The Blessed Mother, who was recently spotted inhabiting a hunk of chocolate, has taken up residence on the plastron of a cute little turtlekins. The visage of the Virgin of the Turtles appears to be from her Cubist period.
Day: August 25, 2006
Ugly Ducklings
I don’t know if it’s true for everyone, but it seems like all of my paintings go through an ugly duckling phase. Some ducklings are uglier than others, and some paintings have multiple ducklings, but at some point in the process of every piece, I want to burn it, tear it into tiny pieces, or paint over it. I had a couple of those moments last night, while working on the new painting (I think it’s a painting, anyway). Hopefully, it’ll look better in the light of day.
I started this one in acrylic, which is something I don’t usually do. I’ve added a few layers of water-soluble crayon, and smooshed things around and generally done everything I could to get my hands filthy dirty. That’s one thing I do like about acrylics, is that I can get my hands into the paint. That’s not a good idea with oils, because some of the pigments contain lead, which is absorbed through the skin. The down-side of finger painting with acrylics is that the polymer creates a skin on your, um, skin, and as each layer of paint dries and is covered by more paint, it starts to tighten and peel and, I think, feel extremely yucky. I have to stop periodically and remove all the paint from my palms and fingers, because it grosses me out.
I woke up this morning to find a Peeper frog on my kitchen window. They are just about the cutest things ever. Seriously. It was incredibly cool to be able to see his little white belly and his itty bitty suction cup feets. I tried to get pictures, but I don’t think they turned out. (There is a sound file available from the Indiana DNR. Imagine being surrounded by zillions of peeping Peepers, and you’ll have some idea of what early spring in the woods sounds like.)
red paper boat 