Saturday, July 26, 2008

6 steps to FAIL

1. Load up van with trash from your garage.

2. Drive to county landfill.

3. Drop of old air conditioner at Metal Recycling pile.

4. Drop off old office chairs at the "Swap Shop"

5. Put it in reverse and do a backwards U-Turn over to the cardboard recycling dumpsters.

6. Get halfway to the dumpster (all of about 75 feet) and get broadsided by the BACK END of a roll-off dumpster. Which is on the back of a truck. Going backwards. Only it wasn't there when I started backing up. In fact - it was coming toward me from the road - FACE FIRST- when I started backing up. I have no idea what sort of magic it takes to do a 3-point turn in .003 seconds and cover half of a parking lot in reverse, but that dude sure has the power.

Van was tipped up at a 45 degree angle getting pushed across the lot. The one picture shows the groove the rear wheel (opposite the side of impact) made after the tire exploded and the van was nearly pushed over by a stinking garbage truck.

At least nobody got hurt.



Thursday, July 17, 2008

Cover Painting

Bands play cover songs. I guess artists can do cover paintings.

I learned a lot about playing guitar by playing other peoples songs. In much the same way, I'm learning a lot about color and composition by recreating an existing painting.

This one is in-progress, but it's decent enough to show, I think.

Also worth mentioning, aside from the ruined Onions painting, this is the only one I've ever done in more than one sitting. All of the rest have been done start to finish in a span of about two hours. This one was started in April as a sketch on canvas and a light blue wash (which can still be seen in the village). While this was drying, my son decided it would be a good idea to smear some white paint on it with a fan brush. Up until this week, it's sat on my kitchen table looking a mess.

I sat down Tuesday night and started working on the sky. I immediately found the small 16x20 canvas size to be limiting. It's excruciatingly difficult to get the brush patterns to appear distinct at approximately one-quarter the size of the original. Thus, I decided to let the first stage dry and I'd try to get the finer detail with a teeny-tiny sable brush later.

Wednesday I did just that. The stars with lots of white around them were done with the small brush. The stars with more yellow were done with a bigger brush and I don't think they look as good. But if I layer some more shades into them with the smaller brush I think it will clean up quite nicely.

Starry Night: