Coronavirus Crafts: J at the temple

So I let J choose, between two pictures, what I would paint for her birthday. She chose the one of K and J splashing in puddles. This was the other option. And Aria stood by her 3-year-old's choice, but we both knew that Aria wanted to see this one in watercolor. Well, it just so happens that Mother's Day isn't that far away from J's birthday, so I just did both. 

Happy Mother's Day, Aria!

I did not expect the temple to be so hard to draw! I guess I don't have a lot of experience drawing architecture, and somehow doing it at a slight angle is infinitely more difficult than doing it straight on. But I think it came together pretty well.  

Does the quality of the watercolor paint have something to do with the vibrancy of the color? The slightly higher-quality set I got when I was 12  (or maybe 14) is essentially dried out at this point, though I can still use some of it. (That's the magic of watercolor.) The new set I have was much cheaper and lower quality and I've noticed naturally brighter hues. But for a tropical Hawaii scene, bright colors really fit.  

Yellow highlight on the top of the bushes. Darker green detail. 

The sidewalk and her cute little shadow. I felt a lot better about the stairs this time, but maybe that's because there's only really one. 

I was very carefree with the sky. Part of that is because the original photo portrays a fairly washed-out or too-light sky, so I knew it would be up to my artistic interpretation anyway. I liked the thought of capturing movement and change in the sky, since that's what I've usually experienced in Hawaii.

Goodness, these windows were difficult. They had to be very small, very even, and very symmetrical. And they all had to be like that. Even though it's just a handful of rectangles, I think it was the hardest part of painting this piece.

I added the rest of the detail to the temple. I was a little at a loss for how to depict the relief sculpture at the front of the temple. It's too far away to show in great detail, but it still has to look purposeful. So I looked at the relief sculpture and narrowed it down to the most basic shapes: lines, curves, circles, and L-shapes. Then I painted those. 

Also, J looks like a cute little ghost child here.

Skin color is always a bit of a hit or a miss, and there are more highlights and shadows than you'd think. I think this came out fairly well. 

Her dress is mainly pink with some variegated pink-and-orange tulle. I tried to capture that in the little folds of the dress. 

J has lovely blond hair that curls naturally in her humid Hawaiian home. I tried to copy over as much life and spontaneity and color into her hair as possible without making it too dark. 

The letters on the temple were another tricky part. I know that they read "Holiness to the Lord -- The House of the Lord," but the perspective of this painting places the letters too far in the background. The viewer shouldn't be able to read the phrase on the temple. However, the lines should look like the phrase even if they aren't clear enough to really read. So I wrote out the phrase on piece of scrap paper in a larger scale, imagined the essential elements of the letters and word groups, and wrote that. It worked out well, so I added it to the temple. It could probably be centered better, but it's not bad. 

Finished, scanned product.

Coronavirus Crafts: April Wedding Watercolor

I love weddings. I caught three bouquets last year, and one of them was for my dear Hermana Stapley (who is no longer either an Hermana or a Stapley). She is one of the few people who has ever taken me up on my offer (my standard wedding gift for good friends) to do a painting of a wedding photo. And though I just missed their anniversary, it still made a good (rather belated) wedding gift, a house-warming gift, and a Mother's Day gift. Here are my progression photos of the project. 

1. The original. I'm a little bit picky about the pictures I'll paint. I have to really like the picture, I have to feel (at least moderately) comfortable in being able to do a good job of it, and it has to have a good composition (or the potential for it).  And lately, I've been a bit more up to a challenge. This painting is a first for me in the following ways:

• A temple (I think)
• Full, standing figures interacting
• White-on-white-on-white-on-white
• Stairs (probably, or at least this many)

Original photo

2. The sketch. I borrowed a ruler and had to label the sides of stairs ("top" and "face") so I could keep the silly things straight. And, as usual, I struggled with drawing the groom's face. (Why are men's features so hard?!) But I'm happy with how everything else turned out in this phase. 

The sketch

3. The mountains and our paint night. My family members in Hawaii and Las Vegas joined me for an evening of watercolor painting. It was a first attempt at watercolor for some of them, and I'm quite proud. 

