danielbeck.net: Image feed

In lieu of the giant screaming head…

…we decided to paint the kid’s room thusly.

Psychology experiment No. 1: Will this give the child A) an unreasonable love of circles, or B) an unreasonable fear of circles?

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Look at his ickle feetses

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Salamander and lilacs

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Enh enh enh enh

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Look what we got in the mail today!

He was curled up between a Victoria’s Secret catalog and a letter from Al Gore.

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Emily would like him to go outside now, please

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Emily greets a bear

“Teddy bear” doesn’t quite do it for a bear this size. “Tedzilla,” maybe, or “Tedstron, Plushmaster of Snuggle”.

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Erin reacts to my sister’s detailed explanation of the proper application of Desitin

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Awkward!

One of these signs is not like the others.

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Duck

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Flight of the Watusi

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Epcot

Disneyland is a lot smaller than it was when I was a kid.

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Sea Turtle

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Patient at the Turtle Hospital

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The Turtle Hospital Ambulance

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A number of pelicans

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Fuzzy bird

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Screw Winter

We’ve had enough. We’re going to Florida. See you in April.

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Large Dog, Small Wife

Subtitle: The Dog Who Matched Her Slippers

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Closeup on the wallpaper

There’s a noticeable difference in the texture of the paint, when you compare the bits I did first to the last ones on the panel. (What you’re looking at here is from towards the end of the process.) The color and light direction kind of wobbles around a bit, as well. I’ll have to keep checking back to this panel as I move on, to keep the variations from spiraling off in some random direction… but even that might not be a terrible thing, as long as it’s an even enough progression and I paint the panels in the right order.

Which is to say, I’m choosing to look at the rough bits my digital instincts scream to smooth out as a virtue, just like the visible pencil marks and the — what I guess is carpet lint embedded throughout it. As in, this is a painting, so I should stop trying to make it all smooth and seamless like a photoshop thing. Have to keep remembering to work with what the paint wants to do, instead of against it.

Which got noticeably easier when I remembered that I was allowed to use more than one paintbrush at a time — by the end I had this whole assembly system worked out: one chisel brush for the red underside, skipping around the border of one piece of the pattern until I’d covered every downward-facing edge. Then a thin round brush for the white highlights on top, skipping around again. Then various shades of pink as I filled in the diagonals until the whole rim was finished, like the edge of a jigsaw puzzle, and from there it was just a matter of blending the colors in towards the center, using a big soft brush in the larger areas. I’m not sure if I could be so systematic about it if there were more than two colors to deal with, but this will do for now.

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Finished! (with one step, anyway)

So that’s the wallpaper pattern for one of the twelve panels, done. Though the wallpaper itself is probably going to get at least one more going-over, to give it some more texture and roughen it up a bit. So not really done done.

And some of the panels don’t even have much wallpaper pattern to do, anyway, they’re mostly fish. The math at this point to figure how far along I am is getting complex, and I probably shouldn’t calculate it anyway or I’ll either get discouraged or start hurrying, neither of which would be a good thing.

Anyway, I’m making progress. Which feels good. And I’m actually liking how it’s coming out, which is a promising sign.

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Inkberry at night

This is what the Inkberry painting looks like at night, in case you were curious about that.

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Inkberry

We have inherited a snazzy new painting by our good friend Beth — she originally did it for Inkberry, but they’ve moved to smaller offices which can no longer contain the vast majesty of this painting. (It’s big.)

So we get it. Yay.

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Toy

This is how I spent my time while Emily was out of town.

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Frozen yard

At ten degrees below zero the dog can just walk on top of the snow. (I still break through.)

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