Painting 1

Colton Bierman "Giants of the Heartland"

16x20”, Acrylic On Canvas, 2022

While going around Iowa on google maps street view I was going around Jackson-Clinton counties on County highway E62 I saw a set of grain bins with a beautiful blue sky scattered with clouds and I decided it was a wonderful landscape to paint.

I used acrylic paint to make the background then added the base of the bins where the concrete would be. I then painted the grain bins themselves and the pipes connecting them. I added small details in the grass and then added the clouds. I then took a metallic paint marker to make the lines in the grain bins.

The work is a landscape in the country and does not mean much. I want to audience to look at it and just think about the countryside of our wonderful state.

The biggest challenge in the whole painting was the fact that I have never painted before in my life so this was a huge challenge to learn how to mix colors and to get good brush strokes so it did not look sloppy. I overcame this challenge by not worrying about my mistakes. I just kept on going and got a painting I was happy with my skills.

Faceless Heros

12x12", Acrylic on Canvas 2022

My artwork is a portrait of a firefighter with the background of a smokey /fire area. I got the idea from my experiences with firefighters throughout my life including my own dad. It started with a portrait looking just like that but with a quote above the fireman but I gave up on that due to time restraints

It started with the background where I made a gradient starting with red and slowly mixing colors until it built up to a dark gray at the top. I used a paint marker to define the outline and arms of the fireman and to get the nice silver lines of the reflective material.

The artwork is a portrait/tribute to firefighters everywhere and how they are all heroes. Seeing a fireman approaching you in smoke with an scba on can be a struggle to see their faces hence the faceless hero's name. Just think about how a majority of firefighters are all volunteers doing all the work for no pay in this county.

Mixing the colors of the reflective material was extremely hard. It took multiple failed attempts to get the exact color I needed, and when I did get that color I would end up running out of it and struggling to make even more

This is realistic as I made a portrait of a real person making it look just like a real fireman standing in a smokey room.