iphone art

I downloaded an iPhone art app (Scribble) the other day that allows you to draw on the screen... and after a few false starts, I came up with these two... Untitled Face and Neon Bunny...

I'll tell you what though... if I thought real painting was hard, virtual painting with just one finger, much harder.

There's not really very much going on in The Life And Times Of Yani at present.

Work is work, there never seems to be enough time here at home, and I realised the other morning that I haven't actually gotten laid yet this year.

I do seem to be on something of a cleaning binge though (which started yesterday)... actually I think it's more of an organisational/sorting binge to be honest (I didn't end up getting as far as I would normally have yesterday because I got sidetracked by sorting stuff out rather than just making it appear tidy)... I really need to go through all my tchotchka and take a bunch of stuff down, not only because I have new stuff that needs to go up, but I just want less of it around.

That sounds fine in principle, and when I look at all the stuff as a whole I know that stuff should be put away, but the problem comes when you look at each piece individually. Ah well, I'll give it a go tonight, see what happens.

Random Question: A guy works in your extended, extended team... he dresses exceptionally well... he's cute as a bug's ear... he's somewhat metrosexual (okay, quite a bit)... he also seems a little bit camp around the edges... but office gossip has it that he's "married" (although "to a woman" was never specified). Then you see him out at lunchtime with another guy who dresses equally well, is equally metro, and seems even camper around the edges (as far as you can tell from walking past the pair of them)... The question is: Is he a duck?

Anyway... as my Nanna was always fond of saying, "This isn't making the baby a bonnet"... so I'll be off.

Today's post was brought to you by the Ampersand (&) and the number 3,672 (which is the number of dollars an abandoned restaurant I see every day when I get off the bus owes in back rent... they just vanished before Christmas, tables set, empty till on the counter, Christmas decorations up... and nothing... until I saw the sign in the door today).

Current Mood:

painting: ticky tack

At last! After waaaaaay too long spent staring at blank canvases and one unmitigated disaster, I finally made something that I like on a giant canvas.

It's a little bit based on the Princess canvas, but these squares are much, much smaller (about 4cm x 4cm... and the whole canvas is a whopping 80x80) and these colours are way more random (and mean that I went though a whole bottle of white paint).

Actually, as I was saying to J yesterday when he was here (and while he was helping me unveil the painting from underneath the masking tape), I didn't do a lot of the things I've done in the past when it comes to painting (or design in general really)... I didn't overplan, I didn't obsess about colours or patterns or placement or not having two very, very similar colours right next to each other... I just let it happen.

And that's why there are some unpainted squares too... not because I had some grand plan to leave squares unfinished, but when I got to the end of the process and had mixed up all the colours I could think of mixing up, and had picked where to paint them completely on a whim... I had squares left. So I left it, thinking I might come back later and fill in those squares, but the longer I looked at it, the more I liked it the way it was.

I think that was possibly part of J's problem with it, since he's a Virgo, the opposite sign to my Pisces and he's all about logic and thought while I'm more about emotion and intuition... he could see that I'd done this very "mathematical" structure with the tape and the quasi identical squares (which they really aren't... especially when you get to the edges of the canvas... because I couldn't be bothered measuring the whole thing to the nth degree to get each and every square the same, so I just did it "kinda" the same), and then I'd been completely random and arbitrary with colour and placement... and I think the contradiction did his head in. But as I said to him after he mentioned the contradictory nature of it... "Hello, have we met?"

Interestingly though... even though the whole thing is TOTALLY random, every single row and column has at least one square missing on it. The most that are missing are seven, and the least, obviously, is one.

Luckily, when it came to the actual application of paint on canvas, there was really only one kinda sorta "problem" with it... and that was the red paint I put on as the very first colour... because this canvas was a different brand from the ones I'm used to, it soaked up the paint in a different way, and I put a little too much of the red paint on at once... and/or the paint itself was a little too thin, because it did bleed under the (not overly expensive) masking tape in spots... but after that I was fine, and spent an enjoyable evening on Monday watching Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and then America's Next Top Model while painting away happily... but once the tape came off yesterday the bleeding was REALLY obvious, so last night I had to sit there with white paint and a little brush and try and touch it up... you can kinda see it in the image if you look hard enough actually... I'm going to leave it like that for now, but if it starts to bug me once it's actually up on the wall, I'll bring it down again and retouch it.

