Movies and Mandalas

Yes, we have Gotham fever here. C has seen "The Dark Knight" four times in the past three days, and the rest of us (N excepted) have each seen it once. I thought it was tremendous, as did Z; R was underwhelmed, but I think he missed the point. He isn't a Batman fan, which is part of the problem. His back hurts, too, so sitting in a movie theatre is painful - another part of the problem.

Heath Ledger was amazing. I thought I would find it painful to watch his last performance, but I was so mesmerized by his acting that I completely forgot about the role having put him over the edge.

C&I also saw "Hellboy II," which I enjoyed, though it wasn't nearly the movie "Dark Knight" was. The creatures of Faerie were pretty darned cool - it was a beautiful, eerie film.

In other news, Z is now officially graduated, and has her diploma (misspelled) in hand. Her party was fun, and the house is, temporarily, cleaner and neater than usual. I spent yesterday and today patching her two quilts - this took hours, literally, but they are now ready to accompany her to college in a month (boo hoo!).

And today I finally began painting again. The mandala started out as planned, but rapidly took on a life of its own. The background became all Monet-y, and then the flower petals, which I had thought would be stark white, turned into waterlily-colored ones, though they're not shaped like waterlilies. So the whole thing is evolving into something altogether different from what I'd originally envisioned, which is fine, just surprising. I'm enjoying it tremendously, but I really need to call the rheumatologist tomorrow, because after painting for a while I could hardly straighten up, and am now typing this while flat on my back on the heating pad. Not good.

Hope I can work on it again tomorrow. I'll try to upload a picture soon.

~Cheers

Slightly Hampered

I cannot find the cable that connects my camera to my pc. This would be more of a concern if my house weren't such a wreck; however, I feel there is still hope, so long as I get some serious cleaning done. Which NEEDS to be done soon anyway, given the imminence of Z's graduation party and several sets of houseguests.

In the meantime, I can run to CVS when my camera card fills up and have the machine make me a cd for $3, which I can then upload to the pc. Not too annoying, and a lot faster than cleaning up. ;-)

Here's N's mandala:
And the one I referred to much earlier, of mine:
At the Jepson Museum of Art in Savannah, there were some really cool photographic displays we played with. Here are Z & N in two of them:

Cool, eh?

And here is ONE of C's artworks from this past year, his pointillism project, which is just amazing, as far as I am concerned:
That's it for now - we're off to see "Wanted" (C & me) and "Wall-E" (Z&N). Happy 4th! Poor R is working. :-(

~Cheers

Suplise! and a wee bit o' panic

This evening I went ahead and ordered about $150 worth of painting supplies - brushes and paints from Jerry's Artarama (see link above) and canvases from Cheap Joe's. The nice thing about Cheap Joe's is that you don't have to order 36 canvases at a time; Jerry's has a HUGE minimum order, and I was not prepared to store that many, let alone to spend that much on canvases alone. But Jerry's had a fabulous sale on some of their brushes (BOGO), so I got a set of 12 "mini micro" brushes for doing some small mandalas, and two huge fan brushes (one each for Z & me) as well as two huge flat-end brushes (one each for Z & me) for scumbling- we've always used cheapo brushes for that, but that is a pain, because the hairs always come off, which means we have to pick the hairs out of the paint surface, and it's very annoying & messy, as well as inefficient.

And then Jerry's also had their liquitex acrylic paint on sale, too, so we got ten colors we were out of or almost out of. As soon as all this stuff comes, we'll be in business!

In the meantime, I have SIX (6) mandalas planned out in my head. Well, the miniature one (which I will do on an 8" round canvas) is already done in colored pencil on vellum, and I mentioned it in my first post of the summer, but have not yet posted it. I think it will be nice as a small, finely-detailed painting. I have a square canvas that has been sitting waiting patiently for a concept since last summer, and now I have it designed to the last detail in my imagination - I also have all the necessary paints and brushes. What I need now is the time to create it in miniature with pencils and markers, so I can work out all the rough spots, and then I can start painting.

Then I have four other ideas: one is already started on my biiiig sketch pad, and just needs to have the sketch finished before I paint. The other three need some geometry help from R - how to measure to get seven equal points around a circle, that sort of thing. All four of these will be painted on 20" diameter circular canvases. One will be called "Maha Chakra," or "Great Chakra," combining all seven chakras. The other two will be sort of mirror images of each other, and I need to work on the center they will share, which is a stylized version of - I won't say, but will hope you can tell once I've drawn it. I'll have to draw all three of these as smallish mandalas before I paint them.

So, at least six paintings before the end of the summer, as well as a ton of small mandalas to make 50 in all.

And yes, Ker and Mom, you will each get a letter & mandala from me, I promise.

Meanwhile, I am pulling together N's birthday party. She is having ONE close friend from school for a day of festivities: meeting at Bounce U to frolic from 1:30-3, then coming home for cake, then painting t-shirts to commemorate the day, then (weather permitting) swimming for an hour or so, then coming home for supper, then playing till dark, then setting off (legal) fireworks, then we'll take Jenna home and all come back to fall into bed with utter exhaustion. But I think this will be nicer than the usual bunch of kids for 2 hrs. of pandemonium, and N & Jenna are very excited about it. Btw, those fireworks were purchased at a stand which was located at a gas station - can you think of a worse venue?

I have GOT to go bed. I've been suffering from terrible insomnia ever since I started taking a sleeping pill (trazodone). I am not impressed with it. It takes forever to get to sleep, and then I sleep so soundly that I sleep till 10 am or later & am groggy all day. Bah.

Tomorrow is yet another big day. The Sears repairperson is coming to fix our washing machine, which no longer spins at the end of the cycle, so all the clothes are sopping wet and take forever to dry unless we wring them out. Z has a library reading to do at N's school in the morning, so C is taking them in order for me to be home in case Sears comes. But I have a meeting to complain about Angel's poor performance in my 6-week class (which is now over, huzzah!) at 2 pm, so the kids have to stay home in case Sears hasn't yet come by then. We've been told they're coming "between 8 & 5" - very specific, ain't it?

~Cheers
.