Painting with Kendall

My mother-in-law is quite the artist.  She does these beautiful paintings, mostly angels and landscapes, but lately she's been branching out and doing dresses, churches, and barns. You can check out Kendall's blog here and see all her work!  She paints canvases in various shapes and sizes, and we're lucky to have a few of her masterpieces hanging in our home...my favorite of which is a cross.  I LOVE this painting, and it's one of the first things you see when you walk into our house.

Then when she started painting these churches and barns, I fell in love with them too and have been wishing and hoping she might paint one for me.  Well, this week she decided to host her very first art class and guess what she taught us to paint?  Her church painting!  I'm so glad I got to attend, and now not only do we have a beautiful church painting to add to our guest room, but I painted it myself :)  I was a little nervous about it because I'm very critical of my work...always have been. (I'm a typical first-child type-A).  I knew if I didn't like my final product, I would still want a church painting for our house, but would have no excuse to ask for one.  Well, I will say I don't love my painting 100%, but I like it enough to keep.  But before I go critiquing it, let's take a look...

Here's Kendall's version

The first night we painted the whole picture.  We started with the church, then worked on the sky, then the grass, and then blended everything in.  By the end of yesterday, this is what I had...

And as you'll see, my church is too far to the right and the top (in my opinion), which left no room for a cross on top of my steeple.  This is honestly the main reason I'm not 100% happy with my painting.  I wanted it to be a church, but a church needs a cross.  Hopefully when people see it they will still think "church."

So tonight we spent the first half-hour tweaking our paintings from last night.  I thinned out my steeple a bit, added a little more shading to the grass, and rounded my door frame.  Then we added a layer on top that "antiques" the painting, as Kendall called it.  It's a glaze of watered down paints that you wipe off after applying.  Then we topped it off with a clear varnish.  And here's our final masterpieces!!