House Painting in 2010

I think this is from two years ago, when we painted the back of Mom and Dad's house.  Brian risks his neck while Kevin supervises.  That's some scary fun right there.

I just found the photo on my phone among the old pictures and realized I probably never showed it to anyone.

Run aground

The younger daughter and I went canoeing out at Jefferson Memorial Forest on Saturday.  She started out well, and I broke out the camera, but then she went all Italian cruise ship on me and forced me to paddle. I thought six-year-olds could handle a canoe better than that. Jeez.

Priming

So far I've primed about 450 sq feet and 1,000,000 rolly polies.

Green bee in my garden

It looks to me like this is an Agapostemon Virescens, also know as a metallic green bee, a memeber of the sweat bee family.

Lunch, Lily, and Little Sketch

Today for lunch I went for a walk behind our office building, in the woods along Goose Creek. I encountered this lone lily growing in the woods, pretty and sort of odd.  I wish the flash from my phone camera had not washed out the colors so much.

 I also made a little ballpoint sketch of another plant growing next to a picnic bench on which I saw for a while.

I stood on a bridge and looked in the creek for fish I'd seen there before, but I didn't see any.  They must have been hiding, but perhaps after weeks and weeks of drought and high temperatures, they perished.

The blue jays were raucus.

Another house portrait in progress

Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

Fishing video

I found this entertaining...

Metal detecting lead

 

 

There's a house near my office building that I notice each time I drive past.  It's a large, old house. I don't know how old, but I'm sure it's pre-1900.  I notice it for two reasons: It would be a nice house to draw or paint, and the yard would be nice to metal detect.

 

For much of the past year, I've looked when I've driven past to see if anyone was outside for me to stop and ask about metal detecting.  Finally, today, I saw a work crew.  I stopped and went back to look closer; it looked like they had been painting, and there was a truck for a hardwood flooring place, and they were cleaning off the front porch.  I asked if the property owner was around, and they told me to knock on the back door.

 

I'm usually pretty uptight about talking with people I don't know, so knocking on a stranger's door is hard for me, but I try to foster a little glibness now and then.  So I knocked and waited. Then I rang the doorbell. Then I knocked again. No answer.

 

I walked back down the long drive to my car, and crossed paths with a man walking across the yard.  I asked him if he was the property owner, and he said he was, so I explained my purpose.  He seemed like a nice guy, and told me that they were preparing for a wedding (which is funny, because even though there was nothing wedding-related in sight, I couldn't see that large old white house in a large green yard with white trucks and working people dressed in white without thinking that they were setting up for a wedding.)  I gave him my card, and he said he'd set it aside and call.

 

He also said the yard had been metal detected before, but not much had been found. However, it's a very large yard.  I have to think that there is some interesting stuff there, somewhere.  Here's hoping!

Fw: Phone

Here's the email I just sent to Kevin.  I tried to make sure it was written in such a way as to be understandable by one of his younger generation.  It's just the sort of thing he likes.  I should also add that the screen touch-keys on my phone are tiny and sensitive, my fingers are not tiny and sensitive, and I didn't bother to correct mistakes.

 

"Hey k i lost my old phone n now i need your phone number man can yoi plz ail it to me? How i like my mad textin skillz? Luv i bro.

Mark"

Sent from my Motorola Smartphone on the Now Network from Sprint!

Sent from my Motorola Smartphone on the Now Network from Sprint!

Trip to Conner Prairie in Indianapolis, early May

First fishing trip

I went fishing for the first time this year last Friday morning. I just went for a couple of hours, since I had various other things to get done, but it felt great to get out.




First, just to get this bit of suspense out of the way, yes, I caught fish. One bluegill and one smallmouth, both too small to be proud of, but fun to catch anyway.



This was also the first time I’d ever tried creek-wading to fish. I probably loaded myself up more than most anglers do for wading, because I wasn’t sure if I was going to stick with just using a few different lures for bass. I wanted to make sure I could switch to any other technique I felt like trying.



I think my preparations paid off. I put an assortment of tackle into a small tackle box, and put the tackle box into a vinyl satchel to carry. The satchel was also (barely) big enough for the plastic jar of worms I dug up in the morning but never used. I packed a few Ziploc bags for my wallet, phone, and camera, because I intended to get wet. I wore my fishing vest and old trousers, and liberally soaked myself in Off! before heading out because I found a lot of ticks the last time I was in that area.



