At long last, in the friscalating dusklight, here's SpongeBob sitting out in front of my house.

Little guy looks thrilled to be there.

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This has nothing to do with Batman or football. It's just Mr. Spock out standing in his field.

Live long and prosper.

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 Wriphe [Official Comment]: Posted Sep. 19, 2024 at 01:10:26 AM

CamMoscatiello Posted Sep. 20, 2024 at 04:14:29 PM
EXCELLENT!!

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Here's an update on the "unidentified" character I teased I was painting last month:

As you can see, after the wood is cut and primed, I sketch out the details of what I'm painting and fill in the blocks of solid color. I generally use cheap acrylic paints for these, so this usually takes three or more coats. Except in cases where I need to delineate large areas of shadow (as I did with Smokey Bear), black is usually only done very last. In SpongeBob's case, green will probably be last, because his yellow body is outlined in a kind of puce on the show.

I still haven't decided whether there will be any additional color shading. SpongeBob is only rarely shaded on teevee, but he is frequently shaded in video games and in the movies. I'm waiting to see how it looks with detailing before I make that decision.

I'll keep you posted.

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Smokey Bear turned 80 on August 9. That was during the Olympics (when I had Izzy out front), so it took me a little extra time to get this big boy to the street.

Obviously, I cannot take credit for that design, just the painting. (I'm pretty confident that the original line art was by Rudolph Wendelin.) I didn't even take any liberties with the colors, as the U.S. Forest And Service has very strict Smokey Bear Guidelines: "Smokey always appears only with his traditional blue jeans, belt, buckle, and 'campaign' hat. Optionally, he carries a shovel."

I'm not interested in running afoul of the USFS, no sir. They employ bears.

That bit of fluffy white you see at the bottom of the image isn't fire-fighting foam: it's Henry the Poodle, who refused to get out of the frame. Oh, Henry.

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Want a sneak peek at an in-progress yard sign in my studio right now? Feast your eyes on this (first-coat) primed sheet of plywood!

In animation, they say good character design is a figure you can recognize by its silhouette. So I probably don't have to tell you who that will eventually be a painting of.

Speaking of design, I was often asked in art school why I would bother doing so much prep work before I painted, as if suggesting there was no point in painting something if I already knew how the finished product would look. (I was also told my work was often "clever in a bad way," whatever that means.) Maybe the finished work of abstract expressionists reveals deep truths about, er, something to its creators, but even if that's true, maybe I just don't like surprises or, as the inimitable Bob Ross would call them, "happy accidents."

I have a good friend from college who still believes that my work is craftsmanship, not art. To be fair, he doesn't mean that as an insult. We both have nothing but respect for great craftsmen. I once knew a very impressive young draftsman at J.C. Booth Junior High School who could recreate freehand anything he could see at any size. He was a craftsman, and I still think his work was pretty darn good.

I'd define craftsmanship as the ability to execute a plan skillfully. But someone has to create the plan in the first place, and the ability to visualize that plan is what makes someone an artist. The greatest artists lie in the Venn Diagram intersection of craftsmen and artists. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, Bob Ross... they could all think up a great idea and execute it. That kid in junior high lamented he couldn't draw anything from imagination. I hope he kept trying. I happen to believe that while not everyone has the natural tools to be a craftsman, anyone with an idea can be an artist.

I don't mean to suggest that I'm the equal of Bob Ross, and maybe I do tend to overthink (and underexecute) my pieces, but I will insist I'm an artist.

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Happy Valentine's Day!

Footnote 1: Yes, this will eventually be displayed by the mailbox in the front yard, but it's pretty obvious that Oscar's native habitat is among the junk piles in my messy, messy studio.

Footnote 2: I started this piece back in April 2023 and have only just now finished it. While Oscar's fuzz did take a long time, most of that delay was because I was working too hard in 2023. Blech. I promise not to do that again.

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Last year, my Lucy painting had rocks thrown at her head. This year I gave her some protection.

If this doesn't work, I might have to get her an offensive line.

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It's not much of a tail, but I'm sort of attached to it

Sure is a cheerful color. Guess I'll have to get used to it.

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I'm not sure I would call myself a connoisseur of kids cartoons, but I sure liked 'em a lot when I was a kid. And a teenager. And an adult. And now as old man. The good ones remind you what's great about being a kid. The best of them remind you what's great about being human.

If you have little kids right now, you can already guess that I'm talking about Bluey.

Bluey is an Australian Broadcast Company/BBC show about talking dogs. More accurately, it's about raising children by allowing children to be children, but it takes place in a world of talking dogs. I'm not so nuts about children, but I love talking dogs. Especially this one.

click image to toggle 3D on/off

That's Bingo, Bluey's little sister. Mom's beau asked why I would paint Bingo instead of Bluey. The answer is pretty simple: I like Bingo better.

She's my kind of talking dog.

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October lawn art is a real treat:

I'm a little worried that people will interpret this one to mean that we'll be giving away candy this year, which we absolutely will not. (Mom and I both hide behind curtains whenever anyone rings our doorbell.) I think my solution will be to put an empty bowl on the porch beside a sign that says "Take as many as you like."

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