have to put myself into the right mindset to take on this challenge of finding a new place to rent before then. Rents are so high, it’s absurd! We would be paying DOUBLE what we pay now in some cases. We might end up living an hour and a half away from where my family needs to be for work/school and it will even then still cost us a few hundred dollars more in rent than we currently pay.

This is rather heartbreaking because we have worked so hard to rebuild our lives and are only a few months away from buying a house. This could sink us and make us stuck in a rental for who knows how long. I will make sure that doesn’t happen! But, the fear is real.

I’ll have to live by my own words, when I previously featured this lion and lamb painting in a blog post about balancing the attributes of the character of a lion with the character of a lamb. This was the part about fear:

When I’m unsure of what to do, I ask myself “is this an action of faith or fear?” If I’m aligned with the character and attitudes of a lion and a lamb, then my decision is based on faith. If I’m not adhering to those traits, then I’m likely responding in fear. 

Fear is a healthy and normal response, but our actions cannot be ruled by it.

from blog post “Are you a lion or a lamb?”