Tea with the Ogres

“Tea with the Ogres” is finally finished and scanned. This painting has taken me years to complete. The original photo shoots took place clear back in 2008. I had just been picked up by a large international gallery and they encouraged me to paint bigger than what I was doing at the time. I painted this on a canvas 48 inches high and 60 inches wide. That’s four feet by five feet. It is almost as big as my wife is tall. After I discussed the idea of the painting with the gallery, which they liked, I started to paint. I was about two thirds of the way through the painting, when the gallery owner contacted me and told me they didn’t like where I was going with it. They said it wasn’t scary enough and the Ogres looked like “good Mormon boys in bad Halloween costumes”. So it was back to the drawing board. I took additional pictures of a good friend of mine to help add to the Ogres. I took pictures of a second little girl and made a composite of both girls. With these adjustments I was able to come up with the refined concept that had all the elements both the gallery and I were looking for. I got a new canvas and set to work. After getting about half way through the new painting, I just ran out of gas. It sat unfinished in my living room for months. In the mean time, I painted a commission piece of the Salt Lake Temple. When the gallery saw this painting, they decided they wanted to take my art in a completely different direction, more LDS temples. As a result, this painting was pretty much shelved without completion. Months passed, and I would occasionally think about it. Then, last summer, when I had a break between commissions and with a lot of encouragement from my wife, I was able to sit down and finally finish the painting.
The next big problem was scanning it. I hate scanning, and the last time I scanned a painting this size I had plenty of room, a more powerful computer and a completely different scanning setup. Now my scanner is better, and I have things set up differently, both of which contribute to an easier scanning experience. The downside is that my computer is less powerful and my studio has lot less room. So I kept putting it off. It wasn’t until a year later that I had built up enough desire to scan it and figure out just how I was going to go about it. It took over 50 individual scans. It took me three days to scan and an additional 2 days just to piece them together as well as deal with some unexpected challenges. But, I am very happy to report that it is finished and uploaded to my print website.