Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Paintings by Aishu

So at my job we do a lot of work with younger kids, as well as kids with disabilities. I've been working with a girl named Aishu for a while now, she has autism, and she loves to paint. When she started she mostly drew cartoon pictures of things she likes, characters from Lion King or palm trees. She has made a ton of great progress though, especially the past few weeks I think she has made some amazing paintings. She did this painting about two weeks ago, I helped her mix the paints but she drew the house and did the painting all by herself. She called the piece Happy House, then when I told her to sign her name she started to write Name. She did this one just yesterday, I asked her to draw a tree, then paint it. Again I helped her to mix the paints but she did the rest by herself. This is my favorite painting she has done so far, she really liked it too.

Next week were going to try to paint a sailboat!

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Upside-Down Cat

The Wayne County Humane Societies annual auction is coming up in a few months, and I'm gonna draw all sorts of kitties for it. The last time I donated a cat Illustration it sold for over 1,500! so hopefully both the pieces I am planning on giving go for even more. The Wayne County Humane Shelter is a great organization, they never put down animals and give them an amazing facility to live in until they can find a permanent home. All the proceeds of the event go to improving their facilities and increasing awareness of their organization, so to everyone who goes and supports the auction, you are awesome.
The World Famous Upside-Down Cat
10" x 10"
Colored Pencil

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Back from the Adirondacks

So I just got back from another great trip to the Adirondacks, but of course I didn't get nearly as much painting done as I was hoping. It was a week and a half of mountain hiking, biking, and swimming, and most importantly seeing some of my relatives I don't get to see too much. I did ticked three more mountains off my list of 46 high peaks though, so thats always a plus.
Even though I really only did one painting, I probably took more than 100 photographs. So I got as much reference as I can handle for at least a few weeks or so. I really liked a few of the early morning pictures I took out on our lake with the dense fog making a mysterious scene. I took this panoramic photo below with five separate photos, then stitched them together in photoshop. You can faintly see the bridge my family has jumped off of into the water for years on the left hand side. The marsh in the middle is also the home to beaver family that has lived there as long as I can remember.
This is one of four large scale panorama's I've taken in the town of Newcomb. The full size of the photo's are all around 72" by 24", so someday I want to get them printed large scale and have some really cool, amazingly big photo's of one of my favorite places in the world.