Tag: painting

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Hobbies

Park at night

Last night Jane and I went to another Wine and Canvas class at Tiato. I’ve gotta say, I like Tiato well enough–it’s big, makes decent drinks,  has plenty of parking–but damn, the lighting SUCKS. I spent waaaay too much time trying to get my green grass as electric and vibrant as the instructor’s, and it turned out it looked just fine under better lighting, but the dim lighting just made it look muddy. Also, sitting on the instructor’s not-painting-hand side means you end up looking at her back most of the night.  I’m mostly happy with the painting, though.

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News Whining Work

Wigglebutt, wigglebutt!

This post has little to nothing to do with wigglebutts, but that’s what we like to call my nephew sometimes, so it seemed like a nice random post title for today.

This “posting every day” thing really isn’t working out too well, is it? Well, the year is still young, hopefully my posting ethic will mature right along with it.

Today’s WW meeting was good, in that I lost about a pound and a half–that’s over five pounds lost now, woo! Five pounds in a month is a tad slower than I’d like, but every loss is a good loss, so whatevs. I really need to get me some mason jars, though, as I think this idea is awesome and would help to motivate me, especially now that I can immediately put five buttons/chips/marbles/etc. into the “Pounds Lost” jar. (I, too, originally saw this idea on Pinterest, but I’m too lazy to find the original source.)

My plan for the rest of today is to work on updating a client’s website, replacing most of the Flash objects with javascript/html5 scripts–yet more evidence that Flash is indeed on its way out. That makes me sad, ’cause I’m pretty good at hand-coding in Actionscript 3, and not so good at all at coding in javascript. Time to update that skill set, I guess.

And once that’s done (the client site, not the skill set upgrade), I have two eps of Lost Girl left, which is DEVASTATING to me, ’cause I can’t find the current season eps anywhere online–not Hulu, not Amazon, not even Syfy’s website. NO FAIRS! Not everyone has cable, Syfy! WTF?!

So, that’s my day. I’d hoped to work on my bear, but once again I forgot to print out any copies of the original, and my freehand bears really really suck, so, no bear for me.

Happy Saturday to y’all!

Categories
Hobbies

Bear crossing road, redux

I painted today. Sure, I went to Weight Watchers and lost 0.6 lbs, but mostly I painted. And Face Timed with my nephew. And painted.

I still hate the bear painting (which still doesn’t have a bear), but perhaps less than I hated it last week? This time I added buildings and telephone polls and globby cars and a very snowy-looking road.

It's supposed to be summer, but I don't think that's what I'm seeing yet. Stupid snowy road. Stupid mutant cars.
It’s supposed to be summer, but I don’t think that’s what I’m seeing yet. Stupid snowy road. Stupid mutant cars.

The receding red car kinda looks like a Hummer, or a low-flying UFO. And I crossed my streetlights above that red roof. Oops. And no, I have no idea what the blue stuff is behind the green car. I was trying to imply other cars, but it didn’t really work out.

Bah, humbug.

Categories
Hobbies

Painting did happen, just….not well

I painted. There was painting. I think it was a crime against all paintings, but yes, I did paint.

I sat at my easel, with my sketched canvas, and decided I needed to loosen up first, so I got a blank canvas, chose four colors I hadn’t used yet, and just started slapping it on in random movements. I covered the canvas, and it looked terrible, so I took my painting knife, and scraped some new patterns into the web paint.

Eh.

I like using sponges, so I spread one with pink paint and dabbed some splotches on. And they looked vaguely like flowers. So I dabbed some purple over those, and used a thin brush to add some light brown stems. But it was all so dark. White is often the answer to dark, so I smushed some around the pink and purple blobs. And along some of the brown stems. Then some green along the stems for some leaves. And this was the end result:

Blobs of flowers on blobs of color
Blobs of flowers on blobs of color

Possibly my least favorite painting so far, I haven’t decided. I think it’s still too dark.

So I put that aside and got started on the bear painting. I decided to block out the lights and darks, like I’ve seen suggested on several blogs.

blocked_bear
Blocked canvas, showing where gas station, sidewalk and departing car will go.

Then I wondered why the fuck I’d chosen this subject. So I sponged some foliage all over the green parts (sorry, forgot to take a pic), and hated it even more, so I decided it was time to walk away for awhile.

This was Saturday. It’s still sitting there, waiting for me to return and turn it into something vaguely resembling more than color blocks. Maybe Friday.

Categories
Hobbies

Bear Crossing 16

Ok, so I’m not exactly nailing the whole “post every single day” goal, but I’m trying, and it’s been a good month of plenty of posts. Yesterday was a late day at work, so I just couldn’t face any more internet for the day.

And just to get this out of the way, despite my “don’t wanna” state of mind, I got myself out of bed and off to Weight Watchers. I lost .4 lb this week–not as awesome as last week’s 3.4, but a loss is a loss. This week I’ll try to eat more veggies and less bbq sauce with my chicken.

For the rest of the day, I plan to work on a painting. January is almost over, and ideally I’d like to do at least one painting per month, so I keep progressing instead of letting all my expensive supplies go to waste. However, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s been hard to sit down and put something on canvas, partly because I couldn’t decide on a subject, and partly because I’m afraid of not living up to my last two awesome paintings.

To get over that, I’ve decided that today’s painting will likely be my worst painting ever, and so be it, ’cause this is a hobby, not a job. Who cares if it sucks?

For today’s suckitude, I have selected this photo from a vacation I took in 2008, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Yes, this is a young bear crossing rt. 16 in North Conway, NH. Apparently he was headed towards the hospital.
Yes, this is a young bear crossing rt. 16 in North Conway, NH. Apparently he was headed towards the hospital.

I have done a preliminary sketch, and now I just have to slap some paint onto it.

Sketch of Bear Crossing 16
Sketch of Bear Crossing 16

Ok. Here I go. Time to paint.