Here’s another little painting, done in acrylic. I estimate that this painting took about 10 hours, working on it on and off in my garage over the past week or so. I’m pleased how it turned out. This is the 3rd painting I’ve done in the square, 6″x6″ format, against a brown-paper-bag backdrop that I’ve jerry-rigged in my garage. I’m starting to think that I might try something different for my next painting.
I finished another painting. This one was started sometime back in October. I had to set it aside for a while in order to do a freelance project. I returned to it in January and spent another day or so on it. I finished it about a month ago, but I’m just getting around to scanning/color correcting/posting now. I think it’s okay, but the shadow is too dark. Too late, I’m not going back to fix it now.
This teapot was a wedding gift from Neil’s cousin. I liked the look of it, and the size of it, so I decided to paint it. It proved to be more difficult than I expected. It’s very symmetrical, which I found difficult to pull off. On a round object like this, getting the perspective right is important, but I know the perspective isn’t quite right here. The very regular, bumped surface was tough, too. I noodled at it for a while before deciding it was as good as it was going to get. One of the things I’ve learned with these little paintings is that I find myself bumping up against a wall of my technical painting ability. There are limits to how good I am with working the paint at a given time. After mucking around for a while, I will come to the conclusion that I’ve reached the limit of my ability for now, and to let it be what it is.
This is difficult for me, because my instinct is to work a painting and work it and work it and work it until it’s as good as I want it to be. But then I get caught up in the process too much, and before too long, I’ve painted the same section of canvas six times over. At this stage, I think it’s important for me to just do the projects, get them out, and move on to something new. When I’m working digitally, I find it very easy to get caught up in process and technique, and to spend too much time on a project. I think it’s because there is no physical object in the digital medium. There’s no canvas to get caked over with too much paint or muddied up with too much color variation. If I’ve messed something up in Photoshop, I can just undo or delete and do it again. Paint is not so forgiving, and that’s a good thing for me, I think. It forces me to commit to what I’ve done. It forces me to think, to slow down, to look, and to plan how I am going to approach something. I have also learned when to walk away from a painting before overworking it. It’s better to bump up against the limits of my painting ability than the limits of the paint’s ability to look halfway decent on an overworked surface.
When I started this painting, I intended it to be a quick, fun, 1 or 2 day illustration project. That was in September of 2009. I finally finished it earlier this week. I noodled at it for over two years, before finally finishing it. (If you’d like to see a larger version of the painting, go here.)
I tend to do this with a lot of projects. I start something, but rather than finishing it in a reasonable time frame, I noodle at it and work at it in fits and starts over a long period of time. Sometimes I abandon projects, but often I’ll return to things I’ve started months ago, doggedly determined to finish them.
When I was in grad school, I did the same thing with an animation project. I worked on it for over four years. One day I was showing the project to a colleague who was new to the school. When he saw it, and saw how long I had worked on it, he said, “This is your Vietnam, and it’s time for you to get out of Vietnam.” He was so right. I just need to learn how to avoid getting myself into these Vietnam situations with personal projects in the future.
I got it in my head to knit Charlotte a Baby Surprise Jacket. For those of you who are not knitting nerds, this is a very ubiquitous pattern. It was designed by Elizabeth Zimmerman in 1963. It is unique in its design and construction; the whole sweater is knit in one piece. It’s called a “surprise” because when you’re done knitting it, you have a very strange looking piece of fabric that looks nothing like a sweater. Then you do a couple of quick folds and two simple seams, and surprise! All of the sudden you have a sweater. While the design does not require advanced knowledge of knitting, the pattern is written in an unusual manner, and it’s a little tricky to get through it the first time around. A series of video tutorials on Youtube were VERY helpful to me in making this sweater!
I’m pleased at how this sweater turned out, although I have mixed feelings about the yarn. I used four balls of Crystal Palace Yarns Mochi Plus, and size 8 needles. The yarn is gorgeous in color, but it’s splitty, and it fuzzes up fast. This sweater is going to pill like crazy. Perhaps Charlotte will grow out of it so quickly that it won’t have time to develop serious pills. At any rate, now I can say I made the BSJ.
For the first time in a long time, I tried some painting. REAL painting, with real paint, not digital painting in Photoshop. I think the last time I made a real, physical painting was when I was an undergrad at Nazareth College. It has probably been 18 years since I painted with real paint. That’s a long time. This painting is small, and rough around the edges, but it’s a big deal to me. Now I just have to keep at it.
