Winged Victory

This is one of my favorite statues.  Possibly because I remember sitting in the Louvre on the side steps with my back to a massive pillar sketching it.  The whole scene is very impressive the way it sits up on a pedestal at the top of a grand staircase.

For this painting I chose a bit of a close up focusing on the torso and wing.  I wanted to do something colorful and quick after laboring for weeks and months on the watermelon picture.  I did this in a couple hours.  It isn't great, but it was fun to play.

 

I don't think the wing was very successful.  The rest is OK.  I actually rather like it cropped down.  That's a little better.  I may try another version, now that I have more of a sense of the lines and shadows, or maybe not.  If I try it again I'll use different colors and mix them to retain their clarity.  I have a lot of mud happening, or maybe it is just neutrals.  It was a fun little experiment.

 



Eatn' watermelon (c. 1952)

Every family has a few classic photos.  This is one of my Dad and his brothers and sister eating watermelon on the porch of their house.  It's fantastic in so many ways.

 

I thought I'd give it a try and paint it.  I decided to go big with a full sheet of watercolor paper (22" x 30")  It's taken me quite awhile to finish.  I learned a lot along the way.  There are some things that I can see need to be better, but overall I'm happy with it.  I'll crop a bit off the top and left side and flatten it out.  You can really see the wavy paper in this photo. 

 

 

As a painter, my favorite parts are not the faces, but the red striped dress and the wicker chair.  I'm learning to add more color.  The dress has a lot of orange and purple and the chair has a surprising amount of green and blue.  This is what makes it a painting and not just a colorized photo.

 



On to the next one.  I think I'll tackle something a little simpler, looser, and smaller for my next one.

Marshmallow Creeps

I really like marshmallow Peeps.  Especially when they are nice and old and rubbery.  It's even better if the outer layer has dried out enough for the sugar to get crunchy bits.  Mmmm Mmmm.  So, when Buddy Boy asked to make marshmallow Creeps, I was all in.  (Creepers are from his favorite game, Minecraft, in case you don't have a 9 year old boy around to translate these things.)

Here's the recipe transcribed from the video you can find here.

 

approx. 2 bags marshmallow

2 cups sugar

20 drops food coloring

1 cup cream

9 oz chocolate

 

If I were to do this again I'd use a smaller pan, maybe 8x8, for this many marshmallows.  Our creepers turned out a little thin.  You also don't need this much chocolate ganache to paint tiny little creeper faces and toes.  I used 2.25 oz chocolate and 1/4 cup cream.  It was oodles.

 



School House Rockn'

Buddy Boy really wanted to try the after school play this year.  He absolutely LOVES scout skits and being on stage so we gave it a try.  They did School House Rock.  It is more of a musical review of great songs loosely tied together with a weak plot so that you can call it a play.  I remember watching the videos on Saturday mornings and being ever so grateful for the Constitution song when I had to memorize the Preamble for High School American History.

We got a CD of the songs they were learning and played it constantly it seemed for months.

The experience with all of the practices run by a grumpy director and crazy narcissistic choreographer at the end of a long school day wasn't all that great, but overall he still had a good time.  It helped that one of his good friends was there with him.  I didn't get any good photos during the performance, but here are a few after shots along with the video of his favorite song.

Happy Halloween

Halloween has come and gone.  It is fun, but sometimes it seems like the never ending holiday.  I'm OK with a Christmas season, but do we really need a whole Halloween season?  Enough complaining.  Here are a few of the things we did.

 

Carving pumpkins is a must.  It is one of the things I like.  Buddy Boy decided to draw his face rather than carve it.  I don't think he wanted to have the pumpkin rot so quickly.

 



Leah and Herobrine.  Princess Leah is pretty recognizable, but Herobrine is only known to the Minecraft demographic.  For the past couple years Buddy Boy has chosen a costume where it is rather difficult to see.  It becomes problematic when we trick-or-treat.  I found a pdf file online of the head graphic and all we had to do was tape it to the right size box and find a plain blue shirt.  We put plastic canvas over the eyes so that they would look white and covered the whole thing with plastic wrap since rain was predicted for the exact time of the costume parade at school.  Luckily it held off until the afternoon, but there were a few drips that would have ruined the ink.

My Girl's costume was pretty simple.  I found a long sleeve hooded t-shirt, sewed a simple skirt, and made a belt with 2" black elastic and called it a day.  The toughest part she took care of.  She's been growing her hair out for months so that she could have nice buns on the sides and no bangs.  The bangs just barely made it.

I'm glad she didn't choose Elsa, the latest Disney princess.  At the school carnival there were so many Elsas a friend had a hard time keeping track of her daughter.

At the church Trunk or Treat there is one family that always goes all out on the costumes.  This year as they were getting out of the car it took me a minute to figure out this year's theme.  They are all captains! (Except Grandma, who is the witch on the end.)  Captain Moroni, Captain Morgan, Captain America, Captain James T. Kirk, Captain Jack Sparrow, and Cap'n Crunch.  Such a fun family.

Each year the teachers at school dress up for the costume parade.  This year they all dressed as idioms.  My Girl's teachers were "two peas in a pod".  There was a smart cookie, a drop in the bucket, raining cats and dogs, Smartie pants, kicking the bucket, hold your horses, and others.  It was fun to figure out what each one was.

 

There were plenty of Minecraft characters in the parade.  I described the different characters to a friend whose son is still a toddler, Steve, Herobrine, Enderman, Zombies, Zombie Pigmen, Skeletons and others.

 

There were several Jedis and Storm Troopers, but there was only one other Leah.

Once the festivities are finally over, what do you do with the decorations?  Feed them to Lucy of course.