Reverb

This is a picture that I painted with heavy paints at each end and then used a spray bottle full of water to make it run. I really don't like the picture but everyone else does so I saved it. My son claimed it and now it's hanging in his room.

Divided

Here is a painting that I created for Sheboss.

The big one on the left is painted on four seperate 16 x 16 square canvases and placed on the wall with a slight seperation between each one. This is hanging in my living room now.

The painting was inspired by a piece called The Divide II by Max Hansen. My wife fell in love with it so I decided to try to make someting similar.

This painting is the final product of several mess ups. There are many, many layers of paint on this because I had to cover the entire thing and start over at least five times. I'm really happy with the end result.

The smaller one in the frame is an earlier painting I did for Sheboss. I think they look good together.

Sorry about the poor photography, there was too much glare when I took the photo straight on or used flash.

Feed My Starving Children

For a long time we have been saying that we wanted to do some volunteer work as a way to help teach our children compassion for the less fortunate. For whatever reason it was always talk and we never got around to doing it. I am sure you have felt the same at some time in life...right? Well, I recently read an article in the AZ REPUBLIC that talked about a group that packages food and sends to starving children in 3rd world countries. I looked into it and they were going to be doing another event in Tempe in August. I contacted them and put our names on the list.



To my surprise I did not even get and complaints from anyone in the family about doing it. Makes my heart warm to know the kids actually do care about others, when in this day and age seems like most kids are very self centered.



So, last night the family went and volunteered to work for 2 hours. It was actually kind of fun. We put on our hair nets and sanitized our hands and went to work. Basically it was a bunch of tables set up assembly line style. I got the opportunity to scoop ingredients into the bag, hold the bag on the funnel, and weigh the bags. We rotated alot since the kids arms would get tired. Some people sealed the bag with a machine that melted the end of the bag and others put boxes together, refilled supplies, and loaded the boxes. It was pretty easy stuff.



There were about 100 people there. They said that in the 2 hours we worked we put together enough food to feed an orphanage for about a year. I dont remember the exact numbers but it was a pretty good feeling to know it was quite a lot.



If you want to look into doing this you can check out the website http://www.fmsc.org/ ...it will list what state they are going to be in and the dates and locations to sign up.

I think I will probably do this again, only I think I will bring my Girl Scout group to do it.

I hope you get a chance to volunteer and help out others some time too. If you have an organizaion you work with, let me know about. Maybe we can work with them too!

I'm Learning To Be An Artist

Have you ever thought it would be cool to be an artist? I have. Only recently I felt like I would love to be able to draw or paint. The problem was that ever since I was a little kid I've always sucked at art. I took art class in high school but was never very good. I was the one who could never color inside the lines. I'm hopeless.

Then I started talking with skilled artists. I was surprised when they told me I should give it a try. All the artists I spoke with said the same thing. They were not born with art skills, they learned through trial and error, repetition, and lots of practice. I'm not hopeless.

Last week I bought a sketch diary from Target. As soon as I got it home I went into my daughter's room and found a picture book of farm animals with basic drawings. I sat down and started to draw them. I used a regular #2 pencil and my daughter's crayons. I burned through lots of erasers. After a while I got the lines to look somewhat like the pictures in the book. I kept going. I was learning to be an artist.

Here are the drawings I did last week:

The cow is my first. I only used a pencil for shading.

The horse was the hardest one to draw.

The pigs are kinda cute.

This one just came out of my head. Seems sorta menacing.

So by the end of last week I felt like I was getting much better at creating the lines and making things look the way I wanted. What about paint? I have this entire week off of work so last weekend I decided to buy some materials and try my hand.

I went to Michaels for all my supplies. I bought 5 colors of acrylic paint, a color wheel, a pad of 12x12 inch canvas paper, the cheapest pack of brushes I could find, a small plastic paint pallet, and a cheap desktop easle.

I also bought a book showing how to paint ocean landscapes because SheBoss liked it. She wants some kinda abstract painting to hang in the living room. She found one she likes but it's $200. I bet I can do that. First I need a little practice.

Here's what I've done so far:

This is supposed to be a wave. My first ever painting, what did you expect?

Don't ask. I'm not really sure. Hey, it's abstract.

This is very similar to the abstract SheBoss wants. My 3rd painting.

This boat landscape came from a picture I found in a book. I liked it so I used it as my 4th painting.

The Iris is from an art book I purchased later. I really like this one. Not bad for my 5th try.

I did the painting of Pepper yesterday for my 6th. It's my first truely original painting. I didn't copy someone elses work. The is a picture I took with my phone when she had her head on my stomach and was looking up at me.

I'll probably work on something for SheBoss tomorrow. I'm thinking about creating the painting over 4 of my 12x12 canvas sheets so they can be hung together an inch or so apart.

I'm taking today off of painting. I think I'll go down to Old Town Glendale and check out some of the art galleries. If nothing else, I look at other artist's work a lot differently now.