Vagabond Color War Photos

As promised in the previous post, here are my pictures from the Vagabond's color war.

Joel in all his battle stained glory.

Selfie! Or something like that. :p

Joel ended up with an awesome hairstyle. Too bad he didn't keep it. It could have been all the rage!

By the time we were done I looked like a glitter hobbit!

James became accidental abstract art. As did everyone.

I did not come away unscathed, as this picture from Alex proves.

I gave a few lucky people a hand-print to remember me by. :)

These are not all my pictures, I am actually doing a post on my photo blog! The first in over a year! You can check that out HERE!

Vagabond Color War!

As I said in the last post, the Vagabonds got together over spring break. What I didn't mention, was the reason for the get together. A color war! I took a video of the whole thing. Well, most of it. the camera cut out right before the glitter, but I got most of it!



As a side note, I just started a YouTube channel! More videos to come this summer!

After we were done Rachel got some great shots of the carnage.

I'll have more of my own pictures in tomorrow's post.

Bob Ross

You might recall about 2 months ago when I shared THIS video on my blog.

I posted that because it was just a perfect little bit of childhood nostalgia, and I loved the message in the song. Today that channel, PBS Digital Studios, released a second video. This one is just as full of nostalgia as the previous video.



When I was little, Bob Ross was scheduled viewing at Grandma's house. Every Saturday we knew that she'd be watching Bob Ross, and we'd be right there watching with her.

I'm not an expert on psychology, or any sort of analysis of the mind, but if I had to guess, I would say that Bob Ross is at least one of the reasons that I love art so much. His consistent message that "Anyone Can Paint," is something that I firmly believe in. Bob Ross showed me that anyone can be an artist. You just need to take the time to learn, and develop your skills.

The people who claim to not be able to draw, or paint, or whatever, simply don't take the time to learn. Their lives would be so much richer if they just tried.

Bob Ross may not be considered a "Master" on the scale of DaVinci, or Michelangelo, but to me, he is one of the greatest artists of the last century. Not just for his works, but for his inspiring attitude, not just about art, but about life itself.

8 Sketches

In painting class we had a few side assignments where we were to sketch famous artworks. I tried to keep my selections very diverse, and I had a lot that probably no one had ever even thought to do.

My first one was part of the sculpture "Odyssey" Anyone from around Council Bluffs knows what this hideous eyesore is. I chose it because I wanted to be very different and sketch something I hated, rather that something I really liked.

The second one is Norman Rockwell's "The Connoisseur." At first I was looking for a Jackson Pollock painting, one, because it would be pretty easy to sketch what basically amounts to a scribble, and two, because at first my plan was to only sketch art that I didn't really like, or had some kind of a problem with. I don't dislike Pollock's work per se, I just have a problem with it being classified as fine art, and people shelling out massive amounts for it when they could do the same thing on their own. It just seems like a big scam or a joke to me. Anyway, I came across this Norman Rockwell painting of a man looking at a Pollock-like painting, and I decided to do that instead.

 Then since I deviated from my original plan to only do art I didn't like, I decided to just get different, and I decided to do a photo instead. This is one of my favorite photographs from the book, Creature, by Andrew Zuckerman.

The next sketch we were given a specific assignment for. We went on a field trip to the Josselyn art museum, and we were to do a sketch on one of the pieces of art. Again I went in my own direction, and I sketched a decaying relic from the ancient Egyptian wing. It is supposed to be a hippo, but you really can't tell very well.

For the next one I went for something more normal, and tried to do one of the most famous paintings of all time. I don't think I did all that well...

For this one I also went for a more normal choice, Just because I felt like doing one of my all time favorite famous paintings. I love Van Gogh's "Starry Night". :)

Then it was back to being weird, and I chose to do Andy Warhol's "Campbell's Tomato Soup Can." I'll bet no one ever before or since, chose to sketch that as an assignment. :p

For the last sketch I wanted to do a sketch of a sketch, so I chose the Vitruvian Man. I decided to give it a censor bar just to be funny. :p I suppose I could have just drawn it correctly, but I'm pretty sure everyone already knows what's under there, and I was just in a goofy mood that day. :p

And with this post, I think that is the last of my artwork from my 4th semester. I did have one more assignment from Design 2, which I will post in a day or two, but I didn't make any new art for that project. Also, I will probably post more of my Beanie Baby pictures as well, since I still have a lot of them. Stay tuned! :)

4th Semester Paintings

I'm finally getting around to posting my paintings from last semester! I still have more art than this to post, but at least I'm getting it up, slowly but surely.

