More Mola

This week's WDE references were from Panama.  I wish I could explore a country more in-depth but a superficial peek is getting to be more than my "travel companion" can handle.  I interpreted a couple WDE references to the Mola style.  The long weekend was exhausting, so these were relaxing.  Acrylic paints in the 9x12 inch wetmedia sketchbook.

How I spent my Thanksgiving Day

I didn't have to cook or serve or host.  Just hung around to help with honey-do's and I got some painting done.  Feels good!

Acrylic sketches on 4x6 inch cardboard for scavenger hunt 292.  There was more!  I also did a wooden elephant and a panda.

Weekend art

 Donkey & Friend - or maybe it's a mule, I can't tell the difference.  From this week's WDE invitation.  Acrylics in the Smash.

The Smash journal has really fired up my creativity.  Since I got the journal, I've been painting/sketching again in my other sketchbooks.  I had three other paintings this weekend!  I don't show them all, that's not the point.  I feel good when the art flows, good or not.  Oh, this is conte pastels in the 6x8 inch drawing sketchbook (one of the 2011 goals)

Abstract

Struggled all Sunday put paint down, any paint.  Then an hour before I go to bed it comes out in a rush.  Felt good, now I can sleep.  This is acrylic paint in the wet media sketchbook 9x12 inch.  I think this could develop into something.  I find it too dark but I was playing with balance & colors in GIMP and surprised me it's pretty well balanced.

Then had a bad Monday.   First I found these paint colors on the arms of my computer chair.  No biggie, it's an old chair and actually tonight I was able to clean it up with just alcohol.  But I get to work and I see a spot of white gesso on my green jacket.  I'll just scrape it off.  Then one spot leads to another and on the bottom side of the arm, ARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!  I'm stuck with it.  I was able to get in to see the dentist today because I was eating mini tacos for dinner and there must have been a stone in the taco shell.  One of my porcelain crowns broke, AAARRRRGGGGGHHH!!!!  The tooth was still good, it's just cosmetic.  Whew, dodged a bullet and a huge dental bill. That would have made it the worst Monday I ever had.  Traffic was bad for a Monday and a federal holiday. 

Above my monitors at work I have my 2007 Oil Pastel copy of The Scream.  Whenever I want to scream I just look up and it makes me smile.  When I first hung it, one of my coworkers commented that it was wierd & creepy to him.  Soon after, one of the originals sold for $120 million.  One of the foreign girls told her husband, "Hey that's Julie's painting!"  He had a laugh.

Carabao

This was last week's WDE, acrylics in the 6x8 inch sketchbook.  I struggled with it and the elephant reference.  It shows. 

I went to the Philippines in 1987 and my uncle arranged a side trip to see the Banaui rice terraces.  Incredible manmade feat!  The brightest green I'd ever seen, even greener than Ireland.  So I was hiking down one of the mountains to see the terraces up close and there was a tribal village down at the bottom of the valley.  Halfway down as I was coming down to another terrace, I smelled this awful stench that wasn't toilet but definately fertilizer.  I turned around and it was a huge water buffalo staring at me.  It was knee deep in the water-filled rice paddy and munching on a mouth full of long grass.  They say smell is one of the greatest memories we have.  Just seeing this reference brought back that stinky memory.