Dear Serena;

Your blog won't allow me to post comments for some odd reason the last....well since whenever I last posted a comment.

Hope you heal quickly and the news is good.

Perp

Carravaggio Never Painted Frogs

Good Frog

Ugly Frog

The next lightening quick step this little fellow took plunged him off her hand, splat onto the ground.  He was okay.  Whoever said turtles were slow never actually picked one up I bet.

Tolerant frog

I was starting to think I'd never get any bullfrog pictures this year for my next batch of paintings but yeah!  I have a few good ones.  Now though I've realized I think I'm tired of working on frogs.  Plus, Carravaggio never painted frogs.

Carravaggio

Why do women plant flowers and put out ornamentation to beautify their gardens?  Really, if you're doing it to impress your male significant other or you want to attract a man wouldn't it make more sense to put out a reclining lawn chair and a cooler full of cold beer?  OR if you want to attract a more sophisticated gentleman a nice....I don't know what, I don't drink.  I'm not talking about the ones who garden for their own pleasure but the ones who do it to impress others.  And why do women love lace curtains so much.  One of my brothers-in-law had a woman he dated a couple of times enter his house without knocking, proceed to the kitchen and hang lace curtains.  He walked her to the door.   Just wondering.

Our class went as a group on Wed. from the art school to see the Caravaggio exhibit at the National Gallery.  Wow!  I like it and him.  He did things the way he wanted regardless.  Okay, he was violent and did have a temper (to put it lightly) but he did only murder one man and there may have been a pardon in the works when he died at 39.  When he needed a model he was known to work  the poor around him or drag a dead prostitute out of the river to pose her, but who of us hasn't done that at one time. 

I think my new goal is to learn to paint like Carravaggio.  I learned he would have used sable brushes which leave little brush strokes visible.  Some areas of his work are finely detailed, such as lace, fabric, fingers, whereas the eyes on some of his figures in shadow are just a blob of dark.  I've got down the blobs in oil painting.  I've got the fine detail in the coloured pencil work.  Now I just need to find a way to marry the two.

I would totally put a Carravaggio on my wall.  Unfortunately they wouldn't fit.  Not the ones I liked the best anyways.

"The Boxer" completed.  Unfortunately I had to miss one of the three half day sessions with the model.  I would have worked it more if I could have.  Anyhow, time to move on.

This was today's model from this afternoon.  This was the fellow that I used to think looked like Kurt but he seems to have grown out of it. Maybe if Kurt had long hair a beard, moustache and was looking like a lush in a chair naked and had a upper class British accent they would look more alike.

I drew this with my right hand.

I drew this with my left hand.

I drew this with no hands.....wait, that's not right.

I can draw hands, unfortunately just not when they are attached to a body.  Huh.

Click to Bigify

These girls are no wimps.  The 6 of them spent a good part of the day chasing turtles, tadpoles, frogs, birds and a snake that was about 1.5 meters long.  They were determined to see that snake up close and personal but it managed to swim away eventually.  I don't mind most critters but something about those tadpoles grosses even me out.  I'd take the snake over them any day......well, on second thought, maybe not.

The Boxer

This is the new painting we've started that has another 6 hours of model time to complete.  We get 9 hours a painting and believe me, it's never enough.  I've only ever finished one painting.

This model is so dedicated that he actually went out and got a horrificly painful looking black eye just for the pose.  He then agreed to let one of the artists punch him again next week to freshen up the eye if it's healed too much.

Okay, truthfully, he did have a black eye but it was from a biking accident and it was worked it into the pose.  I have to admit....it's so much fun to actually paint clothes onto someone for a change I may actually start painting people at home on my own time in oil.

Still in the works.

Sugar is aptly named.  She likes her cheerios!

The dairy section.

That's my kid there....see her?  The one in the red.