Paint night

4. Full mountains, some green added (I mean, it looks like a desert mountain for now, but it'll get there.)

Full mountain

5. Temple detail. Painting white isn't the easiest thing in watercolor, and it's easy to over do it in the gray. But I'm generally happy with how it turned out in this stage. 

Temple detail

6. Windows. I added the blue detail with the windows in the temple and finished the rest of the temple. I'm not thrilled with the right side or the top left part of the temple, but I think the overall structure turned out well.

Window detail

7. Stairs and cement. Telling the difference between the different sides of the stairs is a bit tough, and it's hard to know whether you've succeeded until more of the painting is filled in.

Stairs and cement

8. Flora. The trees had white blossoms, which, again, are hard to paint. So I focused on trying to paint the negative space. It's not something I'm super familiar with, but I think it came out well. The tulips came out okay, too. 

Flora

9.  The suit and the dress. I was lucky enough to have an old tube of dried-out watercolor paint in about the right color for the suit. And the great thing about watercolor is that you can always re-hydrate it. I did make a silly mistake, painting the area I had sketched for his white collar blue because I thought it was the lapel of his suit. That was unfortunate, and there's not really anything you can do to fix a mistake like that in a watercolor painting. So I let it be. For the dress, I used the lightest grays I could to suggest folds while still preserving the whiteness of the dress. Getting the two layers of fabric was mostly trial and error, going for the lightest touch. 

The suit and the dress.

10. Skin and hair. Hermana Stapley has the most incredible white-blonde hair! And boy, that was difficult to translate, but I tried to really read into the highlights and the colors in the photo and paint them sparingly. Skin is always difficult, especially with shadows and highlights. I definitely had some trial and error there, but I think it came out well. 

*It's worth noting that the paper curls up at the edges after I paint it: I promise the stairs didn't suddenly go crooked. It's just the paper.

Skin and hair

11.  Face details. One of the hardest things about painting or drawing a face is drawing what you see instead of drawing what you think. If you think "eye" or "ear" or "nose," you'll draw what you expect it to look like, which is often very different from what it actually looks like from a specific angle or in a certain setting. I'm much more satisfied with the groom's face in the transition from the sketch to the painting. Also, it's very hard to get the right paintbrush with the right amount of paint on the fewest hairs in order to get those tiny, crucial lines on the face. I'm generally satisfied with how it worked out here (though I did have a couple serious scares).

Face details

12. The sky. Honestly, it was a little intimidating to fill in something so simple, so visible, that takes up an inordinate amount of the painting. It had to be free and open without drawing attention to itself. And there's nowhere to hide mistakes. I may have cheated a bit and ensured that the angel Moroni was in front of a cloud so I didn't have to worry about getting the blue too close to the yellow. But what is art if it doesn't improve slightly on reality? 

The sky

13. Final details. So one of the most difficult parts of this project was adequately and accurately portraying the white-on-white details. I tried doing it in previous projects with just watercolor paints and watercolor pencils, but it was barely visible. My little sister mentioned using a white gel pen for some detail in watercolor paintings. So I found one and went for it. Mixed media! I really love how it turned out, and it was a lot easier than I expected! I added some white highlights to her hair, then I used the pen to outline the edge of the veil and the dress, add buttons, create the lace texture, and enhance the nuance in some natural elements. 

Final details

14. Final product. I'm really happy with how it turned out in the end. I found this great frame at the discount section at Michael's when I bought the gel pen. The minor tragedy is this: my paper size was 9x12 and the frame was 8.5x11. I have a growing frustration with the absurd lack of 9x12 frames, as I've either had to plan ahead or cut down a painting to fit. Cutting this one down, when I felt like I had really zeroed in on placement and formatting way back in the sketching stage, hurt more than I thought it would. Still, I think the final setting worked well.

Final product

It was bitter sweet saying goodbye to this piece today. I had expected to be able to hold onto it for another day and get a proper photograph or something, but the timing didn't quite work out and I rushed the framing a bit to get it ready for pickup. I looked at it for a good long while, trying to savor my final moments with a masterpiece (which is definitely an exaggeration, but those were the words that came to my mind at the time). 

I started doing these painting commissions to push myself to do more art and to give meaningful gifts. And it's been incredible. Still, it's kind of sad that I don't own any of my own recent originals. So, maybe someday soon, I'll have to commission a piece for myself. 

