Winos, Dingbats & Riff Raff

This was my last painting from Winter term. I used a photo from The Oregonian newspaper and tweaked it a bit. It's 18" x 24" in acrylic.

I ended up darkening the lettering on the building front after I took this photo of the painting, but otherwise it looks the same. This place is called the Historic Barge Inn Tavern located in Newport, Oregon, an Oregon coastal town.

This website has a nice article on Newport and this tavern: http://www.oregonlive.com/O/index.ssf/2009/01/newports_piece_of_the_authenti.html

I haven't actually been to the Barge Inn, but I intend to go....one of these days.

Hapuna Beach Painting

This was my frustration painting of the term! I painted and repainted and scrubbed out and painted again. I think I painted over the whole thing about four times. That's one of the great things about acrylic! You can "erase" it.

I tried leaves on the tree - no leaves, a variety of different colors, a mountain - no mountain, clouds - no clouds, flowers - no flowers, umbrellas on the beach - plain beach.

This ain't perfect, but I can live with it. It's 9" x 12" in acrylic.

EP

Cheater Painting

This second painting is a copy of an oil painting by Kevin MacPherson http://www.kevinmacpherson.com/. I believe it's called "Serene Pastures". I found it in a book that I checked out from the library and I guess it reminds me of South Dakota and Minnesota and Iowa. I like green and I like cows....what can I say? This painting is 9" x 12", in acrylic.

This was my first real experience in mixing colors with acrylic. I'd mix a color that I thought was close and found out it was very WRONG. I also found out that I wanted to treat acrylics like watercolor. It was hard to make the transition from thin to thick paint. The original painting is impressionistic and kind of loose, which I had trouble duplicating. But, in the end, I like it. I had this old, antique frame that fits perfectly!

Emma Pod

C3PO

Hi Sparky!

Long time no see. Well, it looks like I haven't posted anything since May 2008! That's damn near a year ago - and entirely too long, I might add. I'm just glad that my blog is still here and my login still works. I had to look up my password though.

Since I last posted, I switched jobs. I had been doing an interim management job for 14 months and decided to return to my academic advising position. It was filled with a temporary person while I was gone. Things were hairy last summer and fall and in late November 2008 I made the switch. It was a bit strange for awhile, but all is going well now! I like working with students again and I'm happy to not be in charge of very much.

In January I decided to take a painting class at the college. We had a choice of using oils or acrylic and I chose acrylic because it's less messy and dries faster. The faster drying is both a good thing and a bad thing I've discovered.

Our first project was to find a picture with high color contrast. We cut out a small piece from the original photo, about 1" x 2". Then we blew the small pics up in the copier and graphed the image to a larger canvas.

I picked an image of C3PO, from Star Wars...just his head. This is it, my first ever acrylic painting. It's 18" x 24" in size. I'm not sure what I'll ever do with this, but it was kind of fun (and odd) to paint.

I'm happy with this image and I learned alot in the process. I'll post the rest of my winter class paintings.

EmmaPod

EDM Challenge # 166: Draw a Fish

This is my drawing for the EDM Challenge #166: Draw a Fish. It's a White Spotted Pufferfish, my favorite fish to watch..

We see them when we snorkel in Hawaii. They look almost like a dog or a seal - they're very curious and slow and cute.  They follow you along as you snorkel, watch you with their eyes and flutter their little yellow fins.They come in a number of colors, but my favorites are the taupe with white spots.

We're going to the Big Island in one week, so will get to see them again!

I used wikipedia for a source picture. Here's the link and pic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pufferfish

EDM Challenge #160 - Draw a Trophy or Award

For this drawing we had to go into the Way Back Machine Sparky! Back to 1972 to be exact. The challenge was to draw an award or trophy, and the last award I remember getting was when I was in high school. So I went looking through my old scrapbooks. Have any of you done that lately? It's a trip!

It was interesting to re-meet that girl who was madly in love with a boy named John, who belonged to 4-H and won a purple ribbon at the county fair in South Dakota.

I sewed a brown pantsuit, which you can see in this newspaper photo
(back when I weighed about 120 pounds). The boyfriend clipped it out of the paper and sent it to me with a sweet note.

The event was called "Dress Revue" and we had to sew our own outfits and model them for the judges. We were judged on both our sewing skills and our presentation skills. I went on to the State Fair and can't remember what I earned there....not another purple ribbon I know!

Ah nostalgia.......

Emma Pod

EDM Challenge #159 - Draw a Favorite Cooking Tool

The challenge a week or so ago was to draw a favorite cooking tool. I'm not much of a cook. And I don't have alot of tools other than the basics. No fancy gadgets hang out in my kitchen.

I dug out an old, old favorite item. It's a steel, side-crank flour sifter. It's got the turning metal spirals inside and a screen mesh on the bottom. It works great!

About once a year I use it to sift flour for cookies or cake or something.