Tuesday's Workshop, August 15

More rough color studies:

Wish I'd had more time on these-

I liked the energy on this one:

I think this last one is interesting. The color masses structure out nicely.



These things are hard to photograph well.

Workshop, Tuesday August 8th

Here are a couple of drawings from this week's workshop. The first one got overworked, but I figure I'll need to overwork about a thousand before I begin to know where to stop. I do think I'm finally getting somewhere.





































This last one is a quick sketch of Toni. I'm happy with the way it turned out.

A few drawings from the last couple of workshops

Last Tuesday, adam and eve. I was sitting over in the Eve section.






This Tuesday, dressed as dolls.

Some pics from my drive around the Southwest/Midwest

As always, click for larger images. This post is a work in progress and will grow over the next few days.
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I ran through a nasty thunderstorm on the way to Oklahoma City. When I hit a rest area, I stopped to take pictures:





In the next shot, you can see tiny funnels spiraling down toward the earth just above the light.

I didn't see any of them make it, but I was driving in tornado alley so...




...I got back in my car and kept in front of the storm.


When night fell, it caught up to me again and I could see literally HUNDREDS of lightning strikes. There were so many, I broke out the camera and had time to take a lot of shots, some of which were interesting.




Well, interesting if you like blurry night photography, which I do.

I did manage to catch some lightning.




That would have been a great shot if it was in focus. :-(

The camera kept trying to focus on the windshield wipers and taking forever to get the shot. Had to set it to manual focus while driving and being buffeted by the winds. Then leave it on for about 5 second exposure and hope it got something.















I could hear that last one even at 50 MPH in the storm.

Finally it got so bad I had to stop taking pictures.

Ironically, about 45 minutes later my car got pummelled by bricks floating out of a flat bed truck. They looked like styrofoam coming out of a bag, but when they hit my car they made a tremendous smashing sound. Big gouges in the hood and windshield.



The Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma has some great paintings. Remington, Nicolai Fechin, etc.. Sadly, I forgot to take my camera. I didn't make that mistake when I went to the Museum at the












From a random field in Kansas:

Completed Birdhouse, off to charity.

Here's a couple of shots of the porch. Notice the addition of the lovely chair and windchimes. Nice finishing touches.







































I'm actually a little sad to see it go. :-(

Ahmah's Birdhouse, about done-

I guess this would qualify as having a cat laying around the house.

Pimp My Birdhouse & sleeping kittens

The kittens commune and recouperate after a long day. They visited the vet because they all had a cold- sneezing and congested coughing. The vet assures C. this is nothing terrible, gave her some food supplements, and recommends she not give any kittens away prior to their full recovery, preferably to houses where any other cats are up to date with their vaccinations.








We were all relieved to hear that.

Prior to a full check up, we had all been worried.

The kittens weren't worried. They were just chasing feathers and sneezing. Now they're napping and we all look forward to their final clean bill of health.








~Change of subject~

A few days ago I had a project politely dumped in my lap.



Each of the show crews at C.N. is working on a birdhouse. A simple little birdhouse is to be decorated and donated to a local school where it will be auctioned off with proceeds going to the school. Artists being artists, the charity project became somewhat competitive between crews. The birdhouses became more and more elaborate with extensive show related decorations.

When my car was finally running again (defective steering computer chip), I zipped down to Ken's house where he risked fingers and toes extensively pimpin' my birdhouse. As we started work on the basic birdhouse, we had noticed that the roof line was the same as Ahmah's house in my show:






Sadly, I didn't have this piece for reference, so we had to go by memory for some of the design. We also simplified & exaggerated many of the design elements. After all, it is a charity birdhouse based on a cartoon.



Several hours later, the birdhouse pimping was largely completed. I spent the next day gluing a couple of pieces on and roughing in the paint. Still have a ways to go, but here it is so far:



As you can see, I've propped the birdhouse up on my wallet to approximate the angle of the show painting. Seems doubly appropriate since a birdhouse is about all the California real estate I can afford.

I'm looking forward to seeing this finished. I'll try to get pics of the other crew's birdhouses. I've seen the ones from "Squirrel Boy" and "My Gym Partner's a Monkey", and they're pretty cool. Hopefully our show's will turn out as well...

I'm breaking show style a bit with my painting. The flat graphic style isn't visually as interesting on a real object. The colors are also a bit off at this stage. :shrug: Hopefully Alan won't mind the cheats. ;-)

More kitties.

Getting close to release date.

Hot cat on cat action pics...

OK, so... cat on dresser.



































And cat on cat box.











and cat sayin' "What you got there in your hand?"











And cat attacking pant leg.

















Relaxing on the dresser.













Feather is spotted.

















If you rub them together they become briefly uncertain how to proceed.



















When you leave the room, you can hear them gallop around like tiny little horses with velcro hooves.



























They climb anything, and hang upside down, suspended by two back toes while attacking a sibling.












































Sometimes it's fun to get puffy and hiss at the dog for no reason.























The dog is dying to herd them.











Apparently feet are excellent to chew on.












As are other cats.











































Humans are primarily useful as Jungle Gym and obstacle course.



















Strings now make perfect sense, and absolute focus is maintained.