Coronavirus Crafts: 3 Happy Birthday, Jennie

Today is my niece's birthday! I have been meaning to do a watercolor painting for her like I did for her older sister, K (see K's ocean painting). I let J choose from two of my favorite photos of her, and this is the one she chose. After I sketched it out one evening (while listening to Brandon Sanderson's The Emperor's Soul), I gathered my supplies to begin the painting process (which took all of Captain Marvel and some of Endgame the next day, if we measure time by movies). 

The paintbrush and watercolor set is at least 13 years old, and I've supplemented it over the years with other art kits and supplies I've been given. (Someday, if I ever get to be a real artist, maybe I'll be picky enough to buy my own supplies and get higher-quality materials. But, as our favorite Ranger said, "It is not this day.")

I decided to actually study a little bit of watercolor technique this time, using the book featured in the first photo. So I experimented with leaving more areas blank and having lighter washes. I think it worked out decently well. 

This was the "ghost children" phase, as Eliza called it. 

My cheap watercolor sets don't offer amazing options for skin tone, and I've generally avoided painting people full-on anyway (it's amazing how far you'll go outside of your comfort zone to please a soon-to-be-three-year-old). So I'm not thrilled, but I'm satisfied with how this stage turned out. There are a couple of frustrating things I could point out. I'd rather not immortalize them, but I'm thinking of them.   

A fun comparison and a little insight to how I'm working on it. 

Here's where I added the masking liquid. It's a kind of glue that prevents the watercolor paint from adhering to certain areas, and then you can remove it when you're done. 

Finishing the painting. (It was maybe a little ambitious to choose such a wet, reflective scene, but there you go.)

Removing the masking liquid.

Finished product (photo taken with a MUCH higher quality camera).

Original photo (a screenshot from the video below)

Original video

Coronavirus Crafts: 2

I think this was week two of the quarantine directive. 

This is one of my favorite scriptures, and I think it’s a perfect quote for this difficult time. 

A few years ago we tried the shaving cream egg dying strategy. It was fun, but we ended up with a lot of “eggstra” colored cream after. So, just as an experiment, we tried it on paper. It ended up looking really cool! So I thought I’d try a free hand drawing of the Salt Lake Temple on it.

I’m happy with my #covidcrafts so far!

Coronavirus Crafts: 1

As outside movement is becoming more limited, I’m trying to take more care in using my extra “home time” productively. I’m reminded of my desire to do art projects more and write the ancestor stories for Aunt Melissa’s project.
Since I had already started sketching out this one, a wedding photo of a friend, I decided to finish it off.
I’ve always been nervous about doing faces and so I generally (and often cleverly) avoid it. But the photo I liked best for my friend’s wedding forced me to “face” my insecurities.
Critique: I’m generally pleased with how it turned out. I’m pleased with the hair. I’m mostly satisfied with the faces, but I recognize that I’m missing a lot of the emotion, shading, and depth. I’ve very rarely (if ever) done a male figure in watercolor and I’ve DEFINITELY never done a painting of two figures interacting in this way. So as a first, I’m pleased and I see it as a marginal success. But I know there is a lot of room for improvement. I’m not thrilled with the lace in the sleeve, but I’m not sure how I would have done it differently. I actually really like the background.
Photos below. As always, I forgot to take initial photos. So here’s a jump and then progression photos.

And here’s the real photo.

Education in the Margins (Sticky Note Edition)

 

Kaden Analogies

Don’t pay bills that you didn’t run up.

It would be like the vault door is open but no one walks by.

It’s like being in a congregation and the preacher’s trying to get you to say “Amen,” but you’re only there because your girlfriend wants you to be.

If you’re fighting a pterodactyl versus fighting a mountain lion, either one of them is going to kill you. It doesn’t matter which is the better fighter.

Betterment

What should I “be about?”

Mindful of all the living/little things

We reflect the light of Christ, which we must first welcome into our lives.

It’s easy to be annoyed with people and circumstances. Remember that you don’t know the whole story.

Current Events

Privilege is the dirty word of 2020

When tearing down monuments and pointing fingers at history in the name of Black Lives Matter becomes a French Revolution.

