Laura Wegkamp Fine Art

Igelsia de Suchitoto 2

2011-08-25T15:29:00.001-07:00

Oil on board, 18 x 24

This is a larger, all oil, remake of the first Iglesia de Suchitoto. I repainted it because the first one was so popular and my dad asked me to. I think he wants it to hang on his wall in El Salvador.

Spring Flowers: Apple Blossoms, Poppies and Bees.

2011-08-12T13:57:00.000-07:00

Poppies

10 x 10

Oil on board

Apple Blossoms

5 x 6

Watercolor and Oil on Board

My parents have these amazing giant poppies in their yard that illuminate so brilliantly when backlit by the sun. Not painting them was not an option. The apple blossoms are from an old photo taken in my backyard in Rexburg. It was just a quickie while I was figuring out what else to paint.

Kelsey

2011-07-20T09:56:00.000-07:00

For Father's Day, my dad requested that I paint him a portrait of his favorite (and only) granddaughter. It's now hanging in his apartment in El Salvador. 11 x 14 oil on board.

Angel

2011-07-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

This is a painting I did before the "Tiffany Collection" that I neglected to post. It's of a statue I found at a restaurant garden in El Salvador. It's very common to see basins filled with water and floating flower petals. More often than not, the basin is a simple bowl carved out of a stone. In this case, it's an intricate statue. To me, the red rose petals symbolize the atoning blood of Christ. The painting is hanging in my dad's office in El Salvador. 18 x 24, watercolor and oil on board.

The "Tiffany" Collection

2011-04-12T13:59:00.000-07:00

Winter's Deep

Evening's Water

I've nicknamed these paintings "The Tiffany Collection" because that's the name of the lovely lady who modeled for these paintings. My husband said it once, and it stuck. For these paintings, I wanted to have a Mike Malm/Richard Schmid-esque theme. I still painted them on board, but kept it straight oil this time. My goal, however, was to keep the darks as thin and liquid as possible, treating them a lot like watercolors. I entered both these paintings in Southwest Art Magazine's 21 under 31 show. They display work from 21 artists under the age of 31. It's an excellent way to receive publicity. I'll know by September whether they selected my work for display in their magazine.

Mini Art Exhibit

2011-01-26T17:07:00.001-08:00

Here are three paintings I've just completed for a "Mini" art exhibit in Scottsdale, AZ. The exhibit isn't mini but the art itself is. All entries must be 6"x6". I took the opportunity to get a start on what I've been wanting to do most. Paint women in my watercolor and oil mix style.

Plein Air in Watercolor

2010-11-09T12:48:00.000-08:00

Here are three plein air paintings I did last week while the weather was so amazing.

The Mike Malm workshop inspired me to do some more painting from life. There seems to be so much that you lose in a photograph, even a really good one. But the real benefit of painting from life is that you tend to paint quickly. This causes you to focus less on the details and just see the big picture, or, in other words, the composition and value shapes. Details are just icing on the cake. Even really good icing can't fix a nasty cake.

Artist workshop with Mike Malm

2010-11-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

I just had the pleasure of taking an artist workshop with oil painter, Mike Malm, Oct 25-28. The workshop consisted of painting models from life in

oils. It was the perfect opportunity to hone my figure-painting-in-oils skills, which will be very helpful to my mixed watercolor/oil style.

We painted models cast in warm light, cool light, and backlighting.

Our main focus was creating interesting compositions by grouping value shapes, which is applicable in any medium, style or subject matter. As shown in the image above, Mike is grouping shadow values together in a simplified way to make the dark values hold together.

In the following images, for my last painting, I blocked out the light and darks of my image, creating interesting shapes. I made sure, as the painting progressed, that my light and dark values held together, maintaining the same shapes and patterns.

I took black and while photographs to show how the values groups held together from beginning to end.

Day 4 - we had twice the amount of time to paint this one as we did on the other days (6 hrs vs 3 hrs), as Mike demo'ed in the mornings on the first 3 days.

On the first day of the workshop, we used a limited pallet, which consisted of yellow ochre (as yellow), burnt sienna (as red), perm red medium (or cad red medium, in my case), black (as blue) and white. I used a variation of this pallet for all of the paintings I did during this workshop.

Mike Malm's pallet.

Day 1 - limited pallet, copy from famous artist.

Day 2 - backlighting, painting from life

Day 3 - warm light, painting from life

Domingo

2010-08-05T11:39:00.000-07:00

Watercolor and Oil on board. 16 x 20.

I was itching to do a portrait when I came up with this composition. There are so many wonderful and interesting faces in El Salvador with so many stories to tell.

Church at Ataco

2010-07-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

Watercolor and Oil on board, 20 x 24 in. One of the many churches found in Concepcion de Ataco, El Salvador. It'll be flying over to El Salvador on Sunday.

A Stroll through Ataco

2010-06-15T14:58:00.000-07:00

This painting is a compilation of several photos taken at the town of Concepcion de Ataco in El Salvador. My goal is to complete two more paintings of El Salvador in addition to this one before my parents move home from El Salvador and I lose my connections. I enjoy the watercolor/oil style so much that I've decided to stick with it, this, being the fourth of its kind. I've found the perfect amount of gesso to use to brighten the watercolors without losing the permeability of the board.

Macaws (Guacamayas)

2010-06-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

This is the third painting I've done in the watercolor/oil style. Also part of the series of 5 for El Salvador. In this painting I experimented with adding a light coat of gesso to the board before painting with the watercolors. This allows the watercolors to look closer to their original color, rather than being darkened by the brown of the board. Most of the light areas are watercolor whereas without gesso all watercolor areas would be dark. The disadvantage is that the board became less permeable and some of the pigments had difficulty soaking in, making them harder to work with. The advantage is that less oil paint is necessary to achieve the desired vividness.

SOLD

Las Palmeras

2010-06-15T14:36:00.000-07:00

This is the second painting I've done in the Watercolor and Oil mixture. It is part of the series of five paintings I did to sell in El Salvador (all of which have already sold). All the dark areas are watercolor and the light areas are oil. This was adapted from a picture taken at a friend's beach house at Playa Miravalle.

SOLD

Bird Feeder

2010-02-22T21:01:00.000-08:00

This painting is done in gouache, which is an opaque watercolor. It's not quite finished as it needs a few little touchups. It's based off a picture I took one spring while visiting my sister-in-law in Cleveland.

SOLD

Beach Boys of Miravalle

2010-02-17T21:35:00.001-08:00

Miravalle (El Salvador) is the name of the beach where my parent's friends own a beach house. They let us use it for the weekend. Apparently, Christmas time is the best time to go to the beach in El Salvador. The water is warm, the beach is hot and the waves are manageable. If you go in the "summertime" it's during rainy season and all the runoff makes the water mucky and the waves are too strong to be enjoyable. In my opinion, hanging out on the beach is the best way to celebrate Christmas.

SOLD

Apples

2010-02-17T20:38:00.000-08:00

There's a wonderful tree full of delicious cortland apples in front of my parent's home in Utah. On one misty, rainy day the setting sun shone particularly red, intensifying the colors of this apple tree. The effect was stunning.

SOLD

Iglesia de Suchitoto

2010-02-17T19:30:00.000-08:00

This is another scene inspired by my trip to El Salvador. This painting is an unorthodox mixture of watercolor and oil paints.

SOLD

Apaneca, El Salvador

2010-02-17T19:13:00.000-08:00

This is a watercolor painting I recently completed after my trip to El Salvador. My husband and I were visiting my parents, who live in El Sal, over the Christmas holliday. The town of Apaneca is a popular place to go zip lining. The square shapes on the hill in the background are the tree formations that provide shade for growing coffee. Our guides drove us up one of these hills to get to the zip line.

SOLD

Civita Di Bagnoregio

2009-07-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

This is a little town on a hill in Italy that I visited when I was living in Hungary during high school. Pretty cool little place. This painting took me a long time to finish (but not many hours to do) cause I started it before I got pregnant and finished just recently now that I'm mostly over my morning sickness. Unfortunately, the morning sickness set me back quite a bit with my art.

Worn - Illustration Friday

2009-07-01T06:42:00.000-07:00

I gave myself the challenge of completing an Illustration Friday piece this week. From this man's posture you can tell he's emotionally worn. From what? It's up for interpretation.

Yin Yang Fishies

2009-04-03T15:16:00.000-07:00

I worked out this composition about a year ago and I finally got around to painting it. Unfortunately the fish models used for this painting are now dead. They froze in my pond over the winter. RIP yin-yang fishies.

Crows in the Field

2009-04-03T15:10:00.000-07:00

I have a thing for crows right now. I wanted to put a bunch of them together in one composition. I think it turned out fairly cool.

Sugary

2008-10-03T09:31:00.001-07:00

These two are more than a year old. They were the first of my watercolor family life series.

2008-10-03T09:28:00.001-07:00

Family Gardening

2008-07-30T19:26:00.001-07:00

This is my latest painting. I just finished it today right before I turned it in to my client. I painted it for the BYUI Home and Family Department. They wanted a couple happy family scenes for the office walls.

SOLD

Fly Fishing in Fall

2008-07-26T20:48:00.000-07:00

Fly with the leader.

2008-07-24T16:55:00.001-07:00

I did this for a company in Idaho. The slogan was "Fly with the Leader." They printed it on post cards with flies and leaders attached to them to draw in clients and conventions. It's painted in watercolor.

Sunflower and Ladybug

2008-07-24T16:53:00.001-07:00

Oil and acrylic on board.

Sunflower and Bee

2008-07-24T16:52:00.001-07:00

Watercolor.

Thistles

2008-07-24T16:46:00.000-07:00

This is the first of my flower and bug series. It's oil painted on a wood board. Although thistles are extremely obnoxious weeds they have surprisingly beautiful flowers.

Lord, Save Me

2008-07-24T16:25:00.000-07:00

"But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" (Matthew 14: 30-31)

The wonderful thing about every miracle Christ performed is that they were both literally and symbolically instructive. This painting of Christ lifting Peter out of the Sea of Galilee was painted from the perspective of Peter to communicate that we are the ones sinking into the raging sea of sin and trials and need to call upon Christ to lift us above the water.

SOLD

The Multitasker

2008-07-24T16:10:00.001-07:00

Too much to do. Too little time. Women were made for multitasking.

The Last One

2008-07-24T16:00:00.001-07:00

Four cookies and three children. It's almost cruel.

Cat vs Spider

2008-03-13T21:13:00.000-07:00

This is the newest painting from the same dark kitty theme. Maybe I should call this series "The Adventures of Camber the Kitty: How He Spent His Nine Lives."

Cat vs Crow

2008-03-13T21:06:00.000-07:00

This is my first full-out digital painting. It's a fusion of my darker side and my cat obsession.