Winter Blues

Been gone for awhile but it's all because of this here table. Notice how shiny and new it is! I spent hours sanding that thing by hand and the flat surfaces with my random orbit sander (yay xmas presents!). Not really a sketch but it's creative in it's own right. I sure put enough effort into the darn thing!!

oooh! aaaahh!!

The chair is here for comparison of how weathered the darn thing was although the table itself was much much worse! I've never sanded and painted furniture for restoration before so this was a definite learning experience for me. And oh the mistakes! but luckily none can be seen unless thoroughly inspecting :p


I've always wanted to go skijoring or sledding with my dog so with the acquisition of my old skis and ski boots from storage I think it would be worth a try although my dog might be suspicious of the entire endeavor. I just need to order a harness for the two of us. My favourite part about this model is the safety release. Usable for when your dog sees a rabbit or some trees get in the way or things are going just terribly wrong!

So in the spirit of skijoring I decided to flex my tablet and make a little sketch painting.

Although this is the ideal scenario, I'm sure I'll be on my face for most of the first run if my water skiing skills are anything to go by.

Smooth Jazz

My father is very much into Jazz music so I painted this for him for X-mas. It is on 18 x 20 canvas done with acrylic paint. The irony of this painting came from the fact that I was going to do it digitally and get it printed on canvas for the hand painted effect. Then it occurred to me that it might just be easier to physically hand paint it in the first place rather than paying an outrageous price to have a digital version printed on canvas! :)

The actual musician and instrument only took me 2 days to finish but the background took me about 4 long days of experimentation.

I had some difficulty mixing the black with red and I soon discovered that the red paint I have dries translucent so there was no going back once I had put the black in, short of painting it over with white. Yes, red background, you almost broke this painting!

I am thinking of doing a tryptic with perhaps a cello and trumpet or even a flute but I haven't decided yet. This might yet turn into a series and perhaps a much larger painting with the lot of them on the same canvas. So many ideas!

Enjoy!