Home Sweet Home

This is it - our home for the next 3 months. She's a beauty for sure - 49 feet of sculpted aluminum, paint, and teak and she looks pretty smart for an 18 year old boat. In the last 10 years alone we've traveled over 30,000 sea miles, visited 3 continents, and crossed the Atlantic three times (see right side of blog for a link to recent sailing adventures). This spring, "Robinleigh" is due a little TLC.

Since we'll be living on the boat while we're working on it, we've added the big white awning for extra shade and sun protection. When the temperatures unexpectedly heated up this past weekend to over 90 degrees, we also added one more piece of crucial equipment below deck:




At least I'll be sanding and varnishing in 68 degree air conditioned luxury. When things heat up later this spring, I may never leave the boat...

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Wrong Matte - New Hat

There's no real theme to this blog post, just a chance to share some things I worked on this week.
Here's a bit of music to get your feet tapping this Friday:

It's a great latin / jazz / hip-hop mix you can listen to here or download to your pod (legally).

A few days ago I went shopping for a matte and frame for an acrylic I just finished. The experience served as a very important lesson in being prepared - always take the art with you when you are buying a frame. Your memory is not as good as you think it is! You might imagine the obvious - bad color selection. Matte wrong color, frame too dark, etc., etc...
It was even worse - I bought a blue matte for an 8x10 canvas panel to make the work 11x14 inches framed. I picked out a nice whitewashed 11x14 frame to go with it all. When I got back to the house and started arranging the parts I was shocked to discover the canvas panel was actually 9x12 inches! Yikes, with the 8x10 inch matte on top of the picture it lost a LOT of its coolness! At that point I had 2 choices - return the matte and frame for something else OR improvise. I chose the latter!
Instead of hiding the picture behind the matte, I put the canvas panel on top! What do you think?

"County Fair at Night" 9x12 Acrylic

Last night I started to sketch the second idea for my "Beyond Alice" series. In these illustrations I'm trying to imagine what the characters from "Alice in Wonderland" might be doing without Alice around. This illustration will center on the Mad Hatter and his attempt to update his look with a new hat. I've included the March Hare in the picture but I'm not happy with the look of him. I think he needs to be more crazy and animated so he will change a bit in the final piece. What do you think the March Hare should be doing in this picture? Looking at his watch? Trying on hats? Acting bored? I've exhausted myself just thinking about the possibilities!

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Painting Coach

Yesterday was my first attempt at helping someone else finish a painting. When you're working on a painting you can get stuck sometimes and not know what to do next. That's what happened to my best friend. Because this was her first serious painting (ever) and because I kind of gave her the picture and told her to paint it, and because she is my best friend, I felt kind of responsible.



When I saw the painting I was really impressed and convinced her there were only a few more details she needed to add. Who knew it would take us all day to add those details...


We finally called it quits that night and I think the painting is wonderful. I can't wait to see it framed!



Of course I couldn't just sit there for hours watching someone else paint. I kept myself busy painting a re-enactment of "The Great Mallard Massacre of 2009".

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B.A. - Before Alice

Recently I heard that Disney is making a new version of "Alice in Wonderland - Through the Looking Glass". With Tim Burton as a director and Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter it should be wonderfully wicked.
I started thinking about that classic story and something occurred to me. All of the characters in the story had or have, if you like, a life - before and after Alice. I started imagining things that the White Rabbit, Mad Hatter, the Walrus, the Queen, and the March Hare might be up to without Alice in the picture.
This watercolor is my first attempt at telling the stories of a few of these characters...

The White Rabbit Loses his Watch
8x10 watercolor and pen

I'm thinking my next picture has to include the Mad Hatter. With a world of possibilities, I wonder what he'll be doing?

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Impossibility

Something for Illustration Friday...

Good thing the bumble bees don't know the definition of Impossibility!

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A Little Creativity Goes a Long Way

Ask most people to pick up a paint brush and paint a picture and you'll see their face change from relaxed to fearful. Most see painting as a scary endeavor filled with plenty of opportunities for embarrassment. That's why I was delighted when my best friend who's never painted before said "Let's paint something!". On the way to her house I picked up a pack of canvas panels.

We rummaged through the craft closet (a requirement if you have kids in the house) and pulled out some large bottles of poster paint (red, yellow, blue, and white). We were only missing black and managed to find a left over paint by number kit with a bit of that color too.

When we got the material on the table Dianna's two kids got interested and soon we were all talking about what we should paint. We then spent the next four hours painting just for for the fun of it. No stress, no expectations, just full throttle creativity! We had so much fun we did it two nights in a row. Check out all of the cool stuff we created!



My best friend is so excited she bought a good set of student artist acrylics and is going to keep painting. I can't wait to see her work!

To end the week on a perfect note I got a great surprise Friday afternoon. My young friend Sean gave me a very cool present he created in school this week:

Thanks Sean!

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Windows X-Peeing for Hours

I have to preface this blog post with a statement: I'm a MAC user. I've been a MAC user for about 10 years now. I'm happy.

