"Three Men and a Lady Playing Cards" is the last painting I finished before the end of the year 2012. At the time, I was also working on another painting, which I continued and finished early in 2013. Just like what the title of this painting says, it portrays three men and a lady, who are busy playing cards.
I painted this based on photographs (not one but several photographs) of real people. The three men are actually one and the same person, myself, and the lady is my wife. Before I started painting this, I asked my wife to take several photographs of me, from different angles and in different positions while I was holding the cards. I also took several pictures of her. Once I got all the photos, I picked the most suitable ones, arranged them, and started sketching the images on a 30" X 48" stretched canvas.
The original painting is a 30" X 48" acrylic painting on canvas. Prints of this painting are available for purchase in my Zazzle and Fine Art America (FAA) stores. Please click on the appropriate links in my side bar to visit the websites. Or, simply click on the image below to open the FAA page.
"Harvest Time" is actually a version of another painting called "Kids Eating Mangoes" by Cyril Maza. It shows a group of teenage kids having fun and eating mangoes, with a farmer and some farm animals around them, depicting a typical farm scene in some rural villages in the Philippines.
A nipa hut is shown standing not so far away from where the kids are. There is also a carabao, a couple of ducks, a rooster, a dog, a couple of pigs, piles of rice straws; as well as trees, mountains, and rice fields, in the background.
The original is a 20" X 30" acrylic painting on canvas, painted by husband and wife, Cyril Maza and Lorna Llanes D. Maza (LLDM).
To purchase prints and/or greeting cards, simply click on the images below. They will lead you to their respective pages in the Fine Art America website.
The original "Kids Eating Mangoes" is a 16" X 20" acrylic painting on canvas, and is one of Cyril Maza's first paintings.
I finished another painting this afternoon, April 7, 2011. It is an acrylic painting on a 11" X 14" X 5/8" canvas.
I have named it "Banaue," after the municipality called Banaue (Banawe) in the province of Ifugao in the Philippines. Banaue is widely known for the UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Batad Rice Terraces and Bangaan Rice Terraces.
The Ifugao Rice Terraces (Banaue Rice Terraces or Hagdan-hagdang Palayan ng Banaue) begin at the base of the mountain range and extend several thousand feet upwards. They are commonly referred to by Filipinos as the "Eight Wonder of the World." Accordingly, the total length of the terraces, when put end to end, would encircle half of the globe.
The rice terraces manifest the engineering skill and ingenuity of Ifugaos, who built them 2,000 years ago. They are irrigated by means of mountain streams and springs that have been tapped and channeled into canals that run downhill through the rice terraces.
"Father and Son" is the third in my series of parent-and-child paintings. The first two paintings are "A Moment with Dad" and "Mom and Babe." This painting features a baby boy, instead of a baby girl, giving it a little bit of distinction from the other two.
All three paintings were made in the first quarter of this year (January to March 2013), and were painted using acrylic paints on canvas. I finished this one on the 31st of March.
The background of this painting depicts a countryside scene, which is typical of rural villages in the Philippines. There is a nipa hut in the background, as well as trees, mountains, shrubs, grasses, and tropical flowers. The father is shown carrying his son in his arms, apparently standing on an elevated portion of the land. A narrow pathway is shown on the side slope, leading down from where they are, towards the level ground below, where the nipa hut stands.
Seen from the perspective of a small child looking up to an old bearded man, the painting shows a man with outstretched right arm holding out and offering a green balloon to nearby passersby. The man wears a long sleeve shirt and a blue hat to protect himself from the heat of the sun, as he goes walking along the city streets through out the whole day. He would normally hang out in crowded places such as city parks, public markets, and churchyards. Sunday is probably one of his favorite days of the week, for it is on Sundays that he encounters the most number of people; specially with kids going to church with their parents.
I finished this painting on March 31, 2013.