M.I. Horne hosted “women’s only indignation meetings”—where can I sign up for one of those? 😉

Musings

A woman: cursed with crippling selflessness

Where are the astronauts? (When did kids stop aspiring to greatness?)

We have a magpie friendship—we create/collect shiny things and then share them with each other.

People lied to me in high school and college about professionalism. I work with authors of business textbooks who respond to my emails with emojis sent from their iPhones.

Sometimes we give the people in the scriptures a hard time for not recognizing signs or for falling into wickedness again. But hey, I menstruate monthly, and somehow I’m still shocked every time it comes around. I only recognize the many signs after I see the blood.

Rachel and Lara are alike in choosing favorites and thinking the worst.

Even the word “misogyny” (hatred of or prejudice against women; mid 17^th Century origin) was around long before “misandry” (hatred of or prejudice against men; late 19^th Century origin).  

What is the human equivalent of a bird perching on a wire?

When was the first stroller introduced? (It’s a good Wikipedia search.)

No electronic system is more likely to work than when doing so would prove the user wrong in something. (reporting errors)

Separation of Church and State—Separation of work and love.

Media Connections

Lies of HSM: working with high school friends; unrealistic expectations for audience enthusiasm

Frozen 2 culture: “Then don’t go into fire” (Scarlet Pimpernel “Into Fire”)

M. Knight Shyamalan had The Last Airbender. Andrew Lloyd Webber had Love Never Dies. Paul Gordon had Pride and Prejudice: A New Musical. You are entitled to one glorious failure.

The Count of Monte Cristo to Sweeny Todd to Little Shop of Horrors

From Zero to Villain: Managing an Antagonist’s Arc (featuring Hans and Mother Gothel) (and the reverse, Zuko)

“You Matter to Me” from Waitress crossed with “Only Us” from Dear Evan Hansen. (It could swap places with “Suddenly Seymore” from Little Shop of Horrors.)

LTUE conference (or other) panel: Ethical Responsibilities of Authorship (where does the buck stop for what your content can do in society? Good and bad)

I like my musicals with overtones of social justice. But how sad to perform musicals about a class of people that could never afford to see a play about people like them (Little Shop, In the Heights, Hairspray)

“Laying a foundation for the sensation story of her own life” (Little Women)

From So You Want to Talk About Race: These conversations are never painless, but they can lessen pain. Intersectionality. We build policy to address needs. As needs change, policies should shift to reflect the new needs. We are building a better world, and that needs to happen step by step—because human nature doesn’t change in leaps. BUT the principles or doctrines, the ideals of this country—those remain.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: God’s final message to his creations: “We apologize for the inconvenience.”; The real problem of time travel is one of grammar. The term “future perfect” has been abandoned, since it was discovered not to be (Book 2, Chapter 15). ; Lunch as the center of spiritual life.

Know Thyself

You remind me a bit of my most recent almost—that’s why I’m afraid.

Brian B. has never followed up with me, never made me feel like there was anything beyond a first date.

I’m not fully awake until I’ve had at least one semi-passionate rant.

I feel things deeply and describe them well.

Am I the last sibling they choose to confide in?

Sometimes I converse by skipping from soapbox to soapbox like stepping-stones.

I don’t want to feel like I have to convince family members or friends that someone I’m dating is “good.” That will be a personal red flag for me.

Facts

There are vast amounts of fibreoptic cabling through the earth’s oceans that connect the globe to the internet.

2,300 people in India died in 2018 because of lightning.

Recommendations

11.22.63 Stephen King (not horror)

Miranda Hart (author)

The Blue Castle (book)

Stars and Moon (song)

Me and the Sky (Come from Away)

Podcasts: Hidden Brain, The Happiness Lab, The History of the English Language, The college Investor, Writing Excuses.

Education in the Margins, Winter 2019

I'm a big note-taker. But not everything I write down or learn is strictly related to the course. Much of life-long learning comes from this, 'education in the margins.'

Physical Science:

Experiments on Youtube: "Don't try that at home. There are idiots who've done it for you."

Be careful with your hearing. It doesn't come back. 

"Scriptures are like packets of light" -Richard G. Scott

"inasmuch" = proportionally. Alma 36:30

Powdered sugar is explosive: do with that what you will.

