The Art of Making Art

It's kind of a funny thing, trying to put a painting together...sometimes people ask me, "do you look at a photograph for this, or is it just in your head?" HECK YES I use photographs! It's kind of clumsy, though. First you have to stare at strangers who get kind of freaked out sometimes. And then you have to ask them if you can take some pictures of them to use in a painting, which gets even stranger.
So far, with my Lehi project I've been pretty lucky. Between Springville and Bountiful, I've been able to pick models out of the people I know! For the baby, I used my daughter Nora...
We had to use Bonnie's cat to persuade her to stay on dad's shoulder and look in the right direction.

Our good friend Bonnie posed as Sariah, and MAN was she good! I really couldn't have found a better Sariah. But how did they wear those head things without making them pointy on top? (Don't worry, we eventually figured it out).My brother-in-law Sam and our neighbor Zeke and his daughter are also in the painting. But I couldn't find the right face for Nephi's eldest sister, and I've got deadlines (!) so I succumbed and just had Aaron shoot some photos of me. He's much less clumsy at this camera thing than I am:
Here's a sneak peak at this ginormous (four foot by eight foot) painting, to be finished in May.