**edit** This piece has received a lot of traffic (thank you hibbery!). So I thought I'd throw some news out. He is for sale at my business site [link] Prints are also available there for excellent costs!

So a completely different beast of a painting, this is the first large painting of the series. The reference photo was taken by and can be found here [link] . I couldn't resist using this photo due to the heavy contrast and fabulous lighting.

Suprizingly this was painting number 2 that was started quite a while ago. Due to a series of "I'm stuck" moments I had to lay him aside and work on other things. My smaller pieces take about 2-4 hours to finish. I'm a strange person and track my hours by the movie, since my favorite way to make artwork is to let a movie run in the background.

This painting took 6 movies to finish. I first sketched him out lightly in white watercolor, because I wasn't entirely sure where he would be going as a finished piece. I also used white watercolor because I was a dumbass (i'll get to that in a bit). All I knew was I wanted to work with a green and purple theme. So I started with the background like any good artist and played with a warm light source like sunlight and balanced that with my fun funky purple acrylic I had. I also used an old ratty brush (a must have for any serious painter) and set to work slathering and splattering purple fun here and there on the piece, then letting the brush claw some of it into a direction.

So like a dumbass I didn't realize that watercolor would run under the watery usage of acrylic. This made for a huge challenge as I tried to bring the contrast back up on the black board. I settled on a combination of chinese white watercolor and canvas primer (another artistic must have). So I was left with a sickly albino... well I don't know if it could have been called a lizard at that point. So frustrated I put him asside mid movie and went to work on another smaller piece.

Those smaller pieces kept me encouraged as an artist, letting me know I don't suck and that I'm not hopeless in trying to complete something. So after some long throught I realized what I could do. I ran out to Dick Blicks (an art store chain I used to work for) and got some permanent green gouche paint and a few other assorted things (canvas, paint, paper clay, misc crap to restock my supplies as well as prep for projects I will probably never get to). I have a rule to keep my bipolar madness to buy EVERYTHING in check, I have to be able to carry what I want with my two hands, no carts, no baskets, no cheating.

My former boss from 3 years ago was in and he actually recognized me. I'm about 3 inches taller, with 18 inches less hair, and much cooler glasses than I had when I worked for him. So we chatted for a while about how much nicer the store had become and how much easier it was for me to find stuff. Eventually my over burdened hands holding my stuff was getting heavy and I said my goodbyes and headed to the checkout.

As the employee checked me out Keven (my old boss) walked up and told her to give me 20% off (WOOO MY OLD EMPLOYEE DISCOUNT!). I was so greatfull and touched that after all these years I could still get my 20% discount.

This carried me with high spirits and the iguana actually came to life with the help of that opaque green awesome. There was some fighting between the purple and the green, but eventually the war was over and my iguana was born. He sports a silly little grin as he is as happy to be on canvas as I was to paint him.