Proof that I've been busy...

Not only have I been caring for four busy grandchildren under the age of nine, I've also been working on a neglected room in Stephanie's house...her second family room...

Before:

The race car bed was not a fixture - Sterling was graciously allowing me to
sleep in his room for a couple of nights.

Oddly placed window, bookcase with strange awning...

After:

Ta-da!!

I'm hoping these will be the only hand prints on the walls.

 

Keeping Busy

I've been keeping fairly busy lately.  Much of my time has been taken up with my regularly scheduled programming (family, seminary, sleep, house....) but I've been sneaking in some time to work on Christmas presents.  Unfortunately, I can't really blog about what I've done because you never know who might peek. 


Here's a little something I posted on Help Me Hanna:

5 x 5, Day 1

I actually started this on Saturday - and spent much of the day on it.

 I was surprised at how long it took...

 But, good golly Miss Molly!

I. LOVE. IT
(It seems a bit of a waste to put it in the hall bathroom...)

Not so long ago, in a galaxy not so far away...

While browsing around the interwebs this week I came across a painting tutorial on Lil Blue Boo (she does a great job at explaining the process).  I thought to myself, 'Self, you could do this technique.' And so I did. I'm trying to gather up all the stuff I need to tart up my upstairs hall bath (the only room in my house that hasn't been painted at least once!). Anywho, I have a totally awesome theme (does it help if I mention that it's my 16 year old son's bathroom?)...

Let's get started on the painting!

1. I thinned down some Elmer's glue with water, and basically decoupaged torn telephone book pages onto a 12x12 canvas frame ($5.00). I'll never be able to call anyone whose last name starts with an 'l', but that's a small price to pay.

2. I covered the entire canvas and wrapped the paper around the edges.  You might notice the canning jar rings...I didn't want to glue the frame to the counter, so that's what I use to give a little height to my project.

3. I painted the entire canvas True Blue.

4. I printed up my phrase on the computer (using a free downloaded font - from www.fontspace.com/category/Star+Wars), then cut the letters out and traced them with a pencil.

5. Two coats of white paint, then I dry brushed some Leaf Green paint on the bottom and part of the top.



6. Allow paint to dry, then take some sandpaper to it to give it a distressed appearance.

 

7. I mixed some Bittersweet Chocolate(paint-not the stuff you eat) with water and then started the business of making the picture look even older. After applying the antique wash, I periodically wiped it down slightly with a damp papertowel (thus, the streaky effect).



8. Do I stop now? I think I will...

 I think my end product has a sort of Dagobah vibe. 
Total cost? Maybe $6.00.

Did I forget to mention the theme for the bathroom?  Wait for it...wait. for. it....

The Empire Strikes Bath. (With special thanks for the idea from a blog of the same name.)

Michelangelo in Training?

3rd grade effort. Has a bit of a post-modern
gritty feel to it.

I'm pretty sure that art is Danny's favorite class. For some kids, it would be because it's an easy A - scribble a few pictures, squish a little clay...it's all subjective anyway. Who's to say what's good art or bad? In spite of that, Danny spends hours and hours on his art projects. Very un -Danny of him.

Sure, he's no Michelangelo yet, but I'm pretty impressed with how far he's come.

More of a neo-classical vibe?

The Artist As A Young Man

I know, I know...it's only Tuesday - why are we doing art on a Tuesday?

Because we can.

I think Danny is just about ready to do the artwork for a Napoleon Dynamite sequel. He just needs to spend 3 hours shading the upper lip.

Pudding, as Art

Today's art inspiration is a sculpture using the assemblage technique. The Family, by Marisol Escobar.


The assignment was to create a portrait sculpture using the assemblage technique. Danny decided to make his portrait of nephew Kaith. In order to come up with appropriately sized boxes Danny needed to empty a pudding box...in order to empty it, it just made sense not to waste it...I am so counting the time he spent making pudding for school.

If it's Friday, this must be "Art".

Daniel's art assignment this week was nice. Fast and easy. That's rather refreshing. What is it? It is a monotype print of an African Fang Mask inspired design with Japanese inspired background. Our reference picture was of a sculpture by Amedeo Modigliani (it is called "Head of a Woman"). He in turn was supposedly inspired by the Fang masks.

