The Christmas Train is here

The Christmas Train is available at Amazon, soon to be in stores as well. I consider it a real honor to have been chosen to illustrate this book. The paintings turned out well and I really love the story. The publisher (Deseret Book) Sent tons of photos of Thomas Monson and his family to use as reference for the paintings, It was sort of an inside glimpse of his childhood and family life. For the most part the book looks great, there are some color shifts that always happen in the printing process so I have learned as an illustrator not to get too attached to the color in your paintings. Anyway, its out and I hope you all go out and buy copies for all your family members, I know you will love it, after all the author is really good and the illustrations aren't bad either.

thanks.
Dan

Cover for Upland Tales

This is a painting I did a while ago, traditionally I might add. The editor of a magazine I work for on occasion called the other day and asked it I had an image that could be used for their youth magazine, after thinking about for a while and looking through my files I came across this painting I originally painted for a Farm Bureau christmas poster, I changes the farmer and added the child pulling the sleigh, the pheasant tracks, moved things around a bit to accommodate the magazine header and this is how it turned out. They like it, I'm going to get paid for it again and the world keeps turning...
I hope you like it too.

Updated painting

It seems I am never satisfied with my work and  if I have the time, cannot resist making changes, in this case I think the changes were warranted and make for a better image. I changed the temperature and value in a few places trying to control the composition a bit, added the wood in the foreground, put a shadows on the wall,  cleaned up a few details here and there to fill up the narrative. All in all I am more satisfied with the results. I'm sure there will be more changes in the future. The wonderful thing about working digitally is that the changes are effortless, well, maybe not completely but at least easier than starting over or painting out things in oils. I am looking  forward to the next painting in this sequence and hope you stay tuned.

Dan