These Boots are Made for Dancing!

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg."
– C. S. Lewis

 

These Boots are Made for Dancing!

5.5" x 7.5" Watercolor & Acrylic on Yes! Primed Linen

This painting was done from a reference by KreativeK at WetCanvas.  Thanks, Kay, for sharing this great photo.  Yes! is a really fun surface to paint on.  It's smooth and normally accepts watercolor beautifully.  I think this particular pad has been compromised by extreme temperatures in my sign shop, because the watercolor was wanting to bead up.

Here is a photo at 2 hours.  

I imagine I have over 4 hours in it.  First I drew the boots with a watercolor pencil.  I then outlined all of the lines with a Sharpie.  All of the colors, except the black and white, were painted in with watercolor.   The black is Golden Fluid Acrylic and the white is Winsor & Newton Iridescent White acrylic.  

For the background, I smeared some iridescent white on with a pallet knife and my fingers, then mixed some yellow and red watercolor into some of the white acrylic and smeared it on.  When the boots were completed, I filled in the white background with watercolor.  

Are you ready to go dancing?  he he he

About C. S. Lewis

Anglo-Irish author C. S. Lewis, called Jack by his friends, is best known for his children's fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia. He was born in 1898 in Belfast but settled in England after serving in World War I. He belonged to a writing group with J. R. R. Tolkien, whom he credited for his religious awakening. Lewis went on to write many Christian-themed books. His marriage to Joy Gresham, who died of bone cancer, was memorialized in the movie Shadowlands. He died in 1963.

Mushroom Field

“He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Mushroom Field
9″ x 6″ Mixed Media on Yes!

I painted these little mushrooms on Yes! Primed Cotton.  I remember Yes! being more absorbent, but I have had this pad for quite a while and it was not accepting my watercolor very well.   Since I was unable to get the affect I wanted, I outlined it in Sharpie and then splashed some acrylic on it.  It ended up being fun to do.  This is the first of three paintings I did from this same reference.

Okay, now I want to show you what it looked like on Lake Eufaula, Oklahoma on Saturday evening.  The weather was perfect and I believe we had record crowds for the Memorial Day weekend.  This is just one little part of the lake, but there was a Cross Canadian Ragweed concert about to start at the outdoor amphitheater next to the marina.    These folks saved between $25 and $75 a head.    I took this picture from our boat (as we were heading in to the dock, to put it away and go home).   We just aren’t tough enough to hang with the twenty-something crowd.   

About Friedrich Nietzsche

Controversial German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is best known for his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Born in 1844 near Leipzig, he renounced Prussian citizenship in 1869, remaining stateless the rest of his life. In his work, he argued against the concept of an omnipotent deity, believing in a “will to power,” a drive toward creativity that could explain everything from natural phenomena to human behavior. He suffered from insanity, possibly syphilis-induced, for his last ten years. He died in 1900.

Christmas Turkey - October 30, 2009

"I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time."

– Anna Freud

Christmas Turkey
4" x 5"
Watercolor on Yes! Canvas paper

I guess this little Christmas Turkey is fitting for today's post, because this just may be her Halloween costume.

About Anna Freud

Austrian psychoanalyst Anna Freud was a pioneer in the field of child psychiatry; she also worked closely with her father, Sigmund Freud, in developing his theories. She was born in Vienna in 1895 and fled to London with her parents in 1938, escaping the Nazi regime. When her father became sick with cancer, she took over his studies, becoming his intellectual heir. She founded the Hampstead Clinic to work with children. She died in 1982.