The background inspiration was a picture by Suzuki Harunobu "The Evening Bell of the Clock". Notice the strong diagonal lines.

Whatever. It was a fun little project and a bit of a relief to have a simple project with fast results.

I even made a sample (see below) - mostly I wanted to see if wax paper would work for the monotype print. It worked fine, and might be fun to try again....maybe with a nicer looking subject?

Donating my Body to Science

Slowly add the muriatic acid to the 50 ml of water. Add one galvanized nail. Put lid on loosely, wait 20 seconds or so, then put a burning toothpick next to the lid...you should hear a popping noise like a little explosion. We didn't. We added 2 more nails - hoping to increase the chemical reaction going on. Nothing. Then I came up with the brilliant idea of replacing the lids with the gloves. We watched the gloves slowly fill with gas....this time the flaming toothpick DID cause an explosion. I think our explosion was a wee bit bigger than it was supposed to be, but it made us all happy. And now we know what happened to the Hindenburg.

Lucky for us we didn't have nearly the amount of hydrogen gas as the Hindenburg. As it was I slightly singed one finger. Totally worth it.

I didn't get a picture of our other experiment. Add one teaspoon of yeast to 50ml hydrogen peroxide. Loosely cover with a lid. Take a glowing toothpick (one that you've just blown out) and hold it next to the lid - lift lid and watch it burst back into flame. Cool.

With science done for the day we spent most of the rest of the morning on art. Mixing colors is not as easy as it looks when you are partially color-blind. Just ask my boys. All of them.

Ivan and the Terrible, Horrible, ALMOST No Good, Very Bad Reign

Today's subject in Daniel's World History class....Ivan the Terrible. Yeah, sure, the chapter starts out with Vladimir, sashays over to Ivan the Great, but then it gets right down to business with Ivan the Terrible.... He starts to make one feel good about pretty much any other political leader.

Ivan had more than a few bad/lethal habits. He liked to ride his horse through Moscow and slash away at innocent bystanders with a whip. If Ivan was offended by your face he would have it removed - at the neck. He took some of his advisors on a winter trip to the country...he stripped them naked and made them walk back to Moscow barefoot and naked in the snow(question: was it uphill both ways?) He killed his oldest son. He made a hobby of inventing new tortures. The list goes on and on.

There is one thing that Ivan did that I like. A lot. He ordered construction of a cathedral. The Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin. Well, no one calls it that anymore, in fact, soon after it was built the locals started calling it "St. Basil's". Ivan had this glorious flight of fancy built around the same time the rest of Europe was going all ga ga over classical Greek and Roman architecture. You've gotta admit it's a whole lotta fun to look at.

Super Saturday

I'm always on the lookout for good Thanksgiving decorations...because they are hard to find. We did more than these two projects, but somehow the preparedness binder just doesn't pack the same visual punch. Another project I did (well, I think it was actually Suzanne that made mine...)anyway, no pictures of that one because it is a potential Christmas present.

The visiting teacher gift...who doesn't like chocolate?

art.

This is the reason that government committees should never be allowed to pay people to create art for a community. No, it's not really a pile of poo....it a half million dollar sculpture of a coiled snake. A really bad sculpture of a coiled snake. That someone thought was worth $500,000. If you're ever down in San Jose, you can find it prominently displayed right downtown.

A block away from the "pile of poo" we saw this large reproduction of a Leonardo da Vinci design for a horse. It was pretty darn awesome. And just about large enough to have left the "pile". I'll bet if Leonardo had sculpted a snake it wouldn't look like a pile of poo.

No, not Leonardo. Brunelleschi. A large cut-away model of the dome he designed for the Santa Maria del Fiori in Florence, Italy. I showed the picture to Danny and he actually remembered the name Brunelleschi from his history class a couple of weeks ago.

Yes, we're back to Leonardo. Did I mention that we went to an exhibit at the Tech Museum in San Jose that was mostly about Leonardo? A few other Renaissance designers/engineers/architects were also included - yeah, Brunelleschi. Brunelleschi had a whole room devoted to him. Leonardo was the star of the exhibit. If the exhibit comes to your town I would recommend it. I wouldn't recommend that you take any young children or children who don't like to read - there was a lot of reading involved in the exhibit - and some nudity (this is the Renaissance we're talking about).

