Yesterday, I posted images of my 1-Hour painting Lilies, and within minutes someone asked me how much that this painting would cost.

Lilies – Jacki Kellum Acrylic Painting Created in 1 Hour

I came back with the price of $300, and I could almost hear jaws drop. “What? $300 for 1 hour of work?”

Well, the truth is that it took me several hours to create this one study of lilies. First, I had to go flower shopping.

I began by rummaging through the very reasonably priced bunches of flowers at my local Aldi store, but they didn’t have any lilies.

I continued my search at Walmart. They had lots of lilies, but they did not have the speckled lilies that I wanted for my painting.  Naturally, that stop was complicated because I also needed to pick up my pharmacy order while I was at Walmart, and that took another hour, and I also needed to buy some masking tape. In addition, while I was at Walmart, I needed to check to see if they carried a case for my iPad. No, no case for my iPad, but oh, yes,  the Verizon Store is across the street from my Walmart. I decided that I’d go see if I could file a claim on my iPad which was cracked due to a recent fall. Well, maybe the claim would work, and then I wouldn’t need the new case–yet. I stood at the counter in the Verizon store for about an hour, and after a lengthy call, [at least another hour] the answer was “Yes!” Because I had faithfully insured my old iPad, they would replace it. With that good news, I bounced back toward home, but on the way, I needed to stop at Hobby Lobby. Before I painted my lilies, I needed to buy some new brushes.

I also needed some new canvases.

After I stopped to get something to eat, I sauntered toward home.

I needed to arrange the flowers that I had bought on my outing,

And I needed to tint my canvases.

But I still did not have the lilies that I wanted for my painting that day–the pink ones.

After about 4 hours of searching on the Internet, I found a photograph of the lilies that I wanted to paint, and that led to an hour or two of sketching and then of drawing my lilies on my tinted canvas, and voila! Many hours later, I was ready to get out the paints that I needed and then, to paint lilies for 1 hour.

So, you see, it takes several hours for me to paint any 1-hour painting, but just to further plead my case, I must add that I had spent hours deciding which paints I would buy and then, I ordered the paints. It took 10 days for my order of paints to arrive. Beyond that, I must say that I began painting over half a century ago. First, I studied painting in high school. After that, I studied painting in college, and I grew up in a home where my dad was a trained cartoonist. For nearly all the years of my life, I have studied from my dad’s cartoon books.  After I earned the credentials necessary to teach art in schools, I taught art for several years, and believe it or not, that required more time and study from me. Over the course of several years, I have spent hours, days, months, and years painting–1 flop after another, and a few success stories along the way. I studied painting in college and in graduate school, and I painted some more. I switched from oil to watercolor, and I sloshed water and color on thousands of pieces of watercolor paper.

Fiesta – Jacki Kellum Watercolor Painting

And years after that, I decided to try acrylics for the first time.

I began by painting sunflowers.

And I painted more and more sunflowers until it was time. In one short hour, many, many years after I began it, my painting came together:

Lilies: A Jacki Kellum1-Hour Acrylic Painting That Took 60 Years to Paint