People as Other People

I've been painting family members for a series of works based on classical artwork by others.  It's been fun!  Here's what I've got so far:

Myself as Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring"

My son as a random Pirate

My niece as Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa"  (the Mona Nisa)

Another niece as Edouard Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergere"

Niece number 3 as George Romney's "Lady Hamilton"

Yet another niece as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's "Jane Avril"

Nephew and girlfriend as Grant Wood's "American Gothic"

Son as Maurice Quentin de la Tour's "portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau" (favorite philosopher of said son)

Have many more to go, but thought I'd share progress so far.  These are all watercolors with ink or pencil, roughly 8" x 10".  Hope the original artists aren't spinning in their graves!

Royalty

This is a quick post to strike while the iron is hot.  I am attention-deficit-whatever... I probably am gonna hafta post in this style to get anything 'out there'.  This is a current project.  At some point I want to post ALL of my stuff, but I gotta start somewhere.   Just warning the reader that I will jump all over creation.  Get your Dramamine ready!

I recently painted a little blue jay that was at my bird feeder.  He seemed so regal, I added a crown.  Off on a tangent I go.  Have more royal subjects waiting, but here are a few for now.

These are small watercolor and marker sketches, all referenced from actual animals that are friends of mine.  They are pets, rescues, or visitors in my yard.  I only paint or draw from my own photos cuz I am too shy to ask permission from other folks to use their work.  Along the same lines, please don't use my stuff with out asking.

Yes, I spelled Duxbury wrong.  I LIVE there and can't get it right.  I am a horrible speller and that's okay.  Stay regal, bitchez!

Well, I left this thing for dead.  Turns out, I'm not a very good poet.  SHOCK.  But I really enjoy the blog world and wanna participate so I gotta find a better angle.  Write what you know...write what you love...write what is interesting to you (ME.)

I'm a middle aged married lady working as an operating room nurse in a small northern Minnesota Hospital.  But what I also am is a frustrated artist that wants to paint and draw and make junk art - all day long.  It has taken me an unbelievable amount of time to reconcile this fact.  I have been miserable in the past dozen years spending my days doing things I find pretty horrible.  Don't get me wrong about nursing - I am proud proud proud to be a nurse.  I think nurses are awesome!  Smart, calm, practical, crisis management experts, caring, positive, thrifty, healing, priority setting-delegating wizards....the best women (and men) I know are nurses, I just don't like it very much.  For one thing, I am shy.  I just don't like having to ask folks a lot of super personal questions, and then having to listen to all sorts of super personal responses.  It makes me want to run and hide under a blanket.  Nursing requires a whole bunch of boundary-shattering talking and touching, and looking, and smelling (assessing).  I just don't want to know.  Do you hate me now?

So, as I have ambled over the last few years, I found myself cutting back more and more from hours spent nursing.  (Thank you to my very understanding mushy-manly man husband).  And more hours spent doing art work.  I don't think I am a very good nurse.  I don't think I am a very good artist.  (And, if you are reading this, not a very good writer.)  But I am a much happier woman when I spend my time doing art.

 Above, me, on the right.  Below, me all over the dinning room table.

I will try to write (occasionally) about what I am doing at my art table, and see if I can resuscitate this blog.  And, if anyone DOES read this thing, would ya stop in and say HI!?   :)