If you buy an older home, make sure it has copper, not aluminum wiring. 

Work at your marriage--it takes work to fight the entropy of  "increasing disorder."

The "When it rains, it pours" motto from Morton was coined just because they were the first company to figure out how to make salt that didn't stick together in humidity. 

"God tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." - Galileo 

There are evidences of water on Mars, but no current water.

Skepticism doesn't kill science--it grows it. 

Science does the almost impossible and gets a picture of a black hole. The press immediately responds with, "are you trying to make it higher resolution?" Typical. 

We do need people who understand people. 

ELANG 430:

The bigger the font, the closer you have to look (preventing errors)

Don't "false foreshadow" and have details that don't matter.

X-files: "There's another alien thing, there's another government thing. there's an alien government thing."

Be suspicious of everything. 

That's the dream. Get paid to read books that you otherwise pay to read.

Learn to let go of commas and see big picture. 

Be liberal with praise, even when you're in a hurry. 

Jennifer Nielson: Psychology of Characters 

A happy reader is an engaged reader

First lines and chapters. Get to extrordinary ASAP. 

Twitter account: Brooding YA hero

Find what you like, become an expert, find a client

"I don't feel like being 'super Suzy' right now"
McKan's "Law": Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error. 

Book recommentations

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hegDRPE58N28pRVeSr8AJ0j67XQiA-WsFrSQwJu6hS8/edit

Art History:

"Dante is bae. Dante is hell bae."

Italian Renaissance: women of the time period plucked their eyebrows and their hairlines. Who knew?

"Satan somehow turns into a woman in the Catholic narrative. So, you know. I hate that." -Prof. Hale

Oh to be a tourist in the 70s, before sites were popular.

Single candle= God's presence

The first-ever known painting of Michelangelo was a copy of a print.

"For me, the fact that archetypes pop up in other cultures and beliefs is actually proof that God exists." -Prof. Hale

They killed the two Venetian glass makers so NO ONE else could have the Palace of Mirrors. 

"You know you'll have to ask him. Save it for the spirit world." -Prof. Hale

"Our brains are not as photogenic as we'd hope they could be." -Prof. Hale

Medieval History

"Oh, she's wearing pants? Feminist."-Prof. Wilcox

In chess, a pawn can become a queen, In Medieval times, a queen is merely a pawn. 

We are so worried about bloodlines, but, anciently it wasn't strange for a king to marry the female slave of a conquered people. 

"To what extent are you supposed to fight?"

Acting is 9/10 of action. Fake it til you make it. 

Middle English becomes a big mash-up because of wars and politics.

A loved one, an "other < love one another

culture doesn't translate in the Bible

Victorian Periodical 

Academic writing's basic purpose: to quote or be quoted.

Victorians did "Vinegar valentines" (anti-valentines)

Victorians were really in taxidermy.

You can't really know when people are telling the truth.

You torture the text long enough, it'll confess to anything

Middle class target why? "Poor people don't read, rich people don't care"-Joshua

Rubricated letters: Big fancy letters in Gothic text. 

The ubiquity strategy.

If you torture the text long enough, it'll confess to anything.

Famous authors in their own "write"

"If you use one word when you could use ten, you're not really trying." -Prof. Horrocks

Prof. "Did you study any women?"

J: "Yes."

Prof.: "Who?"

J: "Um...letters from a homestead woman..."
Prof.: "Yep. That's the story of women in literature."

Jesus Christ and the Everlasting Gospel:

More than reading black words on a white page. 

Know that you're loved.

My Musings:

Write in complete sentences. Write incomplete sentences. 

Graduation= gradamnation (a life without student discounts, library access, etc.)

Macabre cards: Gothic Greetings, Bleak Birthdays, Horrid Holidays.

Recommendations/Favorites:

Do a fun interview with your kids every year and ask the same questions. You can make fun videos. 

Hugh Nibley "Pride Cycle" talk. 

Gunner glasses/ computer glasses: save your eyes from screens. 

Halloween stuff, Joyce Carol Oats short story: "Where are you going, where have you been"

"You belong with Steve" hilarious music video. 

"The Way of Joy" Greg Olsen

Tulip Magnolia trees

"These is My Words" Nancy Turner

Quotes:

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."-Albert Einstein