I'm bringing this commute painting series to a close. That's right - this is the last one! Finishing it up with an even dozen, after a full year of doing these paintings once a month. I've thoroughly enjoyed it, and I feel like it's served its purpose. It got me out of a creative rut, allowing me to highlight the beautiful scenery I encounter every day on my commute to work, and I experimented with a new digital painting style. I've even begun to incorporate this style of art into my food illustrations from time to time, like here and here.

If you love these commute images, don't worry - I'll still be instagramming #commute photos like the ones that originally inspired this series. And who knows; maybe I'll even pick this series up again some day. There are still SO many of them I would love to paint.

However, I'm setting this series aside to make time for some other blog content I'm really excited about. I always have way more ideas for this space than I have time for, so I'm attempting to hone in on the content that I think will be the most interesting for everyone. (PS - have you taken my reader survey?)

Thanks for all of the support you gave this series. I know a lot of you particularly enjoyed seeing these each month. It makes me happy to know that some of you who originally came to this space for food also appreciate my little landscape paintings. You're fantastic!

To end this series I picked an image that was very unlike any I had done before. I also picked this one because it's a winter scene, thinking it would be a nice way to welcome in this new season. As much as I hate the cold, some of the commute images I took last winter (like this one) were a reminder of how beautiful that season can be.

Pictured above is the original Instagram photo (on the left) next to the final painting inspired by it. You can read more about why I started this series here, and you can see my photo editing process for the Instagram photos here.

Thanks for riding along with me on this commute painting journey. I've always been a very detail-oriented artist (can you tell?), so working on a series like this is not something I ever would have expected to do. I think it was a great experience for me (I often had to tell myself to put way less detail in the paintings), and I had a great time working on it.

Here's a look at all 12 paintings together: