happy mother's day

Shane Lewis

I've been copying Shane Lewis lately. His blog can be seen at http://stlewis.blogspot.com/
The frog on the top is my demo for a class in which I taught some five year-olds how to watercolor a Shane Lewis frog. I had a bit too much water when I was painting the eye, which resulted in a happy mistake that made lit look like a crying frog.

Sunday Painting: Ugly Christmas Tree Ornament

Last year, I was at Hobby Lobby with my mom, looking through the clearance isles and laughing at the failures of interior decoration, when we found the grand daddy of bad design, a Christmas ornament of an unusually dark-skinned Indian with green and red war paint who was fondly caressing his horse, who had a large red circle painted around each eye. We had a good laugh at it and were about to buy it, but then the lines were too long, so we just put it back.
I went back to the store later and bought it as a cheap gag gift for my mom, who later took it to work and showed it off to her coworkers, who smiled and nodded.
When I went off to school, my parents started playing a little game with the Indian. My mom wants to hang it on the fridge, but my dad hates it and thinks it's the ugliest thing ever, so anytime my dad sees it on the fridge, he hides it somewhere where it will get found several weeks later.
I decided upon a great way to settle this: I would make an actual-sized painting of it on a postcard. That way, my dad would still have to look at the indian, even when the original was hidden away under a car seat or in a less-used pocket of my mother's purse.

the front side was done in gauche, and the back was prismacolor.

Sunday Painting: Viper

Snakes are rather interesting creatures. Their bodies have some special modifications on account of the fact they swallow their prey whole. They have double-hinged jaws, allowing them to swallow things bigger than their heads, and their skulls are divided into several plates, allowing it to be flattened and distorted and not block their airways during swallowing.
Basically, this means their skulls have lots of intricate hard-to-draw parts, and they look cool.
Also, this was the first time I've ever used a paint brush to apply ink. That was pretty fun.

Sunday Painting: Bunkey is an Alien Entity

This is what happens when I combine Bobby Chiu with M.R. Weaver.
Acrylic on postcard.

Sunday Painting: Proboscis Monkey

I've got church that starts at 2:00, so it leaves me with a tone of time in a house all to myself. It makes for the perfect time to do a painting. Here we have the most magnificent of creatures, the proboscis monkey. Part of my postcards for Mom series, done in acrylic.

Tribute to the Internet: Hampster Dance

Postcard-sized acrylic on paper.

postcards, torso study

torso study, after Jeff Hein.
Rem Lezar, from Creating Rem Lezar, a wonderfully bad movie.
Main character from Hotel Dusk: Room 215,
also, some Greek statue.