Florida 19
Another partial scan since this one is too large for the scanner. The copper paint of the tree trunks doesn't show up and the colors are somewhat different, too. But the texture is unreal!
Another Christmas story
Here is a story from one of the ACEO members:
Last night all 3 of my children came down with the stomach flu. Not just one, but all 3!
As soon as the first barf roared it's ugly head, the washing machine was going at full force! But then, I load the first load of stuff into the dryer, and MY DRYER WASN"T WORKING.
So the barfing continues throughout the night, the washer is going, and there are all sorts of sheets, wash cloths, towels, jammies, blankets, hung up all through out my house in a feeble attempt to get things dried. Well the barf soon whipped butt on the washing machine, and before slipping into bed myself, all 3 of my babies were covered up with sleeping bags and yards of fabric off the bolt.
AND THEN.
I wake up around 3:30 am, and realize that the tree lights are still turned on the Christmas tree, so I assume my Survivor Outwit position and slide under the tree to grab the plug.
The tree tipped over and pinned me to the floor
I layed there for about 30 seconds, winded, full of sap, pine needles in my underware, and I started to CRACK UP!!
My husband (who was passed out from the overwhelming parenting he had to help out with) wakes up and comes running down the stairs and yells at me, "What in the Hell are you doing?"
Like I did it on purpose..
I'm laughing so damn hard that I inhale a pine needle and then begin to cough so hard between laughing that I pee my pants.....
The thought of how I must look, and the thought of dying under my Christmas tree because of Pine Needle asphyxiation-While my home reeks of Barf- was just too much....I laughed so hard I peed my pants and I'm not ashamed to admit it...
Florida 18
Here is another partial scan of my latest Florida painting. I should be finishing up Florida 19 tomorrow as it is very close now to being complete. I love all of the texture that is showing up in these current works.
Florida 17
I don't know that I will be able to part with this painting (just yet at least). This photo doesn't show the iridescence of the paint that was used to create it, but this one is very special. I am madly in love with this painting at this point in time, so it's not going to go on eBay...much as I would love to show it off to people there. Everything about this piece came together beautifully and it was easy to finish...a rare occurence. It's got that magical quality that lives very close to my heart line...there's a resonating vibration with certain pieces of artwork that hits an individual...whether it is their own creation or someone else's. Everyone has this happen to them at some point in time.
I've had other paintings do this to me, and eventually I was able to part with them. Sometimes it took me years to be able to do so, but I managed it somehow. So for now, this piece is mine and I will enjoy it to the max!
Florida 16
I had a lot of fun creating this painting. It's done on 20 x 30" Heavyweight Crescent Illustration Board, which is pretty thick. So at times I was wrestling around with this large piece after spending the past couple months primarily painting in 2 1/2 x 3 1/2" formats.
I did this one in liquid acrylics from Golden, which accounts for the vibrant colors. I applied blobs of paints at the top and then pulled the paint towards the bottom of the painting using a credit card...this created some very nice branches. Then I went in with a white ink pen and made hundreds and hundreds of white lines to add texture. On the tree trunk, I kept the lines in black ink and in a simpler format.
New Flower paintings
Shawn photographed these pieces for me today after we stuffed ourselves with turkey and all the goodies. This was the best photo shoot that we have ever had in the 4 years that we have been messing with it. Those first 6 lessons that he took from the New York Institute of Photography certainly made a big difference in his ability...and I can already hear him now poo pooing that fact, but by george it went very smoothly and I was thrilled with the results. Naturally, it's never quite perfect as a duplication of the artwork, but with a 5 mega pixel camera, I think these shots came out pretty well.
Meeeeeeeery Christmas!!!
I was up until the wee hours this morning painting again. In years past I would be up getting things ready for the Christmas feast, but I'm going to my son's house today and get waited on. :)
Jeem is back home in our ACEO group...just made an appearance in there, and already the place is a-flutter with activity even on Christmas day. Someone noticed that he had signed up to rejoin the group last night and they posted a Hello Jim thread, and it has been flying high ever since. He's on his good behavior at the moment and being all nice and sweet and wishing us all a Merry Christmas, and I can't wait to see when the zingers start to fly again. My prediction is by tonite...so I might rupture myself from laughing tonite when I get back from the eating holiday.
Christmas eve
Just because I was feeling adventurous this afternoon, I ventured out into the madding crowd to see what these earthlings were doing. It was like being on an ant hill...little lines of earthlings everywhere you looked (usually not moving very much), throngs and masses of them swarming into and out of stores, and others racing around in little vehicles.
I was busily balancing my checkbook today and began to think about the year-end calculations that will need to be done and I needed a printing calculator so that I would have tapes of the totals. So off I went to Walmart which was so mobbed that it looked like a NYC store.
While I was in there I got to thinking about what a great documentary you could do on Walmart shopping and how the Chinese are taking over our country now that we are gazillions of dollars in debt to them...and we continue to shop till we drop, charging up the credit cards to have presents to give out tomorrow...most of which are useless items that we most certainly could have done without.
I strolled thru Borders books and enjoyed a double latte...my own special Christmas treat to myself. I didn't buy anything, though, because I already have WAY too much stuff and I don't want anything else! I just liked looking at the pretty pictures in the books, and came away with a few ideas for some artwork that I want to try out.
The highlight of this excursion was when I came upon 2 vehicles that had smashed into each other trying to get out a parking lot. It looked as if one or both of the drivers had suddenly accelerated their vehicle from frustration at having to sit at the light for so long. The one girl was sitting in her car shaking her head in disbelief and the ambulance then arrived to check her out for injuries.
So far today I have heard emergency vehicle sirens 3 different times...so the earthlings must be having some adventures of their own. It has been a fun day, but I am finished with my excursions. I was invited to an open house tonite for Christmas eve, but I don't feel like going out anymore. I already shot my wad.
