Some More Paint

Spent some quality time with my painting today (though I'm not certain that either of us is any better off for it).

Seems to have gotten a bit out of control again. A new sky is apparent, the third repaint since the last update. Still about three hues too cool. Worse, I've lost the lines of the airplane under the generous beginnings of my rough color overlay. I'll be days fixing this one. Stay tuned, folks.

Three-Gallon Hatchery

Spent the other day cleaning out somebody's shed, so that it can be moved, so that an excavator can get in, so that a leach field can be dug, so that the plumbing works properly, so that, you know. Yeah.

Anyway, the garden pond needed to be drained and dug up as well, and so I find myself in sudden stewardship of a whole lot of goldfish. We spent four or five hours trying to net them all (at least three bright orange, five-inch fish remain at large in the murky eighteen-inch-deep pond), with several dozen fry in several sizes being brought in. The young 'uns currently reside in a well-lit, heavily circulated five-gallon bucket, where they are quite content to swim in circles and munch on protozoans. And anything else they can, actually. Goldfish aren't picky, even when they're this small.

The works

You can see some of the bigger and carotenoidally advantaged ones here.

Most of them are the size of a grain of rice, and brown.

Cool, huh?

Progress In The Unmistakable Form Of Color

Well, I've finally made the decision that has needed making for weeks and broken out of my umber world, having found myself in something of a mire. I've already worked the sky over twice; the first attempt, subject to miscalibrated lighting, produced a moody, oversaturated cloudscape that would look about right over a moonlit ocean but, needless to say, is a bit out of place for the occasion.

So I mixed out the blues a bit and it looked much better but, still lacking proper lighting conditions, it looks as though it may still be a little bit too deep. The plan is, as it stands, to take another look at it tomorrow and, should it actually need the amount of revision I think it does, to turn tail and hide myself behind a wall of art books.

Consumer Warning

As it turns out, I'm allergic to rentals.

No, really. I took my tux back with time to spare and a noticeable bounce in my step but, upon waking up the following morning, found myself covered from the neck down with the ol' red and itchy. Three days of dermatic irritation ensued, complete with oatmeal baths, ice bags, boo-boo kisses and other such ephemerally satisfying but ultimately futile home remedies. At first, of course, I thought I was suffering a bout of poison sumac; by the end of day one, blemished from head to toe with red blotches and pink streaks, moaning pitifully all the while, I could have been fairly mistaken for a calamine zombie (and accordingly dispatched).

This has some pretty tragic implications. I may never be able to wear a chicken suit, for example. And I guess I'll have to buy my wedding dress, instead of that new car that seems perpetually out of reach. Wait, what happens if I ever need to rent a car? The worst case of road rash this world has ever seen, I believe.

A warning to the superhistaminic would-be skinflint: try it, but buy it. Or suffer the consequences. Side effects may include severe itchiness and/or swelling, brief moments of insanity, an overwhelming desire to thrash your best friend for making you wear the stupid tux in the first place, and smelling for days like oatmeal.

The Man In The Creamsicle Suit

Never been a Best Man before. It was quite an experience, and I'm not certain that I've quite fully realized the magnitude of it. But after 14 years of waiting, I finally got to try his grandma's world-famous but notoriously hard-to-come-by lasagne. Was not disappointed. Looking back on this photo, I have to admit that I had a selfish impulse to knock him down and drag him through the grass. Luckily, I stood fast against my mischievous self.

Forum 2009: A Debriefing

Did far too much stuff last week to write about in depth. Suffice it to say that I had a grand old time and walked away with a head full of ideas and a renewed drive to git-'er-done. Did some sketching and painting en plein air in workshops. This one, an low-angle oblique segment of Stearman wings (they have a very pretty static Kaydet on pedestals), was the first shot with my new W&N water-soluble oils.

PT-17 Kaydet, 11x14", Oil, 2009

Also did a whole lot of figure drawing. In one workshop we sat in the gallery where ongoing restoration work is taking place on a landmark B-17G, City of Savannah, and tried to get the essence of figure movement as the invariably aged and portly (retired) workers went busily about the business of bringing the big bomber back up into pristine conditon; she came out of the works just too late for combat and was then used for decades as a fire-bomber in Canada before being pickled in a hangar for thirty years.

Gestural Studies, 8x10", graphite, 2009

I also made mischief into the wee hours of the morning with, and got some very sound and encouraging feedback from, the greats. We airplane geeks sure as hell do know how to have a party.

Gestural Studies, 8x10", graphite, 2009

Check back for more progress on my big painting later this week, after I've had time to recover from it all.

Off to Geeow-gia

Off to Savannah and ASAA Forum 2009. I wanted to have my painting completely finished in time to bring it, but though I've painted where- and whenever I could, it falls markedly short of completion. I did get a good chunk of my progress covered in the latest issue of the ASAA journal, Aero Brush, which is very exciting and has added fuel to the fire under my posterior.



So here's what I've been up to. The sky, treeline and terminal have been frustratedly worked over and over again; each has at least six layers of paint at this point. I'm happier with the cloud cover now, though it still needs work. I had intended to push the darks pretty far in the background though now I think I may have sent the terminal just a bit too far. I've since also blocked in 50A and turned a large part of the form, though it is less than finished, and I had also blocked in the figures before I painted them over in a fit of rage at the first-story windows (I was pretty close to slicing off my ear at the time). Obviously, they need correction.

Okay. Off to finish packing.