:-/

I don't have anything good to say at the moment. Here's a picture I took of two cute birds in my backyard. :)

San Francisco

I went up to San Francisco for the weekend, to see a traveling exhibit at the de Young museum called "The Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musee D'Orsay." Ironically, I walked by most of the actual impressionist pieces with only a slight pause in step. Aside from wanting a maple frosted donut with bacon on it that I had seen in AAA magazine (mission: accomplished), I went pretty much for the sole purpose of seeing this painting by William Bouguereau:

La Naissance de Venus (Birth of Venus), 1879, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

As I had suspected, it was completely stunning in person. Definitely my favorite that I've seen of his so far. There was another giant painting by him which was also incredible. The sad thing is that they didn't allow sketching, as they had so many people waiting to get in that they didn't want you to dawdle. For the same reason I wasn't really able to get my nose up against the paintings as much as I would've liked to, to really take it all in, as there were constantly new herds of people coming in. I waited about 2 hours to see the exhibit, so I only had about a half hour looking at paintings before I had to drive back home. But it was worth it anyway! Besides my main attraction, there were a few fantastic paintings that I didn't expect to see.

My friend and I took some Polaroids while we were up there and I had fun drawing on a couple of them.

I really need to be careful about what sunglasses I wear, as I tend to bear a rather startling resemblance to a young Roy Orbison. I've made peace with this fact, but sadly, this rules out pretty much every retro-cool type of sunglasses available right now. When I was little, my dad used to sing his song to me: "...anything you want, you got it. Anything you need, you got it!" Apparently that is true, unless what I want is to not look like Roy Orbison.

Ricky Colson

Ravi by Ricky Colson

I found this artist online yesterday through a series of fortunate events, and I like his artwork so much I can even forgive him for stealing my idea. If you look in one of my old sketchbooks you will see a series of undersized-people paintings which I planned out, and still intend on getting around to. Eventually. So Ricky Colson either drove from Texas to California and stole my sketchbook when I wasn't looking, or he is just less of a procrastinater than I am and acted on a good idea. The world will never know. Either way, he is one talented dude!*

Lucky for me every artist has a unique view of things, even if the concept is similar. This is why artists are amazing: Who else would think of drawing a guy sitting on a bar of soap? Not to mention then having the ability to then turn that idea into something so beautiful.

His website is here: rickycolson.com, and his blog is here: rickycolson.blogspot.com.

*Disclaimer for people with an impaired sense of humor: I am joking about him stealing my idea.

I learned a lesson.

Well, I managed to lock myself out of the house, but I still have my beloved iPod, so I figured now would be as good a time as any to do some blogging.

Aside from being stuck in my backyard, with my dog, today is a celebration day. I am finally nearing the end of a painting I've been working on for over four months. That's a long time, for me. I've finished a lot of other paintings in that time, but this one was kind of torturing me. I realized that I had gotten too wrapped up in the the technical details of the painting and it had become more important than the message of the painting, the result being a painting that looked kind of dumb, even if--yes--that furry scarf really looked like a furry scarf.

Once I stopped putting more importance on the technicalities of painting than the message I wanted to convey, it went MUCH easier and faster, and now it actually looks good.

LESSON: Not making technical expertise more important than the painting itself! Otherwise it just looks like paint, without the life and beauty part.

Speaking of life and beauty--here is a painting that I am in love with by my favorite painter, William Bouguereau.

The First Mourning

Morgan Weistling

I really like this painting:

"A Helping Hand" by Morgan Weistling

He has some beautiful stuff, and an exhibition coming up in October. You can see here: LINK!

"Flirtation" time lapse drawing

Yaaayyyy!! I've always wanted to do one of those cool time lapse videos of a painting, and I finally did one. It's a pastel portrait of a friend of mine: