Frankenstein Friday

In case you didn't get enough Chug yesterday. Here he is with his new Red Bull. We picked it out from one of the many Beenie baby booths at the flea market. Frankenstein loves it! He carries it around the house, uses it for a pillow and even brings his little Bull to bed at night.

Snow day!

It snowed! This is Frankensteins first look at snow ever. As you can see he wasn't too sure about it.
He stayed on the edges of the lawn to keep his feet out of that cold wet stuff.
The yard looked lovely.
The fish seem to be doing fine.
Look at that cold weather face! Needless to say, he was happy to come back in the house. Mr. Eleven thought Frankenstein might enjoy the snow more if there were more of it. I think he would like it more if it were warmer and less wet. In any case, it is gone now. It morphed into a cold wet rain. It was pretty while it lasted.

Thursday is Kick Ass Chick day

This is a portrait of Alex. It is a favorite of mine. Every color and brush stroke in this painting tells us about her. It accomplishes everything I was striving for with the portraits. Beauty, confidence her ease and grace, translate, to make this one breath. Yes, in case you were wondering she does have two different colored eyes. I never noticed it till she came to pose.

What is in the funny papers, Wednesday

Wednesday is the day I usually post a Wonder Woman comic. Today I am sharing something a bit different. This past weekend Mr. Eleven and I headed out to a huge Flea Market outside of Richmond. We saw lots of cool things from antiques to just about anything someone might want to collect and beyond. I found this great book: The Smithsonian Collection of News Paper Comics. The comics start in the early 1900's and go up to the early 1980's there are so many cool ones. Old favorites like the Katzenjammer Kidz (I did a series of paintings of them, a while back) but lots that I had never heard of. Here are some titles:
Little Nemo in Slumberland
Little Nemo In The Land of Wonderful Dreams
Mr. E.Z.Mark
The Hall Room Boys
Midsummer Day Dream
Hairbreath Harry
Mr. Twee Deedle
The Naps of Polly Sleepyhead
That is just a sampling, there are so many cool ones. The illustrations are amazing. I love that these were in the newspaper accessible to all.
Above I chose to share, first, a panel from Mr. Twee Deedle, 1914. The bottom comic is from: Jimmy, it is from 1915. They are printed a bit too small for me to read. So I am concentrating on the illustrations for now. Once I get over my illustration rapture, I'll find a magnifying glass to read the stories.

globe

I had to move globe painting operations into the house. It is just too cold out in the studio. If the temp was consistent I could deal with it. But the swings in temp from 70 to 30 and below are just too much. It effects the way the paint feels and dries. I set up in our kitchen. I have good light and can move around the globe freely. Mr. Eleven likes the smell of oil paint and turpentine in the house and so do I. Our NY apt. always had the scent of a working studio, so it feels like home to us. I am painting in style now, with heat and running water near by!

It is really coming to life. I thought the globe was going to be more muted and more or less black and white. But once some color was on the sphere I knew I had to go all out. It developed as I went along. The color somewhat imitates the colors of the sky throughout one day. The morning sky colors are warm yellows that give way to light blue, the blue gets richer till it goes to black the black mutes into Dawns purple-grays that return us to yellow. The images are moving around the globe on different visual levels. The movement is something I have been striving for for years on flat canvas. I am excited about the possibilities.

Today I bought another globe. I am thinking of trying Encaustic on a globe too. The transparent quality of Encaustic would really lend itself to my globe projects. I am way more excited about working on a sphere than a flat surface right now. I don't know if I should count these as part of The 100 Dresses Project or as a side line. I can work that out later. It really doesn't matter.

I bought a few bowls to try as a base for the globe. So far nothing is right. Now, I have a few extra bowls for the kitchen. I still have other ideas to try out. The crochet one ended up getting little fuzzy's all over the still wet surface of the globe. It took me a while to pluck them off. In the end the crochet piece is the right shape but the base needs to be a perfect form, that doesn't compete with the globe. Onward!

A Man for Monday

This is the second of the Andy paintings. Here we see Andy getting shot in the ass by cupid. I called this my green Valentine. I had a 'green' crush on him at the time. That just means I like to look at him cause he was cute, the sort of crush a grade school kid might have on a girl or boy in the next row. In any case, I had fun with this one.