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Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not. It pays a whole lot better than this type of compulsion, but it is no more heroic.
-- Julie Burchill
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Blog Posts for "watercolor"
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Red Flowers: About 1/3 Done |
 ETC: I've abandoned this painting... I wasn't happy with where this was going... |
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It occurred to me the other day that my web site here can be construed as: Be At Canvas Heh - I kinda like that. I had so much fun painting my mom's Mother's Day card yesterday that I painted her husband's card today, for Father's Day.  He lives for golf. And for taking care of my mom, which makes him a great guy. I like this "paint a card on my lunchbreak" thing. It's fun. |
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Getting Ready for Mother's Day |
 In kind of a sentimental mood, I painted this for my mom's Mother's Day card during lunch today. I've been thinking a lot about my daughter, who leaves my nest this year, and I've been reminiscing about my own childhood. Understandably mushy stuff inside the card, of course. I love my mom. |
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Stopping for the night. I'm going from left to right, so I should make my way to the trees in my next pass.  I'll paint the red flowers last... they're in the foreground and the focus. |
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Red Flowers - First Steps |
I'm having a lot of fun with this painting while INXS does "Taste It" in my headphones.  It's bigger than the little postcard paintings that I did before. After working on it more, there was this...  From this:  Woo hoo! Enough with swatches of colors and theory. It's good to push the brush around again. |
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I'm new at painting, so I'm backtracking to get some basics. Clothes... that's a good place to work. Folds of clothing escape me, so I started this at lunch and finished it this evening.  Does it look like a plaid shirt and an Army jacket? |
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Still Life, Um, Standing Still |
I took today off work, which was fabulous. I slept for a while, hung out with my kids, who are on spring break starting today, and I painted. Here's the current red pepper and onion painting, with a view of the transitions between each sit down.  
 But now what? It needs a background, but I don't know what I want to do with it... cutting board? Plate? Dinner table? Fade to white? Beats me... I'll noodle it through. Aaron has his friend, Sonny, over and they are conquering the Covenant in HALO 2.  He'll be staying for dinner tonight. Should be a great evening here at home. I am so glad that I took the day off. ETC: The kids all like this painting. My daughter, who is smart about things like this, suggests that I paint a black-and-white tiled countertop. That seems smart to me because it's a good background without detracting from the color of the pepper and onion. ETC, ETC: After scrounging through Google images and doing some sketching, I think a gray marble tile countertop would be nice. A pattern, even as simple as black and white, would pull too much from the focus of the vegetables. |
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And now for the finer brushes...  You know, oftentimes we start out with a rough sketch in our heads - a vague notion - and if we bother to take repetitive passes at it, we hone it and make it better and it starts to come together. Not just about painting or drawing, but anything in life. Persistence will hardly ever bring failure. A friend of mine has a favorite quote that goes something like: It's not success or failure that defines us, but the effort. It's all about the journey. Which is why we shouldn't be afraid to just stick our feet into whatever it is that we wish to do. |
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More progress on the vegetable still life.  Comparatively, painting a face or a complicated street scene is much easier, I think, than painting a simple vegetable. For that reason, I'm enjoying this. I'm applying the washes and getting a sense of the detail. Still using big brushes for this. And for some reason, my monitor has taken to an occasional flickering that removes all of the red and leaves only blue/green. Which makes a red pepper look more like an eggplant. I hope to finish this during the weekend. I have all five kids this weekend, and they like watching me paint. You know, when I'm programming, I'm not social at all. But when I'm painting, I actually like talking with people while I paint. Jacob and I discussed the finer points of silent "e" as I painted. He was reading a book, and the notion of long and short vowels is a new concept. He's in kindergarten, and his progress in reading this year has been wonderful. So he sits in the chair next to me and makes comments as I paint ("Dad - that's pink. I don't think it's pink like that in the picture.") And reads a snippet or two from his book. Or asks about words that are complex. Later, we'll probably watercolor together. One of my favorite books - just to look at - is The Treehouse Book. And we're not talking little simple treehouses... no, we're talking houses in a tree.  Now that's a treehouse.  I find this sort of thing very appealing. |
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Worked for about 15 minutes on the red pepper. Time constraints prevented more work on it, but it's better than what I had first done yesterday. And no longer resembles Bob the Tomato.  |
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