As for the title... well, it's part of the continuing saga of the fact that the song "Little Boxes" seems to be haunting me (first at the election, now with this painting)... After my walk on Tuesday, I stood in the doorway between my bedroom and the lounge and looked down at the painting on my left, when suddenly the first verse of the song went rushing through my head...

Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes, little boxes
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

Specifically the bit about "a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one"...

It's weird though, I know the song is haunting me because Weeds is back on teevee, but at any given time it will be the song that's floating around in my head more than any other. So I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that I have a painting that's going to take pride of place in my lounge room that will continue to remind me of said song.

Of course, now all I need to do is sort out some way of hanging the fucking thing on the wall... but once it's up there I'll be sure to post a shot of it in place.

Current Mood:

painting: twenty first

This is the last of my half finished paintings... and it's for J's sister's 21st. I asked J a while back what B's (yes, I know her name is on the painting, but we're just going to stick with this initial thing okay) favourite colours were... but he's fairly useless when it comes to those things, and I got the half hearted answer of pink... followed by the fact that she'd painted her bedroom purple... so pink and purple is was.

Two shades of purple, three shades of pink, some glitter paint (the same stuff I used on Miss Oh Livia) and some white and silver, and voila! This was the painting where I'd originally put the pink glitter paint over the white circle... but it just didn't work... whether it was because you could see each individual little grain of glitter, and see how it all clumped up together, or what, I don't know... but I ended up painting over it, which was something of a chore in itself, since whatever the "paint" is that binds the whole thing together (I actually think it's glue given that it's clear and dries that way), once you put more paint over the top of it, it sucks up all the moisture in the liquid and makes it really thick. But I got there in the end.

Not bad all in all actually... and you can't say that I don't give unique presents (not that this is her only pressie... I also got her one of the Whatever It Takes mugs).

Current Mood:

painting: grasslands

This is the painting that I kinda did for Fox... it's kinda a green/brown version of the Safari painting I did last year...

Although the paint managed to get a lot further up the canvas this time for some reason. Possibly because it's different paint and brushes... who knows. I possibly used to many layers, it's not as simple as the original, but I still kind of like it.

It's really based around both the colour of Fox's bedroom walls as well as the small jungle he has in his front yard. And even though I haven't heard from him since the last time we ran into each other, I might drop it off to him sometime in December, mostly because it was always intended to go to him, plus, you know, Christmas.

Current Mood:

painting: miss oh livia

Her mother asked for a painting... her sister asked for a painting... but Miss Olivia, she didn't ask nobody for nothin...

And that's kinda why she got one (although it is only 30 x 30, whereas the other two are both 45 x 45).

This is the painting that Purple Rose was originally supposed to be... but I just like the cleaner look to this version, so I'm glad I started over. And because this wasn't "a request" I got to use colours I love... which is why it ended up grey, pink and white, since I have a soft spot for that colour combination... plus I always think it looks classy.

And the pink isn't blotchy, it actually has a couple of layers of "glitter paint" (which I think might really just be some kind of glue or "clear" paint with glitter in it) over the top of the pink. Although after a failed "experiment" on another canvas I need to remember that the glitter paint only looks good when it's the same colour as the paint underneath (I tried it over white... big, big mistake).

The "O" I made a stencil for, but the "LIVIA" is all done freehand, the same way I did the "PRINCESS" for her sister's painting. The title comes partly from The Color Purple (I can't place the exact spot, but there's a reference to "Oh-livia", with that particular stress on the "Oh") and partly because that's just how my brain has classified them... she's Miss Olivia, and her sister is Princess T.

I did go back and forth on Sunday night about whether or not to actually put "MISS" up in the top left corner (so much so that I called Ma to sound her out about it), but I actually think I like it better this way now. Interestingly enough, this is, I think, the first painting that has gone from my brain to the canvas without a whole lot of changes or substitutions or alterations (the false start notwithstanding)... when I originally thought this up, this is pretty much exactly the way I saw it.

