eric135

The Avengers

 We saw The Avengers the other day. I think the movie runs for two hours and 15 minutes, and the last half of the movie makes the first half worth it (a lot of character development, not usually my favorite part of the movie). 

• Robert Downey Jr: I wonder what it must have been like, being a "regular size guy" acting against such huge muscley slabs of man meat. No doubt, his character was as kick-ass as all of them, and his acting is easily on the order of ten times everyone else on the screen, but still.
• I still see Thor as Captain Kirk's father.
• The airship design, dependent on four rotor blades, the failure of even one of which would bring the huge thing down... they needed to seriously re-think that design. I mean, if three of four airliner engines stop, they can still land the plane.
• The whole lethal bow-and-arrow thing just hasn't been working for me since Legolas did it successfully in FOTR. I don't care if they make them blow up, you'd be better off with a fully automatic gatlin gun.

Overall though I really liked the movie. You can totally tell Joss Whedon directed the movie, with the clever lines and spot-on comedy bits.

Stay through the credits, there is an Easter Egg at the end.

 

My boyhood home in Hopewell, VA, in Pen&Wash and Pastels...

Hopewell, VA
Pen & Wash
5.5" x 8.25" sketchbook

I was playing around on Google maps and looked up the house my family lived in from 6th grade until my Junior year in college. My room mate and I have been going through some serious bouts of nostalgia, which, for me, is a totally alien experience. I've never been beholden to the past in any way. I can't imagine going to my high school reunion (or college, or nursing school for that matter). But last night, I wondered what this house looked like and remembered that Google maps has pictures.

One of our neighbors from years ago installed a huge water fountain in their front yard. My god was it an eyesore. I saw in Google maps that it has since been removed. But other than that, most of the old neighborhood is unchanged except for the fact that peach trees I watched my father plant as saplings are twenty feet tall. The two trees in our front yard are huge now. But architecturally, the house is unchanged. 

Looking at the house, I remember the window in the upper left corner, and the small window you see on the side, led to my bedroom. The two windows below were to our living room, where I spent many hours practicing classical piano. Looking at the house in google maps and then rendering it in art really brought back some memories:

• teaching my younger sister how to read, and having "classes" in math and reading
• my sister's enormous collection of naked barbie dolls (she'd take the clothing of many dolls to make a "wardrobe" for one doll)
• my youngest sister's athletic skills even as a young girl
• mass-producing eggrolls when my Dad was president of the Kiwanis Club, in order to sell to make money for the club (Kiwanis always sold egg rolls when Dad was in charge, the Lions Club always sold funnel cakes)
• going to my sisters' ballet recitals -- in a small town in the South, these recitals were major productions for the community and everyone was there
• the disasterous summer when my parents decided to sign me up for the neighborhood baseball team -- and when I used to pray to the Lord for rain every Saturday (he rarely produced, and I don't know if I've ever forgiven Him)
• having to "crank" my youngest sister's portable crib. We'd take turns cranking it up, and it would click - click - click and keep the bassinet rocking for hours
• riding the riding lawn mower to cut our grass
• the two parakeets we kept cooped up in a tiny cage... our family really should not have had any kind of pets, but we made several poor attempts at it, leading mostly to mysteriously disappearing pets over the years
• incredibly awkward afternoons when pornography or issues of Teen magazine went up in smoke via our wood stove

Oh those were the days.

Here's the same house as above but rendered in Rembrandt soft pastels:

Bob Ross... ; Godshill...

Well that rally didn't last very long. It didn't feel right from the start (April 25 2012). After Investors Business Daily called the beginning of the rally, none of the stocks I was looking at took off, and several fell. I personally think any rally at this point would be suspect unless the market indices take a noticable downturn from here. Cash for now.

I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos. I've had a fascination for watching instructional videos about watercolor and painting in general. With our most recently purchased internet-connected television, I'm able to watch YouTube (in full 50" glory) directly from the TiVo screen. I've been watching more of these then I have of regular television.

It reminds me of how much I liked watching episodes of Bob Ross' Joy of Painting on public TV. In an interview, Ross said that his technique was not "fine art" in the academic sense, because what was important was not the final product, but rather the creative experience of the artist. 

I really like that. 

Bob Ross NY Times article...

Godshill
Watercolor
5.5" x 8.25"

 This painting is my answer to the most recent "watercolor challenge" at Wetcanvas.com. I worked from a reference photograph, taken in a village called Godshill, somewhere in England. I'm particularly happy with it because I am not very skilled in rendering buildings. It's nice to see that all the websites I've read about two-point perspective have actually paid off - the buildings appear to be rendered accurately. I sketched the buildings' edges and roofs with Faber-Castell watercolor pencils, and handbrushed everything else using my usual pan paints.

