(I) A Tree Grows in Bako (Say Amen)

A friend commissioned me to do a painting for his living room, a surprise gift for his wife. He didn't have a really specific vision, just that he wanted it on three panels, and that it should depict a tree or, possibly, a root system they'd seen together. I was stoked with the final result, and I did manage to snap some photos along the way.

I bought the panels from a store called Scrap here in SF. They were about 1' x 5' each, totally recycled. Originally they were painted red, black and blue. I painted over the red and blue, then made a chalk drawing of the basic setup of the piece:

I then did a value painting for the top - I have no idea why painters do this, but I've seen it before, so...yes. I also knew that I wanted a light filtering through the roots, so I painted that in:
Then I went crazy with the paints and didn't really stop for the next few hours:
I was saved by the set of paint pens I'd bought for the project, they allowed me to get some nice-looking detail, as on the roots and the spray of gold lights coming through the roots:


I called it "A Tree Grows in Bako (Say Amen)". I thought about what to do with the tree - a redwood, looking up from below? A big oak tree?- but there wasn't a lot of space on the panels. When my friend sent me a picture of an uprooted tree and the complicated patterns therein, I decided to focus on the roots. If you've been to Bakersfield, you know there aren't a lot of trees- the ones that are there are mostly newly-planted saplings near strip malls- so this little guy made sense.

Commission accomplished!