Rhodies in the Rain Forest

by Godfrey J. Ellis – acrylic 1990

The cover of a Northwest magazine featured a photograph of these beautiful rhododendrons growing in the rain-forest out in the peninsula.  Unfortunately, the cover also contained a large barcode as well as the titles of the articles inside, and so on.  These covered much of the picture.  Even if we had been able to somehow remove those, the picture would still have been too small.  Merry and I realized that the only way to have a copy of that beautiful scene, I would need to paint it.  I had no idea how to paint the leaves and found the project very frustrating and difficult to pull off.