Three tomatoes...

Watercolor
9 x 12" Arches Cold Pressed paper

As the weather turns to more Spring-like conditions, my room mate's thoughts once again turn to the cultivation of tomatoes. Last year, he had a couple of plants and he ended up with 3-4 tomatoes the size of small grapes, but they were indeed delicious.

This year, on a trip to our Fry's Grocery Store, he spotted a couple of tomato plants drying out in front of the entrance. Didn't look like anyone had been watering it. So he took them home and he's been watering them. We now have 4-5 green tomatoes about the size small plums. They haven't ripened yet, and thankfully, the weather has not yet turned so hot that they turn into hay. So we're hoping for a good harvest -- or at least a few tomatoes a bit larger than grapes.

 

Farmer's Market... en pleine air...

Farmer's Market en pleine air...

Watercolors
Pelikan paints
Arches paper, 5in x8in 

Plein air painting; Desert Botanical Gardens

Stone Bench, Desert Botanical Gardens
Watercolor
Ultrecht paints
Fabriano paper
5x8 in 

Five days of watercolor...

I'll be by myself for a total of five days, while my room mate attends his twentieth year high school graduation reunion. It has been totally weird being in the apartment by myself, but I've been keeping myself busy.

I've pulled out my watercolors, but I'm missing a lot of my favorite colors, plus the portable Cotman palette that I got for Christmas several years ago has worn out of most of the paints. So I took a trip to Urtrecht's Art Supply and got some new cool stuff:

Pelikan Watercolor Paint Set, 12 colors: I like the larger pans, and the colors and mixing qualities are excellent. The palatte in the top can be removed and, when packing up at the end of a session, it is possible to put the tray into the kit so that any liquids would not be spilled onto the pans (but you do have to hold it upright until dry). 

 

Ultrecht Artists' Watercolor, Basic Color Set: I've done ok with just the basic yellow, blue and red triad, but there is much to be said for having some pre-mixed greens and browns. The only color I don't see much use in in this kit is the black.

These are called Butcher Trays. I don't know what they were originally used for, but watercolorists use them as palettes to mix paints. I have a couple of flimsy plastic palettes with the multiple wells, but I wanted something more sturdy, and I like having wide open spaces to mix, rather than smaller squares. I bought the larger 11in X 15in, and with my 6-8 puddles of tube paint, I get a wide assortment of hues and values, many formed by accident. Plus, I won't have to use our white Corelle dishes anymore.

Aqua Flow Brush Set: These are amazing. They are water color brushes that have a water reservoir in the barrel. As you paint, when you need water, you just squeeze the barrell. I have been using them with my new Pelikan paint set, and I don't even need to bring a container of water. I don't bother rinsing between colors, I just drain the pigment remaining on the brush on a scrap piece of watercolor painting, then give it a squeeze to get fresh water then dip into another color. This would be great for plein aire painting. All I'd need are these pens, watercolor paper and a paint set (and maybe some paper towel). $6 for the set of three brushes, but there are other more expensive (and probably nicer) versions. 

I also bought a new 12-round and a 1" wash brush.

A Painting: Desert Botanical Gardens

Da Vinci, Pelikan paints
Fabriano paper, Cold pressed, 9.5 x13in. 

 

Lake in Watercolor pencils...

I've been expanding my horizons, working on my drawing skills with colored pencils and watercolor pencils. 

I still enjoy watercolors, but it is daunting to get everything all set up for what might be a short uninspired session, and you end up thinking you'd rather just not do it today so you won't have to clean up everything afterward.

That's where the watercolor pencils and colored pencils come in. I have Prismacolor watercolor pens, and I also have a set of colored pencils. 

I sometimes want to do something creative, but don't want to fetch clean water, get all my brushes out, tape down my watercolor paper and all that. No I can just pull out a handful of pencils and start sketching away. If I use my watercolor pencils, I can later spray a fine mist of water over the sketch and watch the colors intensify. You can take a brush and move some pigment around, or even switch to watercolor brushes and use that medium to put in dominant themes.

5in x 8in Moleskine sketchpad

Prismacolor watercolor pencils 

 

 

 

 

Panaramic View of Scottsdale at Dawn

 
I was taking a walk around our complex, which is surrounded by a wall. Today, I decided to climb up the stairs to one of our complex's three-story apartments and took some beautiful shots of the mountains towards Scottsdale.

10 x 4, Davinci Paints

Orange flowers

My family will be at the beach this week, and due to crazy stuff at work, I'm here in Phoenix instead. Hoping they are having another week of great weather...

I've been feeling under the weather lately. Roomie has just recovered from a nasty case of tonsilitis and I guess it was inevitable that I would catch some of it. But I feel better today, and so I am hoping to be able to work.