I started work on a 30x40 painting of some boys playing around a naval mine that’s stuck in the mud. I don’t know what I’ll title this one, and I don’t think It’ll be done in time for submitting to the Art Around the Bend contest, but if by some miracle it gets finished then I’ll definitely do it.

This first photo is of my original sketch that I taped above before doing the charcoal drawing on top of the canvas that I’d washed with some blue and brown acrylic paint so that I wasn’t working on a completely white surface. I’ll have the sketch with me for sale during the Bookcon next month.

This is the second progress shot. As I worked on it, the UXOs became more a part of the story of the painting so I started to add some more. The way I see it is that the boys are playing here, and part of the game they play is that they dig UXOs out of mud and stack them up like blocks or something. There will be shelled buildings in the background. Some of the decisions I make happen as I am painting and some of them happen when I’m cleaning up my kids’ vomit.