The majority of my gouache paintings were painted on thick watercolor paper. They were taped down to a Masonite panel when I paint them, but when the painting is finished and I remove the tape, the paper still curls. The paper itself does not sit flat. I had two boxes filled with stacks of these curled gouache paintings. And some of them had not been varnished yet. I use cold wax medium to varnish them (to protect them from any kind of moisture) and then I glued them to rigid canvas panels, to make the paintings flat. Gluing the paintings to rigid panels also served the purpose of making the finished painting a more conventional size: 9 inches x 12 inches. See, I would split 11 x 14 sheets of watercolor paper into two sheets, but that would make each painting an odd size of 7.5 x 11. Adhering them to a 9 x 12 panel allows them to fit in a standard size picture frame. For a more finished look I painted a border around each panel with a neutral color and then centered the painting on the panel. I spent weeks gluing gouache paintings to panels.

At the time of this blog post, I am still varnishing and adhering gouache paintings to rigid panels. I have quite a few more to go. I am a one man show here, so it’s a lot of work and very time-consuming. It takes away from creating new things, but this is a necessary task in order to find new homes for these works. So, I am not complaining.

After I prepared a good number of my original artworks for market, I decided to list them on eBay. So, I opened up an eBay store. I listed 40 paintings in my eBay store, so far, and more will be added in the coming weeks and beyond. Each painting comes with a Certificate of Authenticity, hand-signed and dated by me (see photos in my eBay listings). Paintings will be protected for shipping by packaging them securely and mailing them via insured USPS Priority Mail.

Of course, high-quality reproduction prints are always available in my website store, printed in high resolution with waterproof archival pigment inks on 19 mil, 260 g/m2, archival textured matte velvet fine art paper, 100% cotton fiber and acid free. I sign those too.

I currently have another larger painting on my easel, that I would like to get back to (and a time-lapse video of its creation), and I have more originals to list. I’d like to get back into some drawing also, pencil or ink.

I hope 2026 will be a productive and fruitful year for my art and that it connects with people in a positive way. Thanks for stopping by and reading this. I hope you’ll check out my stores and that you’ll see something there that you like.

Since I just mentioned Christmas: Mine was amazing and I am always blessed and thankful. I received a couple of art related gifts from my loving wife. I received a Masterson wet palette. I got the large yellow one. For anyone not in the know, it’s a large low flat plastic container with an airtight lid on it. It reminds me of Tupperware. It has a large flat sponge that sits in the bottom of the tray, over which you place a thick tough palette paper which holds paint but doesn’t tear easily even when wet. You wet the sponge with water, wring out the excess water, and lay it in the bottom of the tray. You want the sponge more than just damp, but less than saturated. You don’t want water to pool in the tray. You then wet your palette paper and after letting the excess water drip from that (again you don’t want water pooling in the tray), you lay that on top of your sponge. So the sponge and paper are not swimming in water, but they are moist. You then would squeeze or scoop out your paints onto the palette paper.

The water in the sponge and paper, combined with the airtight lid, keeps my acrylic paints moist and workable for longer periods of time. In the past I’ve always had a tendency to dispense too much paint onto my palettes, and then I will step away for long periods, and my paints would dry out. Using this wet palette, I’ve stepped away for 3-4 days, opened the tray and found my paint still workable. It’s been working out great so far and I think it will eliminate a lot of wasted paint.

The other art supply that I received for Christmas was a small travel watercolor set that I can carry in a backpack or in a pocket. It’s a tiny palette box, that came with paints and little water brushes (the clear plastic kind that you fill with water). I think it’s really neat and fun and I’m eager to use it. It came with a 1.5 inch square book of blank watercolor-paper (like a micro journal), to paint in. The book is about a half inch thick. The palette box is two magnetized lids and that’s what holds it closed, and also what holds it open and together when you put the lids together. On one lid are 8 paint pans, which you can fill with the colors of your choice, and the other lid acts as a tiny mixing tray, A little metal clip helps keep it all together and acts as a small handle to hold the palette box as you paint. I’ve attached a photo to show better what I am talking about.

I’ve not blogged about any of this, obviously, but I have completed several paintings over the last half of 2025. So, I’ve been keeping busy.

The first painting I’ll talk about is a study in gray scale values. It’s a painted rendition of a sculpted rendition of Jesus Christ that stands in a cemetery, not far from my home. The full statue is of a standing Jesus with outstretched arms; his hands pierced with wounds. The statue is painted completely white, so it details light and shadow really well. I chose to paint a closeup of only the face.

The small Jesus painting was so quick, that I did another painting right after it, and then realized I had a small stack of these 5 x7 panels and I wanted to use them all up to make a series.

So the paintings that followed were a great horned owl, and a couple of my garden friends – a bumblebee, and an orb weaver spider. For the spider painting I tried using the edge of a piece of white card stock to create the webs. With a brush I would apply white paint to the edge of small piece of card stock and then press the cardstock edge to the painting, much like you would a rubber stamp, It worked out well, but I could practice it some more.

After I created this small series of gouache paintings, I got back into the larger acrylic paintings. I completed three more paintings, one of them on a round canvas, because I wanted to try something new. The round painting is of a bumblebee feeding from a bright marigold. Obviously, the round shape of the flower head filled the round canvas very nicely, and that was the catalyst for painting that particular subject. The bee was icing on the cake.

I then tried another odd-shaped canvas, this time an arc shape, painting a gardening scene which I titled “Springtime Planting” (a favorite time of the year, therefore it’s a self-portrait). Those are pepper plants, bells and jalapenos.

