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Started painting a pair of wood ducks taking flight, still unfinished, another painting waiting for that final brush stroke. I got so many paintings started, I don't know which one to work on next. Anybody else out there like me, start working on ten different projects and taking forever to complete stuff already started. I look around my studio and shake my head, thinking what a dumb idiot I must be. Oh well, old habits are hard to break!

Since I was old enough to hold a pencil, drawing became an everyday thing. I would draw cars, space ships etc. On the way to school, on the bus, on the way to church, everywhere I went. I sorta put drawing on the back burner trying to learn how to paint, but I like painting, it's adding color that makes an image stand out. My mother painted, and I had to give it a try, I took up colored pencil drawing, but it is not the same as painting. My wife has been urging me lately to go back to pencil drawings, and I may start drawing again, but for now painting is my desire. The drawing in this blog entry is the last commission drawing I did, give me some feedback of what ya'll think out there.

Saving money is a hot topic, especially if your on a tight budget. Art supplies are getting higher and higher. I priced a premium quality 18 x 20 canvas frame the other day at an art store and my eyes literally popped out of my head, you got to be kidding me! The price was $45, I make my own frames at only a fraction of that price, and you don't need all the shop equipment like I have to do it either. I will be glad to show anyone interested in making their own canvases at home. I figured up my total cost to produce one canvas frame of that size, and it came out to $8.94 in material, that includes wood for the frames, and premium duck cloth, which is only $5.97 a yard at Walmart. Click on the more information button below, go to the In House section on my website at Murray Art Studio's and see how I make my canvases.

This is one of the other steam train paintings I'm working on. The mountains in the background turned out beautiful, least I thought they did. My brother commented about my mountains. "That's some Bob Ross looking mountains you got going on there." Guess that meant they were good. Anyway I am not very happy with the trees, have not decided what I need to do with them yet, but they are on there, so I have to make them work somehow.

Titled the Big One, this is an unfinished piece I was gonna present it to my brother-in-law, who loved to fish. I was in the process of trying to finish this piece and give it to him as a gift, but tragically he died in his sleep at the age of 54 on his last night of vacation at the Outer Banks. I miss fishing with him alot, I intend on finishing this painting and I am not selling the original painting, but keeping it in remembrance of him.

I love trains, especially steam trains. I currently have three acrylic train paintings started, this particular one here I named Donavan's Pass. I really need to get this one finished, but I keep putting it off to work on other things. Maybe one day I will get it finished, but till then it will sit I guess. Check out others I have sitting around unfinished at my Murray Studio's website.

Meet my apprentice, 100 pounds of pure art critic with big teeth. His name is Thor Maximus Von Xan Murray. This is the look he gives me when I refuse to go play with him. My son named him "Thor" Mythological God of Thunder and Lightning, I think; so much for that, he goes running off to hide somewhere during rainy and stormy weather. But he is my companion, constantly bugging me all the time when I'm painting, drawing etc. Sometimes helping me with the brush strokes by nudging his big cold wet nose under my arm abruptly. When he gets really mad he will give me an deep earth shattering bark till I give in. He's a big help as you can tell.

Just a brief glimpse of where I spend my time, working on my art. So I call it my studio, simply a back bedroom in the house, a 12 x 12 space, stuffed to the gills with everything I think I might need as an artist. But seriously I don't need probably half, OK, more than half of what I have crammed in here. At any rate it's pretty much stuff that gets in the way, if it was not in here, then I would more than likely need it. I know a majority of artist like myself find their own working areas the same way, it's just how we are, and there is no use fighting it, just go with the flow!