My initial idea was perhaps that she could hang it on the door of her room, but I think possibly she's going to like it too much for that...

Current Mood:

painting: purple rose

Obviously Christmas is "painting season" for me... I have (or had until I finished up this one) four canvases on the go (this one, a possible piece for Fox, something for J's sister's 21st and something for my cousin's youngest daughter)... not counting the two I already finished that are Christmas presents...

This is another one of those "happy accident" paintings... originally it was going to be the basis for another idea I had... but I realised that for the idea in question and the person it was aimed at, it was way too overly fussy. Then Ma commented on it possibly on Tuesday... sometime recently anyway... but not yesterday... so I kind of thought I might be able to turn it into something for her.

While we were doing the Tea Tree Plaza thing yesterday we found this art supply store that was far too funky for it's own damn good (and had a floor that was very cool... just tons of paint in four different colours slopped all over the place), and as we left I noticed this cool painting in the window that had a background similar to this one. And it had this groovy almost tribal tattoo kind of foreground to it. So I figured, something in that whole genre might be good.

Of course, when I came to make something out of my canvas this afternoon I couldn't actually remember what the hell the painting I saw yesterday looked like as far as details went... so I tried sketching out a couple of things... thought about trying something a little bit seahorse, but that wouldn't come together for me... then was just doodling and came up with this rose idea.

So I sketched it out on the canvas, and added the leaves at the last minute (since I figured it was more likely to actually look like a flower if I added things that looked like leaves).

Looking at it now, I think I possibly should have done it with three "sides" rather than just two... let it overlap a little more... but all in all I'm not displeased with it.

But when it came to naming it, all I could think of was The Purple Rose of Cairo... so it nearly ended up being called "Cairo" before my better judgement won out.

Current Mood:

dammit dammit dammit

I actually feel like I might throw up right now...

And it's stupid... it's not really like anything bad has happened... well, you know, nothing IMPORTANT...

But I was sitting on my big red sofa earlier tonight supposedly watching Jeepers Creepers 2 and I kept looking at my BIIIIIIIIIG blank white Laura Palmer (ie wrapped in plastic) canvas...

I've been going backwards and forwards and sideways and longways and slantways and roundways on what I actually want to do with the bigass white canvas... and I didn't want to really make a start on anything until I'd made some kind of decision.

So there it sat, still wrapped in plastic, taking up half the goddam room and being all bright white and reflective thanks to the plastic.

And then I got all inspired... I figured I could recreate this design I'd done a while back in coloured pencils when I first started thinking about doing something on this scale. Which really should have been my first warning... I really haven't had that much luck recreating my earlier pencil designs in paint.

I took the plastic off, didn't I...

Now, technically there's probably nothing wrong with what I ended up doing... but I'm hyper critical about my own stuff, and I'm just not a happy camper right this second. It just didn't come out the way I wanted it too... the way I expected it to look. The lines which should all have been beautiful sweeping curves turned out a little jagged and the big curves didn't curve really big... or I turned them too early... and the curve that was supposed to be smaller turned out huge and probably the best of the lot... mostly because it was the last thing I did.

And the colours are probably a little dark, since I didn't do anything to the paint, I just used it straight out of the tube.

I'm also officially running on three different brands and types of paint right at the moment... the original stuff I got when I started this whole experiment... the stuff that's the same brand as the gold and silver paint... and the new stuff which is somewhat similar to the original paint. All this technically wouldn't be a problem, except that they're all different consistancies, and they all dry differently... the cheap stuff just "spreads out" and flattens out, whereas the more expensive stuff is thicker and stays that way...

So the yellow paint is all little pointy points, and all the rest of it, more or less, has flattened out to just be flat dots.

And I just feel physically sick... honestly, I do... It's not that the canvas cost hundred and hundreds of dollars or anything... it's just that feeling that I screwed up AGAIN.