My first painting was for a grid assignment. We were to draw a grid on a picture and paint it. I chose the picture below.

I ended up with this painting after I was finished.

The second painting was supposed to be a science themed painting. We were to take any branch of science and illustrate a specific scientific principle. I chose refraction through a prism, but I put my own spin on it.

The third painting was a mythological painting. I chose a phoenix. Because phoenixes are awesome. :p I used photos of peacocks for references.

The next painting was actually three paintings. We were supposed to paint either a triptych, or a diptych, and I went with a tryptich after I chose my subject, eyes.

When I remembered that the space between two eyes is about the same size as an eye, I thought it would be perfect to paint a pair of eyes as a triptych.

The last painting was a rather different sort of assignment. We were supposed to build a composite picture in Photoshop, and then after having it printed, glue it to a canvas and paint over it. I made a flying giraffe in Photoshop.

And then I painted over top of it. Apparently it turned out that my teacher meant that we were supposed to add to the Photoshopped picture with paint, but I must have missed that, because I just used the whole thing as a base for a painting.

My teacher didn't mind though and I still got an A.

Overall, this semester had some of my favorite paintings in it. The only two I wasn't too crazy about the end result were the giraffe paintings, but I loved how my other ones turned out. And all of these were a thousand times better than my self portrait two semesters ago. >Shivers<

I have loved these painting classes, and I'm kind of sad that there were only two classes available. I won't have a proper studio arts class in my final semester. Hopefully I will in the future though, we'll just have to see what happens. :)

Last Two Paintings

These last two paintings took me the longest to do because I put so much detail into them. First I will show you the whole painting, then the details so you can better see what all is in them.

For this first painting the assignment was to paint a surrealist painting, so I decided to do a seascape where the birds were swimming, and the fish were flying, with a few other backwards details thrown in for good measure.

Such as an octopus climbing a tree and seahorses hanging like bats.

Flying Jellyfish

And flying penguins. :)

I also did a forest of sharks. :)

For the birds, I did cardinals in coral,

Along with Canada Geese and Ostriches

And probably my favorite part, a Barn Owl. :)

Our final painting was to be based on a famous painting, but we were to give it a modern twist. I chose “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” by Georges Seurat.

And for my “Modern Twist, I made it into a parody of the Apple Advertisements that have a silhouette against a solid colored background, with almost no other detail besides the iPod and ear buds.

As you can see I added some iPads as well.

I moved all the animals so that I could paint them better. It’s difficult to show two silhouettes if one is in front of another.

I remedied that here though.

And that concludes my paintings from last semester. Hopefully I’ll get this semester’s up a bit sooner… :)

Fall Semester Paintings

So I am FINALLY getting around to posting the paintings I did in Painting one. I will post most of them in this post, but I have two others that I painted that were very detailed, and I want to do some close up shots of some of those details. So I will save those for a later post. For now, here are the rest of my painting from last semester.

Let’s just get the horror over with. We HAD to do a self portrait. I HATE doing them! The only GOOD thing about this painting was the clothes. :) *Perry the Platypus from Phineas and Ferb. :) The rest is awful. I could not for the life of me get the skin tone right. I look like I have leprosy. Want an extreme close up, to fully grasp the grotesqueness of my hideously pale face?

SCREE! SCREE! SCREE!!! *Horror Movie Music*

This one is not so good. I painted it completely out of my head with no reference picture, and it shows. Always use a reference picture.

Of course, there’s an exception to every rule, I also did this one out of my head. It is watercolor though, so it works better than if I’d tried to do the same thing with acrylic.

Our still life assignment. I was pleased with how the vase turned out. It’s hard to tell, but there are some lighter flowers to the left of the yellow ones. I think if you click the picture you might be able to see a larger version.

Finally, the painting that I was most proud of, besides my final, (Coming next post) was this one, based on a photograph I took last year, right after I got my new camera. It’s also a picture I entered in the fair, so you may remember seeing it. If not, I will link to a post that contains it HERE.

And that’s all for now. Stay tuned, I hope to get the last two paintings up soon. :)