Word of the Day

Illustration of one point perspective by Daniel

Orthogonal

I was going to use "vanishing point" or possibly "one point perspective" - but since those are both multi-word phrases, orthogonal won out.

As in:

"It was fun to draw a picture using the vanishing point as a guide for the orthogonal lines. This picture illustrated the concept of one point perspective, as seen in Raphael's The School of Athens."

or·thog·o·nal (ôr-thŏg'ə-nəl) adj.

1. Relating to or composed of right angles.
2. Mathematics
Of or relating to a matrix whose transpose equals its inverse.
Of or relating to a linear transformation that preserves the length of vectors.

The School of Athens by Raphael

Censorship Begins At Home

Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus". Nude on the half-shell.

Donatello's "David". I much prefer Michelangelo's David - this one is just smarmy looking. AND if you're going to be naked, what's the point of the hat and boots?

Danny (and by association, I) are currently studying the Renaissance in his World History class. So far I have really liked his history textbook - it presents facts without being too judgemental about them. I like that a lot. It also has a lot of cool pictures and illustrations to go along with the text. As anyone who has ever studied Western Civ will know, a lot of the Renaissance artists were all about the "nude". Call it what you want, it doesn't fly too well at our house. It's not that I'm opposed to my children seeing "fine art" - I'm not. I just don't think they need to have those nudes constantly in view. To that end, I have supplied Danny with some Post-It notes.

The textbook actually shows great restraint - I think Danny only needs about 3 or 4 more post-it notes. The rest of the Renaissance art is clothed.

I'm really looking forward to some of the upcoming chapters. Especially the one about the Ottoman Empire, or as Danny has already dubbed it: "The Footstool Empire".

Sooo...should I put a post it note on the Maxfield Parrish print that I have up? I'm kind of thinking that since Steve grew up with it in his parents house and never noticed one of the figures has no clothes, we might be okay.

Attack of the Nakedish Art

I'm pretty sure I've never seen this statue with a towel around it.

I'm feeling a little better about WAVA (Washington Virtual Academy) today. No, we haven't received Danny's books, but we were able to do more of his courses online. I didn't realize he would be taking "Intermediate World Art". I remember taking Western Civ in high school and being somewhat embarrassed at the videos that showed nakedish art in our coed classroom. I'm not sure if it's better or worse to view them at home, but at least I will be commenting on them, not the adolescent young thug in the next seat.

On a similar note. Stephanie is taking a figure drawing class this quarter. She'll be contributing her own nakedish art to the world. Or at least to her instructor.

Performance Art?

It's Monday and we're off and running with a vengeance. This was one of those days that made me wish for a second car. Our one and only was in constant use starting at 6:30 am (Dropping Danny and a friend off for Scout camp), dropping Nathan off at the college at 7:30, Andrew taking the van at 8:45 to pick up Steve and go missionary shopping, 4:35 Andrew and Steve got home ($1,700 poorer) 4:40 left to pick up Nathan from work, home at 5:30 (after making a stop at Safeway to pick up milk) - Nathan then left 15 minutes later to go to singles FHE.

Tomorrow should be better....at least, that's my hope. I just hope our running around isn't as pointless as this.

Thrifty Art

I've been looking around for some Japanese inspired decorations/art for Alex's new bedroom. Totally scored at Goodwill. Handpainted picture $6.99. It's quite large - about 2 foot by 4 foot.

Now that we have our inspiration piece, we'll go from here.

Poster Girl

Repeat with me: "Overhead projectors are our friends...."

I don't mind volunteering to make posters. It's fun, easy and a great way to impress people with my fairly non-existent artistic abilities. I'm pretty adept at copying - which does go a long way towards compensating for said "artistic abilities".

Unfortunately for me, my older sister hogged ALL of the family artistic ability. The rest of us have had to learn to cope one way or another. I think we've done quite well. In one way or another.

Going to Pot(tery)

Not bad for a left handed, right brained, partially color blind, teenage boy who wears glasses.

"One kind of man I impatiently scorn is the kind that looks bored if I mention Ibsen or ceramics or Aztec civilization but is interested instantly, alertly, if I mention my garters”
- Mary MacLane