I mean part of me just wishes that I'd never unwrapped the fucking canvas... that it was still there all covered in plastic and blank and mocking me with it's "not startedness"... instead it's sitting in the other room drying out and just being all "not right"... I don't even want to touch it to try and "fix" it... since I'm afraid that whatever I do to try and improve it will only fuck it up even further.

Fuckit, fuckit, fuckit, fuckit, fuckit...

I'm just going to bed... I'll deal with it in the morning... or, you know... not...

Current Mood:

painting: delicate

This is my other "painting by request"... at the same time that Princess T requested her painting, my cousin also said to Ma that they'd "take anything he's got"... see, this is what you get when you do something nice... *grin*.

Anyway, her vague request was "something pink and green" (I'm so overdoing the quote marks today for some reason)... so something vague and pink and green (with some white and gold mixed in, since I know she has a thing about the gold) she got... or will be getting... or whatever.

I really love the background on this... the blended pink/white/green thing (which is the other idea that I stole from the Better Homes wench... at least partially)... it worked out exactly how I saw it in my head. The stylised blossom things... not so much. It's the curse of my inability to paint "stuff that looks like stuff"! The thought in my head was very stylised and "Japanese" and elegant and whatever... and I'm not quite sure it translated onto the canvas. And you can't really see the three little gold dots inside of each of the pink "blossoms" in the photo... but they show up nicely when the light hits them just right.

My inability to paint not only a "straight" line, but also a line that extends very far without running out of paint bugs me... but then, maybe that's what happens in painting... who knows. And I don't like these slimmer-line canvases as much as the ones I've been using before which have a much thicker "edge" to them... they had a definite sharp angle where the top became the sides of the canvas, these have more of a slope, so the "pale gold" edging I put around this one kind of leaked up the edge in a few spots because it didn't have a sharp edge.

Not to mention the fact that I'll have to remember in future that if you mix gold paint and white paint you get beige paint, not pale gold. Okay, it's a little bit pale gold, but mostly it's beige.

I know it sounds like I'm whinging... and yeah, I am a bit... but overall I don't think it's too bad. It just didn't come out the way it looked in my head... but that's always been my problem with painting and drawing... good vision, lousy ability.

Current Mood:

painting: princess

As I mentioned in my current mood alt text earlier today, I started the day with pale blue paint on the side of my hand, but very happy and appropriately creative...

I started painting again last night, not my great big grand enormous canvas, but something else. I haven't painted anything since December last year, partly because I didn't have anything particularly running around in my brain screaming to be painted, and partly because I'd really run out of people to give paintings to. I mean I don't have the room here to just generate stuff without an idea about where it's going to end up.

It all started after the other week when Ma was at my cousin's place for the birthday of one of her daughters and I happened to call Ma (why I can't remember right now... possibly something on the teevee, I dunno) while she was there, which of course must have brought my name up in conversation, and probably got them talking about the canvas I did for them collectively last year.

Next thing I know Ma has called me back to say that Princess T (the eldest and the birthday girl) wanted me to do her a painting for Christmas... she didn't care what it was, so long as it was bright. She also rattled off four colours off the top of her head (blue, orange, yellow and pink), which I dutifully scribbled down on a nearby bit of paper.

Then when I saw Ma later (or maybe she called me after she got home, I don't remember) she said that my cousin also wanted another canvas... "something green and pink"...

I think at some point I kinda just banged my head on the wall a bit... I mean I occasionally have enough trouble coming up with ideas without being commissioned with a vague coloured request.

Ma and I were talking about it on Saturday and I was saying that I had some ideas but nothing, you know, concrete... plus I'm extra twitchy about the big canvas because I don't want to screw it up given the size... but Ma said "just paint something"... which was a good point, since it's worked with other things in the past... you just start writing or creating or whatever and it unstops the blockage.

I had some "spare" canvases (that we'd picked up at some point because they were cheap) tucked behind the bookcases, so I got two of the big ones and one of the smaller ones out just to see if they would spark off any ideas.

The canvases themselves didn't... but scarily enough, watching Better Homes and Gardens yesterday afternoon did... two ideas actually... god bless you and your scary artistic ideas Tara Dennis!

