Post election painting

 I woke up this morning on November 4, 2026 and no reason felt patriotic and wanted to paint about it.

 I decided on ultramarine, burnt Sienna, yellow ochre, viridian, and titanium white.  I laid in a gradient background of the first three colors and then mixed viridian and white to put in the foundation of the final image. 

Before I put the image in, however, I was thinking about how much the world was watching the elections last night, and how the past two years have been continuous slaps in the face of people who have always been our allies. 

Whether it represents erosion, rain, or tears, or whatever, I felt like doing something drippy down the background. So before I laid in the final image I took a dropper with odorless MS in it and squeezed it out as I ran it across the top of the canvas, and then across the middle of the canvas. 

The canvas is a 24"x36" stretched canvas that has been sitting around in my studio waiting for a painting. 

Then I started laying in the image, using a silicone spatula and palette knives.

I started refining the image, at first I was going to make it more lifelike, and put in the beginning of redder lips. 

I thought the blue was a bit too dominant so I ran some ochre back over the blue, and did some more drippy stuff.  

The initial image looked kind of ghostly, so I started putting in some darker viridian. 

Next, I started trying to refine the eye area. Then I decided to make it more like the actual sculpture and took out the red lips, and worked some shadows back in with meridian mixed with a bit of Sienna. 

... 24x36" / 60 x 90 cm oil on stretched canvas, "Beleaguered But Not Defeated."