Attempt at acrylics

I'm glad I didn't follow my impulse to buy more acrylic paint, the ones I have aren't the colors that Betty Edwards recommends in her Color book. However, following the exercises was really hard for me and I kind of got disgusted. There's a self portrait (natuarlly),  the four seasons, not representational but more in terms of colors the season evokes in me (just so you don't have to guess: spring, summer, fall, winter),"colors I like and colors I don't like" from the palette,. Some of the examples in her book were cheats, because the instructions specifically said not to be representational (for the seasons) but the artists didn't follow the instructions, I tried to.   I made do with the three primaries that I have plus black and white. I tried to make a color wheel with orange and blue mixtures and I could see that a prefab orange would have been useful because too much of the yellow from the home made orange made the blue turn green. I think that wouldn't have happened with an orange tube of paint, the colors would have have been blended much more thoroughly.  One of these days I'll get more colors, but it didn't seem worth the trip.  I'm at home for "spring break" and I don't feel like going anywhere. I have everything I need here. Except for the potting soil for my spider plant. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.  There was a major brush fire on Staten Island today, probably still raging.  That's scary. The smoke must travel over to Brooklyn.

So I tried some of the exercises anyway from Betty Edwards' book.  They look kind of cute.  I also used one of the Pesach dinner plates as a palette, that was one of her recommendations.  All my plastic containers are put away in the chometz, but I had the bright idea of using the tin can from the peppers that I so foresightedly bought.  And now I have a little applesauce container as well. Not to mention the metal dish I bought that was sitting around with my acrylic paints that I haven't gotten around to using before today. Tomorrow, I'll try the watercolor portrait colors. Maybe. I'm afraid that I won't be any good, but as usual, I end up loving my work.

Avocado Update

So here is my little avocado farm. Three of them are doing something, one never sprouted at all.   I also have a spider plant in process, I brought it home from work for the "spring break".  Then there are the oysgeklapte shaynos that I stuck in some rock hard cactus dirt.

Mumbai Feeling

that horrible Thanksgiving, when the Holzbergs were murdered in Mumbai...today mirrors the horror, this time in oh so civilized Toulouse, France.  What kind of monster guns down a three year old and a six year old along with their father?  People are quick to assume Muslim terrorists, but it seems the neo nazis are responsible for this.

Fourth of July drawings, 2010 at Spring Studio, Henry as Uncle Sam and Dani's random drawing created at the studio

Minerva has a drawing session On July 4th open to children and adults. I can't always make it, but in 2010 I took Miri with me and they came to the opening of the exhibit, and Dani got to add a drawing as well. Will post Miri's drawings too.

Portrait Sunday

Whew. I shlepped home a huge 18 x 24) newsprint pad and some pastel drawings as well. As usual, the ride took 30 minutes longer because of sunday track work. So here are today's drawings.  I thought that I had a particularly bad day today.

Avocados again

I am seriously on the way to becoming an avocado hoarder.  I have four of them now.  I think I will pot them all together, instead of one at a time because then all you have is a "telephone pole".  the little tiny one will probably have to go, it looks kind of rotten, but I'm just going to let it continue to soak.  The other ones are all in their little net perches.

Nature's Designs

I'm going to try and photograph interesting designs from food. I peeled an orange and the top looked like those kids' adhesive stickers, so I played around with it a little.  I bought a ready made sandwich on a baguette,  and thought, hm, that looks like a dolphin's snout but I was greedy and ate it before I could photograph it. so when the orange top looked like a flower sticker, I decided to take its picture. .