So last night I got all inspired and got out my painting supplies, strapped up one of the large canvases with masking tape and mixed up some colours.

Think it qualifies for "bright"?

The text I added this morning... and it's actually half of an earlier idea I'd had, since Princess T is in fact a princess... and who better to label somebody a princess than a queen? *grin*

Originally I was going to put a butterfly or something in the top left corner, but every time I tried to paint anything for that spot on a spare bit of paper none of it came out right, so I chucked the idea in. It also means that she can hang it with the text on the left or the bottom or the right without it looking like it's "upside down".

It's not bad though... and it kind of gave me another idea of what I can do with my enormous canvas... I just need to get some better masking tape.

Okay, now I'm off to finish watching Mannequin (so very 1987... love those fashions... but still fab!)...

Current Mood:

painting: purple

This is probably going to be my last painting post for a little bit... at least until the new year...

And, for the record, I actually finished this either last week or the week before (I'm thinking the week before, since I didn't really have a painting day last weekend)... and since the colours are all about me, this one is mine.

I'm not totally convinced that this is completely finished, but every time I think about adding something else to it I worry that I'm going to go overboard, so I'm just leaving it for now.

Current Mood:

painting: family

Yeah, I know... Sunday is normally "Painting Day"... but I'll be indisposed for pretty much the whole day tomorrow, so I figured it would be better to swap days.

This one is actually for my cousin for Christmas... well, technically my cousin and her girls... and it's the Chinese versions of their names that I found online somewhere (and if I have any Chinese speaking readers, keep the translations to yourself *grin*).

Although I did five years of Chinese in high school, and, for the most part, can actually write the few Chinese characters I can remember, I pretty much did this whole thing with stencils... like the seahorse painting... it was just easier that way... and they come out looking a little more "Chinese" than they would have done if I'd attempted them freehand.

The red looks a little sketchy in spots in the photo, but doesn't look too bad in real life. I also did about 15 layers of red on it, just to get the right colour happening... and did a few of the base layers with red and gold paint mixed together... so it has a slight sheen to it in certain lights.

I just wish I'd done the gold "signature" in the bottom corner a little lower and more on the very edge of the canvas... oh well...

Current Mood:

painting: brent

I'm so not having a productive painting day...

Maybe because it's hot, maybe because I'm a little distracted, I don't know...

Okay, I did get stage two of the Asian canvas done, but then I screwed up the last bit and had to wipe some of it off and paint over it... and I started something new, maybe for one of Ma's friends, but I'm not sure about it... and then I realised that when I put some orange paint on it, I managed to get little orange specks on the Asian canvas that I'd rather stupidly put on the floor next to the table to dry... so then I had to go over it with a fine brush and try and pick up each and every little orange speck... I did pretty much finish this purple stripey canvas that's probably for me (although where I'm going to put it, I have no idea), but it's kind of missing something, but I don't know what... and I'm afraid that if I do too much to it I'll overwork it, and that never ends well...

So I officially give up for today...

This is something that I actually finished two weeks ago... and, once again, it was a piece that didn't quite go according to plan...

Technically this is the third part of the Blogger Series... although this one kind of comes from a different place than the Eddy and Tom canvases... rather than coming more from a verbal/mental place, this one very much comes from a visual place...

Mostly, I guess, because the subject in question is a lot more visual... Brent Corrigan...

Actually, that's kind of weird in and of itself... when I painted it he was still Brent, but now he seems to be in the process of "reverting to his true self", Sean Lockhart (and for the record, there's something so engaging about that surname, I don't know why, but it just grabs me)... so maybe this should actually be "Sean" and not "Brent"... but anyway...

Either way, I chose to focus on something that is, in my eyes at least, instantly recognisable as "Brent" (or "Sean"... but let's not start that again)... and contrary to the image above, that's not actually his ass (although it is a very nice ass)... but rather, the star tattoo... which, yes, does happen to be very close to his ass obviously... but, to me at least, sums him up in more ways than one (both because he seems to have that star quality and because once you've seen him, he's instantly recognisable)...