The water varied between ankle deep and almost waist deep along the edge of the creek. The water felt good; it was peaceful; and I think I even saw an otter in the distance at one point, though it might have been a beaver, which I know were nearby because I saw the chewed-up vegetation.



I caught the smallmouth right at the edge of some ripples, and he jumped as I reeled him in. He was very pretty and bronze.

I didn't wade very far. Probably not more than an eighth of a mile.

I think the smallmouths are targeted pretty hard by local anglers. I’m wondering what kind of success I’d have looking for catfish there? I never hear anyone talking about catfish there, but I don’t think many people look for them. I really want to go back and spend a while fishing some slow-current spots for bullheads and channel catfish; I think they’re there.

Looing upstream

Looking downstream

Ferrari Spider commission finished

 

I finished this commission in time, a couple of days ago. This is a 2004 Ferrari Spider, oil on panel, 16 x 24.

 

The background is cobbled together from a few references, and quite a bit of it is just made up.  I had never painted a palm tree before, but I think these look sort of nice.

 

What a show

I saw two big productions over the weekend.  Last night, thanks to my friend John, I was able to attend The Wall Live, performed by Roger Waters and a bunch of great musicians and a host of production personnel.  It was spectacular, and we had great seats.

Also over the weekend, I attended another wonderful performance in my own back yard!  Here is the invitation:

And here is another handout, a synopsis to entice us to attend:

It, too, was a fine production, completely silent, obviously well-rehearsed, and with great props (there was hula-hooping, small plastic stakes used at hunting implements, and a water spray bottle for cleaning the invisible prey... which they did eat with enthusiasm.

Rock climbing

 

These are some crummy cell phone photos, but you can still see what a great job she did climbing!  These are from a birthday party last week.

House Portrait drawing - sort of a rush job

 

 This drawing is 8 x 10 inches, black walnut ink on bristol.  I only had a small window to get it done, soI worked fast on this one. It's not quite a "polished" as I usually like, but I'm pleased with it nonetheless.

Still so many basic things to learn

  

Pretty frequently I'm startled by my lack of art knowledge.  Sure, most people I know really aren't into art, and have almost little working knowledge of any media.  To them, I'm sure I seem like I really know what I'm talking about most of the time.  And to other, more established, experienced artists, my lack of knowledge isn't surprising at all.  There is so much to learn that, even you are devoted full-time to learning about art, there is always something new to discover.

 

Still, I regularly learn something that makes me think, "Wow, how could I not have known that?"  The most recent example is pyrrole red.  This is a pigment that was developed in the 1980s, so it's been around a while.  It's a relatively inexpensive red, cheaper than the expensive cadmiums.  I've learned (through internet research) over the past week that it's a great, versatile color, and very bright.  Many artists consider it a very important tool.

 

I don't have this color.  I don't have any reds that have this pigment in it.  Get this: this color is also nick-named "Ferrari red."  Hey! And I'm painting a Ferrari right now.  I guess I'd better buy a tube and check it out.

 

Another thing I think about, related to the above:  I feel like the technical aspect of painting was largely glossed over in my university studies.  What did we talk about instead?  Well, there were a lot of generalities (don't over-mix the colors…perhaps you want to try more muted tones…etc.).  Most of all, I think there was discussion of the drawing aspects of painting, such as getting value right (something that, honestly, probably can't be over-emphasized), proportion, paint application and brush strokes.

 

I can recall very little discussion, however, of opaque pigments vs. transparent pigments, or having on hand cool and warm versions of the same hue.  There was certainly little information presented on glazing, which frankly I'm not sure any student I was with every really attempted.

 

I'm not at all faulting any of my professors.  They had their hands full just trying to coax us into the ability to paint a portrait with vaguely human features, and I am forever in their debt.  The information has always been available for me to learn.  Maybe I don't really every learn it until I truly need it.

Bird: Beginning and Intermediate Levels

 

 From a start of four robin eggs in the butterfly bush beside our house, only one hatched.  We saw it the same day it hatched, tiny and feeble and limp, but I failed to get a photo.  It didn't take long, though, for the bird to be big and feathered.  The day after I took this photo I saw it standing on the edge of its nest, and a couple of hours later, it was gone.