I fiddled a bit on Owl’s Adventure III today (already sold), and Caitlin did some doodling in paint on a sloth portrait… This photo was taken in pretty terrible lighting so it doesn’t really show the colors of either of these incomplete pieces very well. It really brings me immense joy to be in a house so full of art, as cluttered as it may be because of that!

I finished the “Guitar Hero” painting today. It’s for sale… rent’s due so I’m feeling reasonable! You can’t see him super well in this picture, but I’m particularly thrilled with the lizard Lars Umlaut. The painting is done in a kind of duotone in lime green mixed with grays — other than the TV image and the guitar hero controller buttons of course.

PS. If you’re wondering he’s playing Cliffs of Dover…

We went to the ROM and checked out the reopened dinosaur exhibit, but to be honest, Nefarious far prefers the mummies… I think other than the play area and the bat cave, that’s her favorite. Anyway, I forgot to post our gingerbread house — the construction went perfectly, although I do admit that it rapidly degenerated into what’s basically just a platform to hold an enormous amount of candy in a thick layer of icing…

For our Christmas tree, instead of setting up a 3D tree, we painted a six foot high tree on a discarded canvas (Caitlin’s idea), and then made lots of decorations and glued them to it. I think Santa will be quite pleased — it may not look as “fancy” as a normal tree but it’s a much more fun family activity I think.

Other than that, loads of ice skating, sledding, and other winter holiday fun is being had.

I hadn’t painted anything other than walls since high school and I am pretty happy with how these turned out. The smaller one is a portrait of my mother’s cat, Harriet. The larger one was influenced by our trip to Cape Breton Island (our land is covered in birch trees) and my love of owls. They are gifts for my mother and father.

First: I’d strongly appreciate if conversation on this blog was kept to art, homesteading, and other stuff tied to the entries as much as possible… BodyTwo was taken down for a reason and while I know everyone wants to know the details, I’d rather not have those issues affect this site as well. There will be a time and place when it’s possible to discuss this at length but this isn’t that time or place… Thank you.

Second: If anyone has any ideas as to why this blog renders its archive and index pages wrong on IE (other than “IE sucks!”), please drop me a line so I can fix it… Or switch to FireFox!

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Third: I’m still alive and doing fine and looking forward to a wonderful holiday period with Nefarious and Caitlin and others, and am as always, working to create lots of new stuff. A couple more paintings are now on the go — on the left is “Where Water Snakes Come From” “The Origin of Water Snakes” and on the right is “Owl’s Adventure III” (on wood panel).

I’m also giving a lot more thought to the idea of the children’s art museum, and perhaps launching a children’s clothing line at the same time. I was being interviewed by a doctor yesterday as part of my ongoing legal stuff, and he asked me how I saw myself, and I told him that I saw myself as someone with a deep drive to create things of beauty, bring them into the world, and share them with as many people as I can.

I don’t really like the way this turned out… I may do another kitty-cat in robes to atone for my errors here at a later date.

As a sort of part two to the Owl’s Adventure, I painted another in the same series, on some sort of cardboard/masonite stuff (in acrylic) I had lying around that I usually use as a backing material when I make frames. I think I might do the next one as an underwater scene with some sort of submarine contraption that matches the kid’s party balloon airship…

Caitlin and I braved the Toronto blizzard this morning…

…and went out for breakfast and to pick up supplies to make a few sheets of gingerbread house dough. I can’t wait for tomorrow when Nefarious and I will assemble it (after tons of sledding and/or skating), and then on Tuesday we’ll decorate it, but here’s the cardboard stencil I made. It’s relatively complex so I hope I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew with this design.

Nefarious and I made a clock today since other than the stove and microwave, we don’t have one downstairs. I put it together and she painted the numbers..

I will probably still do a repaint of it, leaving her numbers but adding a picture of some sort. I’ve decided that I’m going to line the letters so they hover “above” the painting, and then I’m going to paint one of my lizardy guys looking at his watch, with the hands of the clock being the hands of his watch… I’ll post the finished version in a couple days.

Update: We added the background this morning (and are now off to go ice skating to celebrate)…

A la “you can always make something out of nothing,” this small painting is done on a scrap canvas that I had been using as a palette on which I’d been mixing acrylics for another painting — thus the random background pattern. The frame is some cheap edging that I bought and stained, so it cost me just a few dollars. Click for a closer look as always (the full-size one is quite big).

Edit: I should note that I ripped off the idea of drawing an owl from Caitlin who is doing a painting with an owl in it, so when she posts that, in chronological terms, her owl came first…