I sketched out something in chalk first that was a little bit more representative of, well, his ass to be honest... and came out really well I thought... but when I came to paint it, because the paints just wouldn't play ball the same way the chalks did, it ended up way more subjective and abstract than I was originally going for.

Interestingly enough, I think the way it turned out actually says something about the journey he's been on in a bunch of different ways... the winding road... the whole concept of coming back up after being down and reaching a higher level than where he started... you know... all that good pseudo-psychobabble stuff that I honestly didn't think about at the time, only after it was finished...

But in the end I actually like the result (and hopefully, so does he).

I did email him about it, with copies of the photos, but I haven't heard anything back from him yet...

Subtle, ain't I...

Current Mood:

painting: tom

Tom, Tom, the Blogging Man...

This is Blogger Canvas #2: Tom...

When I originally mentioned the whole concept of both painting and the blogger canvases, I said "Tom would feature blue"... I think it's mostly because of his blog design rather than anything else... but it suits my mental image of him anyway...

And I always feel that Tom's writing is very "straight lines"... which isn't a bad thing, I just mean that it goes very clearly from A to B, and you always get the feeling he hasn't left anything out... but at the same time there HAS to be stuff that we don't see... which is why the straight lines (or straightish... given my inability to paint really straight lines freehand) all criss-cross like that... nothing seems to be hidden, but there are layers there... there's depth... and maybe some stuff that's hidden way in the back.

I'll also add that, for no real reason really... each of the layers has five stripes...

That, and the fact that in person it's a little brighter than it seems in the photo, but I can't get too much more brightness and contrast going or the top lines loose detail.

Current Mood:

painting: eddy

Eddy...

I've never encountered anyone who wears their Pride on their sleeve as much as Eddy... not even when I was heavily involved in "the community"... so of course I had to use the rainbow flag colours... I was intending to use stripes, but the damn red paint wouldn't play ball properly, so I went with the whole dot painting thing...

The other reason I wanted to use the rainbow was that I remember a post Eddy did not that long ago where we was saying that "rainbow" was his new favourite colour, or something along those lines.

I might need to revisit the whole "rainbow on black" thing at a later date for something else... since I liked how this looked even before the swirlies.

The swirlies are silver (because I know he likes silver too), and while they didn't come out quite how I had originally sketched them, I liked the fact that I was able to do a lot of them with a single brush stroke (even if I had to go back and touch it up in spots afterwards).

So yeah... Blogger Canvas #1: Eddy...

Current Mood:

painting: safari

This painting has been a series of screw-ups, recoveries and happy accidents from the get-go...

Originally this was supposed to be the "Eddy" canvas from the abstract blogger set that I'm working on...

It started out with a basecoat of orangey yellow... then I painted this random "J" shape on it in yellows and oranges... all swirly and interesting... and it was okay, but it needed a little work in one section, so I overpainted the whole thing again in the same shape when it dried... but I overworked it and the whole thing just didn't work anymore... so I actually rubbed all the paint that I'd put on with a cloth, which kind of smoothed out the original shape too...

Then I tried a rounded shape, kind of like a sun... you know... Eddy... Sunshine... it's a whole theme thing... and I quite liked the look of that... although the round idea was kind of the same as one of the other canvases I was working on...

After Tuesday's shopping expedition, and the fact that I'd decided to go in a whole other direction for the "Eddy" canvas, I thought I might try something in the gold paint on this one... so I tried out painting an Asian character in the middle of the "sun" (partly to test out an idea for another canvas)... but I didn't like how it looked when it was done... and ended up painting the whole thing over in gold...

And I realised that a whole gold canvas looked tacky, so I wiped the still wet paint off again with a cloth... but it only partially came off, leaving this faint gold sheen to the canvas... which actually grew on me as I left the whole thing to dry.

So I decided that it needed something in the "foreground"... fine stripes or something... maybe something grass-like... and that ended up being the new silver paint (with a little black thrown in to darken it down)... but for whatever reason, I'm having a ton of trouble getting my lines to continue the full length of the canvas... and was going to go back over the first line I made to fill it in... then I looked at it properly and realised that I kinda liked the effect of the "vanishing" paint...