With that out of the way I have to tell you that the 4th computer in our household is a PC. An IBM Thinkpad, Pentium III, 1Ghz with 256k of RAM. It's not fast but it's fairly reliable; it's the third Thinkpad we've owned and it was cheap (bought refurbished of course).

This poor notebook has been in the cabinet doing nothing since December of last year. When we head for the boat each year it comes out of storage and gets to do a little work for us while we are sailing, helping us with a few ancient "Windows only" software programs that are particular to sailing and navigation.

I turned on the Thinkpad this morning at 8am and got ready for the update process that Windows users know so well...

"What first?" I asked myself. Given that the "Conflicker" virus was just in the news I thought it best to update the Anti-virus and Spyware software first. 30 minutes later the virus definition files were still downloading. An hour and a few hiccups later, the job was done.

Next came the browser upgrade - Firefox was fairly straightforward... Add 30 minutes for that one.

After that I figured I was finished - Not much else to update, right? Then I see the little [yellow shield] on my task bar and the message bubble "Windows updates are available". Four hours and at least Ten restarts later the yellow shield is finally gone (that's a good thing, right?). My wireless mouse no longer works and I have a really big headache. I'm off to Google to search for patches for both problems...

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Painting and Closure...

This question has come up numerous times during my painting sessions with friends:

How do you know when a painting is finished?

How indeed... We've all come up with both silly and philosophical answers but today I was browsing WoosterCollective.com and came across this funny list of answers from different artists:

While working on a piece of art, how do you know when it's "done"?

Luke: When someone buys it!

John: When you're sick of nit-picking at it

Puppet Industries: When the cops catch ya.;)

Nick: You never do, that's why it's a piece of art.

James: When your mum calls you down for dinner.

Jasper: "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away" - Antoine de Saint Exupery

Frank: When the check clears.

Anita: When you feel satisfaction!

James: Paintings are never finished, only abandoned. - Picasso

Sarah: When you're afraid you'll destroy it if you do anything else to it

Nathan: When you feel like there's more work to be done, but nothing you do to it makes it better than it already is.

Josh: When it starts to piss me off

Will: When efforts at improving it just screw it up.

Logan: When I ruin it.

Pierre: When i stop looking at it as an actor but as a spectator, no more acting obsession, when i can forget it....

Misha: When its 6 am and I've got to be at work at 8

Dan: When somebody loves it

Angel: When you are scared about putting something else in it.

Victoria: 10 years later

And finally, from the little guy in the picture above: When your Finger Paints dry up...

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Get Moving Why Don't You!

OK, technically we're not moving, we're just going on a 3 month WORKING HOLIDAY to our other home which is currently SITTING in Virginia. By sitting I mean this:


And by WORKING, I don't mean this:



I mean THIS:


















The next few days will be chaos around this house, trying to decide what to pack and what to leave behind. My priorities: Computer bits and bytes, Arts and craft supplies, reading material... Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, clean underwear and a few clothes.

I'm really bad at this - Words of encouragement are appreciated...

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The Great Outdoors

We just got home from our weekend trip to Wakulla Springs state park. They hosted a Spring Festival and Saturday there were lots of things to see and do; most of them free!

We watched tiny song birds get banded for tracking and identification of migratory habits, went on a great boat ride to see the wildlife on the river, saw some really good bands perform, watched great presentations about reptiles and birds of prey, ate lots of great seafood, and even managed to catch the 2 great NCAA ball games Saturday night!

We're exhausted...

Here's a short video of a really smart Bald Eagle that belongs to the Center for Wildlife Education at Georgia Southern University:



And pictures of course:

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Wildlife

This afternoon we're heading to Wakulla Springs state park to enjoy the weekend long Wildlife Festival they host each spring. We'll do some guided nature walks and see some really great exhibits plus there's a really good art show and entertainment. It should be a great weekend.

Speaking of wildlife, I just finished the second in my "Predator and Prey" Series. I'm not sure who is more surprised in this painting, the blue heron or the cartoon fish!

"Blue Heron and the Fish"
Acrylic on canvas 11x14

The first painting in the "Predator and Prey"
series can be seen here.

Have a great weekend!

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It's Raining Cats and More Cats!

We've had an enormous amount of rain in the past week and it has really cut into our TNR (trap-neuter-release) program with the local feral kitties. I think we're all, kitties included, feeling a little soggy and tired at this point.

Charles the master trapper managed to snare 8 cats, 5 of which had never been taken to the vet before. With the help of Leanne, all 5 went in for a check-up, shots, and spaying or neutering. Kudos to Charles for a job well done!


With all of the rain and cats on the brain (accidental rhyme there), I decided to paint a picture of my all time favorite cat - Murphy (1993-2007). In this 8x10 acrylic I just finished, Murphy is sitting on the dock enjoying the afternoon sun.

"Murphy in the Sun"
Acrylic on canvas - 8x10

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