I finally finished one of my many projects! Yay! This is a scarf I made for my sister. I had started it about 2 years ago, in the BC era (BC = Before Charlotte.) The pattern is Shirley Paden‘s Interlocking Balloons. I used Cascade Yarns’ Cloud 9. I used size 6 needles. The scarf came out wonderfully. It was a bit difficult for me to give it up! It’s by far the nicest scarf I’ve ever knit. It’s about time I knit something lovely for myself.
So, I’ve been unemployed since the second week of May. I’m always sad to be unemployed, but this time around, I was looking forward to having a little personal time. Since Charlotte came into my life, it’s been very hard to find time to do anything for myself. One thing I have wanted to do is build a portfolio and be a better artist. When I was laid off, I thought it would be a great opportunity to do my own personal work.
To a great extent, that just hasn’t happened. There’s always something to keep me busy. Mostly cooking, cleaning, and shopping. The house is never clean. There never seems to be any food in the refrigerator. It’s a never-ending task. I don’t know how the house stayed together during the brief period that I was working.
However, I did participate in a few figure drawing sessions at Sadie Valeri’s studio a few weeks ago. I’m really pretty rusty, but it felt good, and I feel good enough about the drawing I made to share it with you here. This drawing was made over two 5-hour sessions. I’ve never spent this long on a drawing before.
I really need to do more of this. I should do some right now. But I have to go find a dress to wear for a friend’s wedding this weekend. See? the chores never end.
This blog is not dead! Really! However, it’s been tough adjusting to life with a baby. But I’m starting to get my legs under me, finally. The fact that Charlotte started day care is helping.
I have mixed feelings about writing a blog. I know that these words are public, and there’s a chance that anything I write here could come back and bite me someday. But then I consider the courage of some of my friends who keep blogs, notably Sadie, and Nowell, and Ella, and I realize that I should just get over myself. However, I recently saw the movie Kick-Ass, and I think a brief review is pretty safe. I’m not reviewing this movie because it was life-changing, or because I thought it was the best or worst movie on earth. It is simply a movie that crossed my path recently in my life, and I have some opinions on it, and I thought I’d share those opinions with you. I’m dipping a toe into the blogosphere ocean.
To begin with, Kick-Ass was not what I expected. The film has a lot more violence and swearing than I had anticipated. Or perhaps I’m just getting to be an old fogey, and my tolerance for swearing and violence in films is wearing thin. This film may have been intended for a teen audience, but Kick-Ass’s “R” rating from the MPAA makes it tough for the teen audience to catch the flick in theaters.
That’s not to say I didn’t like it. At one point during the film, my husband remarked, “This is an unusual film.” For this reason, I liked the film very much. It surprised me on more than one occasion, and it’s not the safe, predictable, audience-tested-to-death film that studios feel comfortable making these days. In some ways, I’m surprised that it got made in the first place. Sure, it made me feel uncomfortable at some points (like, for instance, Nicholas Cage and Chloe Moretz’s first scene together) But you know what? I watch movies to feel things, and sometimes the things I feel are not always positive. That is not a bad thing.
I won’t get into a deep analysis of plot, because to do so appropriately, I’d need to scrutinize the movie with repeated viewings, in order to properly reference various scenes. I don’t have the time to do this, and also, I am lazy. Often, I find myself watching movies and I realize that some movie or other is exactly like some other movie or other. (Avatar and Dances Wolves, or Elf and Enchanted, for a few examples.) This is nothing new, and just because a movie is a rip-off of another movie doesn’t mean it’s bad. This idea is very well covered in Kirby Ferguson’s Everything is a Remix videos. (If you have time, go watch them. They’re good.)
While watching Kick-Ass, I realized that the story was kind of Shakespearean. The movie has unrequited love, mistaken identities, and people die, and all of these things also happen a lot in Shakespeare’s plays. Kick-Ass is, essentially, a comic book writ large on the movie screen. And I realized that lots of comic books are kind of Shakespearean. I found this kind of ironic. Shakespeare is considered among many to be the pinnacle of western literature. Comic books have often been considered the most base form of literature. Nonetheless, the two share a lot of similarities beyond plot. Neither Shakespeare’s plays nor comic books are intended to be only words on a page. Comic books come with pictures, and Shakespearean plays are meant to be performed on stage.
