Halloween Art

 Halloween has come and gone -- too quickly, in my opinion.

Now my thoughts have turned to Thanksgiving, another point in the season that I need to prepare me for Christmas.

But first, here are some Halloween-themed paintings that I finished recently. (One CAN be a Halloween image, but it's really a nocturne that could be thought of as creepy and Halloween-ish). 😃

Hi, Bunny! Hi, Pumpkin       8"x10" / 20cm x 25cm

A Walk in the Moonlight       8"x10" / 20cm x 25cm

The Morning After               8"x10" / 20cm x 25cm

And finally, one painting that is just about autumn, Colorado style near Cripple Creek:

Untitled (so far)                 8"x10" / 20cm x 25cm

Finally, I started on some Thanksgiving paintings that I hope to post here soon.

Enjoy the season! It's moving through fast!

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

Desert Sunset -- on a Bunny??

"Desert Sunset on a Bunny." ON A BUNNY????

Well, yeah...if you've been following this blog for a while, you know I'm addicted to cute little bunnies, whether domesticated or wild. They (along with guinea piggies) have gotta be the cutest critters in God's creation!

So I often place desert cottontail bunny-rabbits in my desert scenes, watching the viewer before the viewer notices the bunny! I hope this new piece continues the tradition.

Desert Sunset on a Bunny            11" x 14" / 28cm x 35.6cm

This scene is in Joshua Tree National Park, California, USA.

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

HAPPY EASTER!!!

Happy Easter!!!

Everybody knows Easter is all about a warm sunny day filled with flowers, bunnies, chocolate eggs and jelly beans. Maybe the kids will go searching in an Easter egg hunt or looking for an Easter basket hidden somewhere in the house. That's what Easter is all about, right?

Well, not exactly.

You see -- God loves us and wants to dwell with us, living the perfect life and attitudes He had in mind for us. But there's one big problem -- we don't do so good at living a perfect life according to His standards. In fact, we suck at it, and it ticks God off!

He loves us, but He can't put up with our disobedience -- another way of saying sin. We deserve to be thrown into hell because we make God miserable, as well as ourselves and everyone else. He's got a pretty high standard, and hey! God made us!! He makes the rules, and serving Him instead of ourselves is as good as it gets.

Thankfully, God gave us a way out. He used to require sacrifices as a way of making things right with Him, but then He had another idea: He sent His Son to be a sacrifice in place of the ones we came up with. His Son, of course, is Jesus Christ.

Jesus was crucified -- nailed to a cross as a blood sacrifice. He died, but He became alive again three days later. He took our sins/disobedient acts on Himself, thus cleaning up our acts once and for all, and by rising from the grave, He conquered the deaths that WE deserve.

Why did He do this? Because He loves us and didn't want any of us to languish forever in hell. All we have to do is: accept the notion that Jesus did this and that He is now our Lord as well as our Savior from hell. And follow Him. As imperfect as we are, God wants us to try, at least, to live a live of obedience to Him. In other words, this is NOT an anything goes kind of contract.

Is there a Plan B? What about those who live a good and moral life but who don't accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior?

Well, the Bible isn't that hopeful for people in that position. I can hope that Christ's death and resurrection is one method for being saved (although Jesus Himself said He is the ONLY way, and it's hard to see a Plan B in that).

So I'M sticking with Plan A, and I pray that anyone reading this will do likewise. Eternity is a long, LONG time!!!

Ohh... In case you really need a bunny, here's a picture of ours! 😃

Hippity-Hop

If you're like me, you think bunnies are cute. Jackrabbits are, too!

Hippity-Hop: Blacktailed Jackrabbit           a/p         8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm

I decided to paint him ambling along rather than running full-out to escape a predator (that may be another painting!) Still, I blurred the shrubs in the background to look like things are in motion. Also, the clouds in the sky are intended to simulate clouds of dust that the jackrabbit is stirring up.

Jackrabbits can run 40mph / 64km/h (compared to desert cottontail rabbits which run at 19mph / 30km/h), although it can be difficult to clock the critters because they zigzag when they run, and they often bound into the air so they can look above the vegetation to see if they're being pursued.

In our former home, jackrabbits would occasionally come by and share the rabbit pellets we put out for the cottontails. The jacks had a special, endearing appeal when they moved around in their long-legged lanky way when they seemed almost clumsy!

I'm glad I had an opportunity to paint one of these amazing critters!

Mark Junge

www.MarkJunge.com or www.SouthwestSpaces.com

Plodding Along

Plodding along...that's been what I've been up to lately. Not in the same spirit as the tortoise and the hare, but I've felt an awful lot like a tortoise lately.

The Tortoise and the Hare

(The pictures are details I cropped and enlarged out of two different paintings. Sorry about the blurriness!)

