New addition to Souq Series

I guess I should probably call it the Bahrain series!  This is based on the image of a sacred tree here in Bahrain called the Tree of Life.  It is a mesquite tree in the middle of nowhere out in the desert here in Bahrain. Surviving against all odds.  It is a national monument and it is forbidden to trim it or desecrate it in any way.  It has a little fence around the base and has some awkward branches that lay along the ground.  I would love to trim it up and make it more visually appealing but it is not my tree.  It is beautiful in its imperfection though I guess as is life itself.  I have added some other local Arabic images such as the decorative windows and camels.  The tree is actually printed on a piece of Butterick dress pattern paper.

  There is a local shop that is showing my Monotypes of Bahrain:  Alaa Aladeen Handicrafts   15741 - Phoenicia Center, Building # 56 Road # 306 Shop # 5 Adliya Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain.  (The shopping center across from the Ferrari building) Wani Waseem +97333892837  

Can't get past the beginning!

This is a small 9X9 oil study of my grandson Griffin, on linen.  Strangely enough, I have had trouble moving on with this as I love it just the way it is.  I had such a different vision of how it would end up but I just really like the image as is.  I am thinking maybe I will just leave it alone and start over with the same format and then move on with that....  The reason I started with the red background is that the photo
I'm working from had the backlight of the sun making his ear light up with the translucent red that I find so appealing.

When you try to go back to a style you have grown out of...

This is the third attempt (still in progress) at a portrait commission that is supposed to be a companion piece to the little girl "Rachel", the older sister of this sweet little Sarah at the same age in the same dress.  I have had to
contemplate  the complications of this situation for several reasons.  The first being that I have worked
very hard to move past this style of working exactly from a photograph...(the biggest problem with this particular example is that I can't seem to download a clear rendition of the reference photo so am working from a quite fuzzy photo, which would work very well with my current style where I like to
abstract things a little more.  I'm really having a hard time with this simple portrait that I would have in the past dashed off in a matter of hours.... I have been struggling with this for months.  I recently came across a photo of my own of the subject that I can get a very good rendition of the image to work from but Sarah is not in the same costume.  I may start over and try to get the details from my own photo and just paint in the dress.  Frustrating, as I know I can do so much better even in the old style if I had a better photo reference.  Maybe I will just do both in my new looser style and just gift it to their parents.
That would be so much easier!