At Large: Painting a mood

Take a quiz and create... art?

Because once wasn't enough, I did it twice. I changed up a few answers, though. What do these two images have in common? Quiet. Summer. Travel back in time.


Click here to create your own painting.


Click here to create your own painting.

To send out a little bit of link love, I saw this on Enchanted Crafts.

Loki as art

My first-grade nephew drew this picture of Loki for school after reading a story about a dog. There's definitely a resemblance. Loki is big and black with floppy ears and a long tail. See:

Lessons learned from painting

Painting class wrapped up on Thursday night. I don't profess to be a painter, but I think I've shown a definite progression over the past seven weeks. I mean, just look at my painting from weeks six (pink and red - top) and five (blue and green -middle) and compare it to the one from week two (orange and blue - bottom). Hugh difference.

(I'm still sparing you my effort from week one, weeks three and four are boring, and I haven't taken a photo of week seven. Disclaimer on all of these: they were each done in a two-hour class.)

What I've learned in the painting class:

Squint and look at things with a blurry gaze.

Lay a bold foundation and then add detail.

Work with confidence.

Don't be afraid to go outside the lines. Imperfections are more interesting.

An artist spends most of his or her time mixing colors and preparing to paint, and very little time actually applying paint to canvas.

Using true black can be overpowering.

Destroy the white background first. It can be intimidating, plus it can throw off your colors.

Personal lessons:

I need to take a drawing class.

I need to learn perspective.

No matter how bad I think I am, I've definitely made a progression from the first week.

It's nice to have a foundation of understanding in painting, but I should stick to writing.

Painting and wine tasting

The summer session has started at the local community college and Dave and I have enrolled in a seven-week oil and acrylic painting for beginners class and a two-week basic wine tasting class. We're one down on each class, and I have to say that, so far, I haven't exhibited extraordinary talent in either area.

Sure, I can taste wine, but I have the hardest time analyzing what I'm tasting. I either really like it or I kind of like it. Usually, it's all drinkable. LOL. However, Tuesday night, I ran into my first totally undrinkable wine. It was a $25 bottle of Chardonnay that, to me, smelled like tuna. Fresh, out of the can tuna. I just couldn't get past the "aroma". Funny thing was, a few people in the class rated it really highly. I also learned a new phrase. My French, it is not so good, but it goes something like this: pis pis d'chat (cat pee). It is used to describe wine that has the aroma of cat pee, which is supposed to not be a bad thing. Who would have thunk?

In the painting class, I'm starting with acrylics because they seem easier. The first class we had to do a still life of a table with various objects on it. Mostly, we were concentrating on mixing colors and a little bit on composition. My painting, like my French, it is not so good. If, over the course of the next several weeks I improve, perhaps I'll post my first effort here. Or perhaps I'll spare you. Let me just say that I would have done much better with paint by numbers. If anything, I'll learn some color theory from this class. That was my main goal going in...