It's a shame the camera can't pick up the gold and silver paint properly... but all the stuff that looks grey is actually silver...

A similar layer in black came next, and technically I could have stopped there... although it did look a little heavy I have to say, so the white was the final layer...

It's quite possibly the MOST abstract thing I've done so far... but somehow it came out feeling very "Africa"...

Oh, and for the record, this one, and all the blogger canvases are 20cm x 25cm... because I know at least one of you will want to know... *grin*

Current Mood:

painting: pink flowers

I gotta say, I'm not as sold on this one as I was on the painting I did last weekend... maybe it's because I just plain overworked this one, while the seahorse one just came easily, I don't know...

Maybe I should just have done the flowers with a much smaller brush, so they didn't look so much like they were painted by someone with no arms or left foot...

Maybe I should have just done "patches" of pink paint to represent flowers, like I did with the 103 layers of green paint for the background...

I dunno...

I suppose in the end it depends on what Ma thinks of it... but suddenly I'm feeling like I'm in primary school and bringing home some random piece of paper covering in nonsensical daubs of paint and expecting a big hug and a place on the fridge...

And I ended up redoing the beginnings of both the "Eddy" and "Tom" canvases... "Eddy" because I completely cocked up the first version my going over it too many times and essentially ruining what I had... and "Tom" needed to be redone in darker paint if the idea I have is going to work...

Grrrr...

I give up for today...

Current Mood:

painting: pink seahorse

Well, I was half right when I said I would have a stab at painting something "sometime next week" and that it would be for Ma...

It is for Ma (and now I'm going to have to find somewhere to hide this until Christmas), but I've actually been working on it for about half of the day today (okay, so not the WHOLE half-day)...

I started around lunchtime, only intending to do the "undercoat" on both the canvases (one pink, one green)... but I'd found a cool random seahorse image online that I then printed and cut out to make a stencil given Ma's ongoing fetish for seahorses...

To be honest, I'm not completely sure it's finished... but I also don't want to overwork it, or else I know I'm going to end up screwing it seventeen ways from Sunday... and I know it's not brilliant... which is partly because I'm using cheapass brushes and paints... but also very much because I have NO idea what the hell I'm doing...

And yes, since I'm not sure exactly how I want to end up signing these things, that is kind of an ellipsis as my signature in the bottom right corner...

This was a three-movie painting too... Boogie Nights, Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Breakfast Club... what, I'm going through and watching all my movies in alphabetical order... shut up...

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one step closer...

Okay, normally I would have left this to Monday and babbled about it in my Montage post... but it might have made Monday's post a little more rambly even that the usual amount of ramble... so here I am...

Like I mentioned last Monday, I've been feeling that the Universe is nudging me in the general direction of the idea of painting... and it kept happening this week... during Oprah this week they happened to show some of the post-Katrina families getting their new homes, specifically the Bon Jovi funded ones, and there were a couple of abstract painting on the wall of one of the houses, done by the kids who were going to be living there...

And I've just started noticing all the paintings in the backgrounds of various teevee shows and stuff... weird...

So, while Ma and I were running around town today, I brought up the whole subject of the Universe and painting with her... and she suggested that we hit the "cheap shops" and see what we could find (not that that wasn't already my plan, but it's always nice when we're on the same page).

We ended up going to just about every single cheap shop, and a couple of not-so-cheap shops to get all the supplies...

• The two canvases, the artists brushes, and the "house" brushes all came from Cheap As Chips...
• The bottles of red, blue, yellow, white and black acrylic paint (that way I can make any and every colour possible), plus the blue tarp (for the floor, or maybe my sofa, I dunno yet... but just in case) came from The Reject Shop...
• The sheet of calico (under the brushes) came from Lincraft...
• And the very hard to find artist's pallet was eventually tracked down at Spotlight...

I'm not even going to think about adding up how much it all ended up costing... I only hope that a) I actually end up liking this whole painting thing... and b) I can get the stuff that's in my brain out onto the canvas in some appealing form...

Not sure when I'll have a stab at it... sometime next week I guess... And I think the first one is going to have to be something for Ma...

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