As comic books have been translated into movies (plays for modern times) that they have started to gain prominence and respect in western culture, or at the very least, a lucrative endeavor. Recently movie studios have made every prominent comic book out there (and some not so prominent) into movies. These movies often enjoy box-office success, and sometimes critical success as well. Why is that? Perhaps there’s something in the DNA of both Shakespeare’s plays and today’s comic books that tickle our brains in a pleasing manner.
I’m realizing now that this has gotten away from being a movie review and has gotten into a mini-essay comparing Shakespeare’s plays and modern day comic books. Forgive me. And perhaps see Kick-Ass, but not if you’re turned off by a movie that has more swearing than it really needs, and more violence than you might expect.
Our story started in mid-August. I was 8 ½ months pregnant with my first baby. In the midst of last minute baby prep, while I was big as a whale, my old oven died. After doing some research, we purchased a Frigidaire Gallery Premier 30″ Self-Cleaning Slide-In Gas Convection Range oven in stainless steel. Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? It’s VERY fancy. It’s perhaps the fanciest heap of junk I’ve ever owned.
My lovely baby Charlotte was born on September 7. The new oven arrived and was installed a week later, on Sept. 14. Less than a month later, in the week of October 4 – 9, the new oven stopped working. Specifically, it started to beep and flash the error code “F12” on its LED readout screen. It started to do this at 4 am. Needless to say, I was not trying to cook anything at the time. I was trying to get some sleep. I had a newborn, and I wasn’t getting much sleep to begin with. The last thing I needed was for my oven to break randomly by beeping loudly at 4 am.
We called Frigidaire; they gave us the name of an authorized repair service in our area. I called the repair service, and scheduled a repair for Tuesday, Oct. 12. The repair guy came, looked at the oven, and spoke on the phone with a Frigidaire technician. They determined that the oven needed a new clock. So the repair guy ordered the part from the distributor.
Getting the part took a month. A MONTH. Just think about that. A month with a newborn and no oven. Granted, I didn’t have much time to whip up gourmet meals while dealing with my new baby. But I couldn’t bake a frozen pizza. I couldn’t boil water. I couldn’t fry an egg. For a month, we’ve been eating takeout and cooking in the crockpot. It’s been a huge inconvenience, to say the least.
Perhaps you’re wondering why we couldn’t just keep using the oven and stove. I mean, it was only the clock that was broken. There was nothing wrong with the oven or stove, right? Yeah, I wondered that myself. But the clock is part of the whole button panel thingy, which is what operates the oven. It’s how you set the temperature, and turn the convection fan on and off, and all that. So even though the oven itself was not at all broken, I couldn’t use it because the CLOCK didn’t work.
I don’t need the clock. Every other appliance in my kitchen has a clock on it. The microwave, my coffee maker, and my toaster oven all have clocks on them. I could care less about the clock. But because of the damn clock, I couldn’t use the entire appliance. Note to Frigidaire: YOU MIGHT WANT TO RECONSIDER YOUR DESIGN.
But I digress. Finally, the part arrived and the repair guy came to repair the oven today, November 15. He arrived, installed the part and… the same problem occurred. The oven beeped endlessly while flashing a “F12” error. So then the repair guy called Frigidaire, and talked to a technician. (just like the first time.) They said, “well, that error is the clock, but the problem could be with the key pad.”
At this point, I’m thinking, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? But what I said was, “how quickly can we get that part?” And apparently, they will ship the part to my house within a few days. It had better arrive by Thursday, because that’s when I’ve scheduled the repair guy to come back AGAIN.
I’m also wondering why it took a MONTH for my repair guy to get a part through a distributor, when I can just call the company directly and get a part delivered in a matter of days.
I sure hope that the part arrives by Thursday, and that it works. Otherwise my Thanksgiving plans will be going out the window.
So, let’s review here.
That’s all for now. I’ll give you an update later this week!
When Charlotte was first born, Neil was caught a bit off guard. I don’t think he knew quite what to expect in a newborn. He wrote this during his adjustment period. With his permission, I’m posting it here. Consider it our PSA to first-time expectant parents.