I then got back into rectangular canvases (I ran out of odd-shaped ones), with a scene of a rocky stream in an Autumn forest (which is The Smoky Mountains, in The Sugarlands, to be exact), which I aptly titled “Mountain Stream”. I found this one to be a challenging piece, with all of the foliage detail.

I have another new painting on the easel right now. It’s acrylic on an 18 by 24 inch stretched canvas. The subject is chess. That’s all I got. You’ll see that painting later.

Currently, it’s freezing cold where I am. It was 12 degrees yesterday, and zero the day before that, so I’m spending my days making art, peppered with moments of clearing snow.

I should wrap this entry up and get back to the painting. Until next time… which will be who knows when? It could be soon. It could be later. I wish that you, my readers, will have a great day! Thank you for coming by and checking on me. I appreciate your interest in my artwork.

I’ve made several new paintings over the past few weeks. I began filming timelapse videos showing the creation of these paintings. My first painting was a garden gnome standing next to some black eyed susans. I painted it with gouache paints on paper and named the piece “The Gardener”.

The next one, also gouache on paper, was a grasshopper.

And the painting after that was some bleeding heart flowers, which I painted on a larger stretched canvas with acrylic paints.

The bleeding hearts was a painting that I had started about a year ago, but I lost interest in it as I instead got into a different painting. So I decided to break it out and finish it finally, and I made a timelapse video of it, and started a YouTube channel to collect the footage and more timelapse videos of my paintings, for people that like that sort of thing. I think it’s interesting to watch a piece develop and morph in fast motion. I try to put nice music to the videos or some pleasant ambient background noise. You can watch the full videos from beginning to end on my youtube channel at www.youtube.com/@marjasallproductions. Subscribe to my channel and you’ll receive notifications of when I post new videos.

These new paintings I just mentioned, “The Gardener”, “A Grasshopper”, and “Bleeding Hearts” are now available as archival prints in my store.

I put together a slide show several weeks ago of most of my current collection of artworks. I think it’s an entertaining way to view the collection quickly in one place. Enjoy!

I’m about to begin work on another yet-unfinished painting and time-lapse video. I want to keep the creative momentum going. It’s another painting that I started about a year ago and I’ll reveal what it is when I release the video.

April is the time when nature gets creative. It’s planting season and nature comes back to life. Summer will be here before we know it. The warm weather gets me outdoors more, which means more energy, and that I will be surrounded by inspiration and new things to paint.

That’s all the news I have for the month of April. Peace to you and have a blessed day! Thank you for reading my blog!

The ladder-back chair belonged to my Grandma Allen. This is a fitting focal point, as it’s an empty chair (in reference to the poem), but it’s still present and ready for use, representing the passing of still relevant knowledge to future generations. So, it’s a wise old chair, or it once belonged to a wise lady. It had no seat on it when I received it. I don’t know what happened to the original seat. I imagine it was probably wicker or some kind of caning material and that it might have fallen apart with use. My Dad had the chair, and meant to put a new seat on it, as a project to keep himself busy and to save his mother’s old chair. But he never got around to doing it. After he passed away, at the age of 78, the chair was given to me. I had never woven cane on anything before, so caning a chair seat was a cool and useful thing to learn. I acquired the materials and the tools needed, and I learned how to do it and I was very happy with how it turned out. Now I know how to cane a chair. We use the chair and it’s been a good chair. I sit on it to put my shoes on, and it also conveniently holds dust, coats, and many other items that don’t really belong there.

My wife wears a straw-weave hat when she’s working outside in the gardens. It breathes but keeps the sun and rain off of her head. It hangs off the back of the chair. The other ornament hanging off the back of the chair is an oddly shaped piece of metal. I don’t know the placard’s origin or intended use. It has a capital letter printed “A” on it, and three holes drilled along the top edge of it. It has a strand of brown jute cord tied through the center hole, into a loop, like a hanger. It was a gift to us from my sister-in-law (my wife’s sister), and the letter “A” obviously represents “Allen”. We like it and the back of the chair seemed like the most natural place to hang it.

An empty wicker wine basket, which can hold two bottles of wine, a corkscrew, perhaps a towel, and a couple of flute wine glasses, occupies the space beneath the chair. Underneath the chair seemed like a perfect out-of-the-way space for it. I believe it belonged to my mother-in-law. We end up with peoples’ things eventually. We inherit said things or they are dumped upon us, and sometimes they end up in a painting.

You will notice that stacked next to the chair there are three cylindrical vessels. On the floor, is a 6-gallon Red Wing stoneware crock. At one time I had planned to ferment mulberries from our backyard in it, to make wine. In this painting it’s holding up a couple of metal pots. Atop the stone crock is a steel 20-quart water bath canner, and atop that is a 15-quart aluminum stockpot. On the floor, on the other side of the chair, are some glass jugs which at one time contained apple pie moonshine out of Harmon, Kentucky. They’re empty now, but the jugs are unusual and useful. Towering over the jugs is a butter churn which has been around longer than me. When I was a child, I played with my toys on and around that old butter churn. My Dad gave it to me before he passed away. Oddly it’s like an old familiar friend. Maybe you have an item you can relate that to.

“Canning Season” reminds me of old-world ways – maybe a harder life, but a more simple and gratifying life – the lifestyle of my ancestors. It makes me think of domesticity… the smell of vinegar… gardening fruits and vegetables… food preservation… and self-sustenance. Taking care of family and oneself. Particularly in these uncertain times, I think gardening and food preservation are good things to know how to do.

Thanks for reading!