Best Friends

“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.”
– Grace Murray Hopper

 

Best Friends
5″ x 7″ Acrylic on Canvas

Can you tell I have been enjoying the acrylics a lot lately?  I am lingering in this phase longer than I usually do, but I’m having a great time!

Here is the base coat ….



I also tweaked the Trio of Birds and I am happier with it.  I applied more layers and took the yellow off one of the bird’s feet.



The original post of the birds can be found here.

About Grace Murray Hopper

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, the American computer pioneer, was the first woman to become a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. She was born in 1906 in New York. By age seven, she was taking alarm clocks apart to see how they worked. She worked for the U.S. Navy developing the first compiler, which allowed people to write computer programs in real language rather than machine code. When she found a moth inside a computer, she coined the term “debugging.” She died in 1992.

Trio of Birds

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
– Aristotle

 

Trio of Birds
Golden Fluid Acrylic on Ampersand Clay Board

This was a fun little painting to do.  In the reference photo, the birds were on a man, picking at his shirt.  I made up this little fantasy setting.  Here is how it all started…



I painted the panel with black gesso, then when dry, I drew my lines in with watercolor pencil.  I then painted in a base coat and after it dried, I wiped off the pencil lines with a damp rag.  There are a bizzilion layers of acrylic on the finished painting.  I say finished, but seeing it here in the monitor, I can see where I may need a few more layers.  It’s amazing what a scanner picks up that I don’t see with the naked eye. 

About Aristotle

Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher who is considered one of the most influential thinkers in history, wrote a number of books about science, poetry, and ethics. He was born in 384 B.C. in Macedonia. He studied with Plato in Athens and later tutored Alexander the Great. His death in 322 B.C. was rumored to be caused by hemlock poisoning.