Remember this plant from a couple of months ago? Now the Copper Canyon Daisies are in full bloom. They’re beautiful, but they stink to high heaven when you get near them. That’s probably a metaphor for something. Still enjoying my garden!
As I drove up to my art teacher’s studio this morning, I noticed a young black border collie trotting up the driveway. She looked friendly enough, so I wasn’t overly concerned about getting attacked — more like getting licked to death. I parked my car, and she came over to my door as I opened it. “Eh!” I yelled at her, making what Diana Gabaldon would undoubtedly refer to as […]
Today in art class I worked more on tone. I’ll show you the progression of a drawing in charcoal on rag paper. The first step is to determine the average tone of the setup, which in this case was a middle tone, about a 4 on a 1-to-10 scale, where 10 is the darkest. The setup was a dark wine bottle, a green pear, and a white onion set on […]
I’ve been learning to think about tone in a painterly way. Tone is the structure of a painting and is what makes objects appear to be three-dimensional. If you think in terms of movies, you’ll notice that a black-and-white movie tells you most of the information you need to know about the environment. You can tell what is grass and what is water and what is skin, and so forth. […]
Until this afternoon, the worst odor I had ever smelled was that of decomposing rat. Did you know that there is a product called RatZorb that is made specifically to absorb that smell? This is one of the many unfortunate facts about rats that I learned at my previous residence. Back to the present: I have a new “most disgusting” odor. It is burnt microwave popcorn. I’m not talking about […]
I stumbled upon http://www.archive.org, repository of classic cartoons and educational films. The Coronet series of films is hilarious. Try this one out: Are You Popular? They’ve got old movies, old newsreels, government films, music, books … it’s a goldmine for history junkies, and it’s all free. Edit: If you’re unable to watch the movie by clicking on the image, try one of the links that appear below it. They’re different […]
I haven’t fallen off of a cliff. Just FYI. Lately I’ve made a change from the art of writing to the art of painting. I’m learning to paint from a classically trained artist in a small, self-paced class. It is absorbing a lot of my mental time even though I’m physically drawing only about six hours a week. I’d like to post bits and pieces of things I’m learning as […]
In White Mountains National Forest of New Hampshire, the trees begin their change. Dusk falls over the hills. In the Green Mountains of Vermont, leaves fall like a gentle snow, softly striking the ground in an orange blur. At the Morse Sugar Farm in Vermont, the pumpkins await carving. Rain-filtered afternoon light flows through the jars of maple syrup standing guard in the sugar shack. They are the litmus papers […]
Saw this outside the house a few minutes ago. Random rainbow trivia: the ancient Greeks believed that the goddess Iris acted as a messenger to the gods and would travel along a rainbow to deliver her messages. I assume that tradition got passed on to the Romans because even today the Spanish word for rainbow is arco iris — Iris’ arch. Not often that I get to bust that little […]
A lot of people here in Central Texas believe we have only two seasons: Summer and Not Summer. It does feel that way. This morning the temperature dipped below 70 for the first time in months, and I overheard a little boy outside my children’s school complaining to his mother about the cold. He wanted a jacket. It’ll be 85 by afternoon, though, so he’ll be okay. We won’t be […]
Flabby Brain 