The Wiffee and I are getting ready to sell our house and move into a mobile home. It's simply gotten too expensive here in the state of California to stay in our house any longer. Taxes, insurance premiums, fees as well as living expenses keep going up, and the income isn't increasing at the same rate.

So we've been working on packing, staging our house, stuff like that.

Meanwhile, I've still got a habitat diorama to finish for the local nature museum. It figures that I have to deal with both of these issues at the same time!!

Here's how the background painting for the diorama finished out:

Admittedly, the painting appears much more detailed when seen in person than it does in this small photo!

And as for paintings -- well, that's fallen by the wayside for now. Too busy, too tired, all that stuff -- I just can't seem to continue on a painting I began a month or so ago. Someday!

Hopefully, I'll finish the diorama next week and I'll post pictures of it here! Until then...

Mark Junge
www.SouthwestSpaces.com
www.MarkJunge.com
www.FineArtAmerica.com (for prints)

A Christmas Bunny

So -- what does one do if one:

• is an artist;
• loves Christmas;
• loves bunnies?  

Why...one paints a Christmas bunny! A lop-eared bunny, in this case.

A Christmas Bunny               14" x 11" / 36cm x 28cm

www.SouthwestSpaces.com
www.MarkJunge.com

 

Pinnacle Peak

Pinnacle Peak is the title (and the view) of my latest painting. This special place is located northeast of Scottsdale, AZ. The dimensions are 18" x 24" / 46cm x 61cm.

For some reason, this painting was hard to photograph and make it look like the painting. Close, but no cee-gar.

Here is a detail that shows the bunnies I painted in:

I like the way the painting turned out, but I left myself some room to re-do it several times over -- which I suspect I will do, in time.

Sadly, although the Peak itself is still there with it's hiking trails (it's included in Pinnacle Peak State Park), the surrounding desert is gone. The virgin desert I depicted is now homes, roads, golf courses, a resort, and -- I believe -- a few shops and eateries.

Who knows -- maybe someone who lives near Pinnacle Peak will want paintings on their walls showing how the area used to look!


 

This Matter of Balance

This Matter of Balance is my latest painting. It features Balanced Rock which is in Arches National Park (one of my favorite places, BTW!), Utah.

The scene is pretty much the way it actually looks except for Turret Arch over on the far right. It's visible from this spot, but it's much much more distant than I've shown it here. But bringing Turret Arch forward makes the landscape that much more mystical, and it helps to form a triangular composition with the peak of the Rock being the apex of the triangle. (If you look carefully, you may be able to see the bunny under the shadow of the piñon pine on the left).

This artwork is, to me, an allegory of the balance we need in all things of our lives. Nowadays it's so easy to get caught up in one extreme view or another. I think I once achieved balance, but it hasn't been that way in a long time.

Even at Balanced Rock, balances have changed. Once, a smaller balanced rock, "Chip Off the Old Block," stood to the right of Balanced Rock, but it came tumbling down during the winter of 1975-1976, its pedestal a victim of erosion. In time, Balanced Rock will collapse, too.

I learned much about balance during the '70s , with karate, dance, meditation and the study of Chinese philosophy. In my opinion, the Bible itself, while not using the word "balance," conveys a sense of balance when considered in its entirety.

Today, between struggling to survive during this economy, age that continues to creep upward and so many of life's issues that are beyond my control, balance has been harder to find lately. But I know it's out there, and I have to find it. Somehow. Hopefully soon.

More About Bunnies

My favorite pets of all time have been: guess what? BUNNIES!!!

Bunnies are low-maintenance pets. They can be paper-trained, believe it or not. We've had bunnies that have had the free run of the rooms we kept them in and really didn't have to clean up much after them. They always had a cage on the floor where we kept their water bottles and food, and those little critters "did their business" in the cages. So the cages needed cleaning every day, of course, but the room itself was pretty much OK, except when the bunnies were shedding.

I was never creative when it came to naming them. One pair was a brother and sister--they were simply "Girl Bunny" and "Boy Bunny." The third and fourth (we didn't have them at the same time) were both named "Bunny." Our last critter was the only lop-earred rabbit we had, and it came with a name: "Maggie." The previous owner thought it was a female, until a trip to a veterinarian uncovered the truth: "she" was a "he"! But the name stuck.

We once had a guinea pig, too, in between bunnies. They're cute,too. They squeak and whistle and scurry around in their cages. And they always have this expression like they're constantly startled. Cute. Very cute.

Some day we'll probably get another bunny (or guinea pig). But for now, we're too busy to take on the responsibility of having a pet. And we do have the wild bunnies outside. They won't let us pick them up or pet them, of course. But they're still cute!