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1.) A “newborn” and a “baby” are two completely separate creatures. All new parents who tell you how awesome parenthood is, this is because they now have a baby, and have forgotten what it was like having a newborn. The baby is interactive, has thoughts and emotions, plays with you, makes cute noises. A newborn does 4 things only: cries, eats, sleeps and poops. Your role right now as parents of a newborn is to give love to someone who doesn’t know you exist (remember that girl/guy from high school? Just like that) Your role is to help your newborn to survive the next 3 months to the baby stage, where you’ll then start to have fun.
2.) Babies are not very playful for the first few weeks. Again, all they do is cry, eat, sleep and poop. She’s like a little time-bomb. While she’s asleep, you’re afraid every moment she’ll wake up and cry, and when she’s awake and crying, all you want is to find some sort of technique to put her back asleep. After 3-4 weeks, she may have short periods of being awake and NOT pissed off, and this is when you can play with her. But until then, your job is to stay awake and provide food.
3.) A newborn’s eyesight is very poor, and so they will almost never look you straight in the eye, because they can’t see your eyes. It can take up to a month until the kid realizes that your face is something to be looked at, and not something to be looked away from.
4.) A baby has no short term memory. So she can be crying in the most brutal way ever, and then in 1 second, she can stop and look around all inquisitive, like she was never crying in the first place. Think the film “Memento” and you’ll get the idea.
5.) Babies’ respiratory systems are not very well developed when they’re born, so it’s quite normal to have them snort, squeak, squeal, croak, make all sorts of pig noises, sound like they’re coughing up a lung, etc. Basically, every moment they’re alive, they sound like they’re taking their dying breath, so you stop worrying about it pretty fast. This gradually improves over the first month.
6.) Your newborn’s skin will peel off for the first month or so, this is not a sign that she’s a reptile, that’s just what newborn skin does.
7.) Many people will give you the advice “Sleep when the baby sleeps.” While good advice, this only works if the baby actually sleeps. Babies can in fact cry for 14 hours straight, with only 5-10 minute sleep breaks every hour or so. May I recommend coffee.
8.) Babies should sleep on their backs for health reasons, but all books recommend that she spend at least 30 min a day on her belly (this is called “Tummy Time”), starting from day one. However, all books also say to not to put her on her belly until her umbilical cord stump falls off (usually 10 days or so). So apparently the people who wrote the part of the book recommending tummy time from her first day of life hasn’t spoken to the person who wrote the part of the book about the umbilical chord.
9.) Poo. No matter who much you think you know about it / are ready for it, you’re not.
10.) It’s recommended to use non scented soaps and detergents on your newborn and her clothing. Unscented does not mean it has no scent, it means it doesn’t have any perfume in it to hide the horrible smell of whatever the product is actually made of.
11.) You will create more garbage and recycling then you ever imagined possible.
12.) You will start off trying to be environmentally friendly, you will try and use cloth diapers, you will try and use biodegradable diapers, you will try and use biodegradable inserts and cloth diapers. But all of these plans will go out the window really quickly, you will become all about survival, and you will use disposable diapers exclusively.
13.) People will recommend to fathers “Stay above the curtain” during the birth. I thought there would be an actual curtain. There isn’t anymore.
14.) Most of the hospital staff will be awesome. But there will be one nurse who rubs you the wrong way. Do not waste energy fighting with her, that energy has much better uses, like sleep.
15.) You will dream about laying in bed, worrying that your baby is about to wake up. And when you wake up from that dream, your baby will be awake and crying.
16.) You know those in-laws you never see? Invite them over once a week to take care of the kid for 2 hours while you and your wife have a nice dinner alone.
17.) Your hair will fall out, do not fear, this is normal, it’s caused by stress.
18.) Newborns do not understand the irony of you crying at them.
19.) When walking down stairs with a baby, concentrate on the stairs first, and the baby second.
20.) Most of the time when a baby cries, it’s because they are crying, not because anything is wrong. Many parents feel that their baby crying is because they haven’t done something that the baby wants, when in fact most of the time it’s just because the baby is expressing itself through crying. As long as you’ve checked the obvious, dirty diaper, too hot / too cold, is she being held enough, have you tried jiggling her, does she have gas, etc, then don’t beat yourself up, there’s nothing wrong with her, you just have to get used to the sound of crying.
BTW, if you’re thinking “Man, this must be one of the bad kids, our child is going to be nothing like this”, please note that our pediatricians told us we actually had a pretty mellow kid compared to some. So mark my words well.
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