I was able to get some decent beach reference photos while on our trip (some great wedding pictures too), and I plan to do some paintings of the kids and my family from our trip, but I am also still very much seeing the children in the flak helmets in the drawings I do, so I’ll just keep at it until I run out of interest. My plan with these paintings is to start submitting to some contests and galleries within the next couple of weeks. I was doing some stuff in watercolor, but when it comes to these war paintings I have found it difficult to do what I want to do unless I use opaque paint. This one is acrylic over a watercolor and pencil sketch. It was done so that it’ll fall within the 12x12 size guidelines for a local contest. I don’t like working this small, but I decided it would be an opportunity to create an artificial deadline since that can often help me to light a fire and get some things done that I may otherwise spend too long fiddling around with.

War Baby: Day at the Beach is below. This one seems more like a war “toddler”, but I think it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. A couple things might change on this one if I go back to it, but I am really trying to follow my own advice and let these things go so that I can move on and make something new.