Memoirs of a Geisha
What a lovely, aesthetic movie! I had read this book years ago and wondered how on earth they would manage to make a decent movie out of it...and by jove, they did it. Very impressive indeed. Normally I don't enjoy Japanese music very much, but this score was wonderful and fit perfectly with the movie.
Many scenes were so gorgeous that I wanted to stop the film and start painting what I saw. Many other scenes made me feel so cold that I thought I was going to freeze to death...these people basically lived in paper houses! And it snows there, for god's sake. I wouldn't last 24 hours...
The discipline that some people have, too, is really amazing to me. Being a westerner, I want everything right now and I hate waiting for anything. Parts of Japan, I am sure, must be much more culturally similar to this viewpoint these days. After this movie I was telling my girlfriend that I don't think I have ever in my life loved any man the way this character did. My girlfriend has been happily married for over 30 years, so she had a lot more reality on this scenario than I did...I can't even imagine sharing my home with anyone at this point!
Cannonball
ta da!!! Here he is ladies and gentlemen...the one, the only...Cannonball! He has been created as a study prior to creating a larger painting, so this isn't the final version by any means. The Clearwater Jazz Festival has a poster contest and the deadline is January 6th, so I thought I would get busy and see if I can come up with a frog that I could enter. Here's my first one.
eBay hacker problems?
It was wild and wooly on eBay all day today. The artists in many different groups were all talking about how screwed up things were...I've never seen it like this before. We think some hackers got into the works and messed things up. As usual, the live help people were clueless as to what was going on and were denying that it had anything to do with the eBay system itself. Come on...
Anyhow, here is a partial scan of another painting that I finished up today. It has just not been sunny enough yet to get photos of the other 5 pieces that I have completed. I should have Shawn come down here where I have spotlights to use and photo them here...maybe we will do that on Christmas day when we get together.
new ACEOs
SOMEBODY STOP ME!!! I have plenty of art cards in my eBay store now...about 24 of them still unsold, but I keep making new ones! This is addicting. Apparently my snowmen are addicting, too, because everytime I put a new one up for auction...bang! he's snapped up. This is a good thing. I put these new cards on a 5 day auction instead of the usual 7, since we have Christmas coming up in a little over a week. I don't know if people are going to want to get the cards before Christmas or not, so I thought I would shorten the auction time and see what happens.
Rudy & Rudolph
I decided that it was time to work on my Frog series again and today I created 2 ACEOs (studies) for a larger painting in that series. Rudolph the Red-Eyed Tree Frog is the first one that I did...he's on the right in this blog. Although, he's very cute...the horizontal lay-out is very boring. I also noticed that it's hard to tell the red nose from the red eye in both paintings...I will have to alter the size of the noses one way or another...otherwise it's hard to tell what the painting is.
I'm planning to do a third study/ACEO of the same subject, incorporating the changes that I want to make and also making the colors brighter...maybe putting some color into the background? I will be posting one of these guys on my eBay auctions tomorrow to see what happens. I have found that it's better not to post more than one of the same thing at the same time because that affects the bidding.
Doodles 48 & An Artists Life 2
One more Florida piece
This one started out as a line drawing that I made while watching TV one night a month or so ago. I was just going to leave in it the black & white stage and do nothing further with it, but as I discovered (unhappily) this past year...black and white items are not big sellers. I had an entire series that I called Black & White, which consisted of 20-some collages of my various line drawings and photos over the years. I loved the series myself, but it was not well received in artdom.
Consequently, the series was either trashed or given away. I still hope to one day return to making another series along the same lines, and maybe by then I will be known in New York City art circles, and the Black & Whites will be popular. You just never know...
More Florida
This was the Floridian piece that I was yakking about before...the abstract with a hint of reality thrown in so that the viewer can understand what the subject matter is. You can't really see the copper on the left very well, but it and the green areas are metallic. I LOVE this painting...even three days after I completed it. I might have to keep this one for myself.
The lines add another whole cool dimension to this new string of Floridian pieces that I am making. Oh, yeah, I should scan a part of this other one that I completed this week, too...
Another Florida painting
Again this is only a partial image of the completed piece, but I did get another one done today. This one is on canvas and measures 11 x 14", plus it's on the thick 1 1/2" gallery-wrapped canvas. So I have painted the sides of the piece in black and it can be hung just as it is without a frame. The partial image looks cool the way it is off-center and all...maybe I will paint my next one more like this view...
Middle of the night painting
Yes, it was another one of "those nights" last night as I was up until nearly 2:00 am painting. I finally had to step away from the painting since I had just made a large error and managed to correct it before it was too late. That was sign enough for me to pack it in for the night.
Again, this was another Floridian piece. I have scanned in a portion of the painting here so that there is some visual to accompany all of this blabbing that I am doing...
Doodles 46 & 47
These two little Christmas trees got created tonite and posted on eBay. The background on the scanned images looks really orange, while the originals are more reddish in color, but I was unable to get the color to turn red using my Paint Shop Pro software. So I left them in an orange hue. Whoever buys them will be pleasantly surprised when they get them because the originals look a lot better.
Fa la la la la, la la la la.....
Doodles 42 & Phoebe-girl
Herb, my Christmas frog, has done pretty well as an ACEO...I have sold everyone that I have posted in the past month. So I thought I would try my Phoebe as an ACEO and see how she does...
Doodles 39 & 40
Some abstract fish parts to go with the Gezeldafish for the holidays...including a fish tale...
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Doodles 124
6:30 am on a Sunday??
Black & White image
Florida 59
Viacom vs Google
Tour de Chaos
Pet Video Contest #10
Klimt revisited
A lot to be grateful for....
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