The Nosey painting is a work in progress. I wanted to immortalize the little girla's favorite stuffed animal, Nosey. She sleeps with her every night and dresses her in various costumes constantly. It is going to be oil/casein on board. It will be my first stenciled painting with five stenciled, casein layers (two for spots).

The Birds painting is the first casein/oil painting that I finished. I was researching how to get oil paint to dry quicker as well as under painting techniques and started to look at alternative mediums. I tried egg tempera, gouache, acrylic, and various mixtures of oil. Egg tempera was initially the winner.I really liked the matte finish and how it contrasted with the glossy oil on sparingly added on top. Turns out that egg tempera is hard to come by without making yourself. The tubes I bought were from Italy and cost 2-3 times the equivalent in oil. So I dug in deeper and found casein.]]> octopikids octopikids octopikids http://www.octopikids.com/post/birds-on-a-wire-prep-framed Wed, 31 Dec 1969 18:00:00 http://www.octopikids.com/post/birds-on-a-wire-prep-framed A start to framing the prep painting for Birds on a Wire.]]> octopikids http://www.octopikids.com/post/trex-color-study-print Wed, 31 Dec 1969 18:00:00 http://www.octopikids.com/post/trex-color-study-print ]]> octopikids http://www.octopikids.com/post/birds-on-a-wire-oil-studies Wed, 31 Dec 1969 18:00:00 http://www.octopikids.com/post/birds-on-a-wire-oil-studies

I am close with the overall colors and values, so I made some larger casein studies and started plowing away with oil on transparencies.

Sand is the perfect summer medium. Little girl and I have made our usual array of favorite characters in the sand as well as many sprawling castles. This day we got into rock sorting and finishing our usual castle with a rock roof and weed landscaping. It was very important to the little girl that we replant the weeds with as much existing root as possible.

Little girl could not have been more excited when she got a couple chunks of sidewalk chalk. I grabbed a stick and gave her a starting point of some animal's head or body and she finished it up for me. She was into giving generous helpings of neck. We ended up with an animal on each square for a block before sundown brought the game to an end.

Winter is finally starting to break, so little girl and I started playing with some spring themed window stencils. It was about time; the Santa Claus filled windows were starting to get a bit out of place. She started with the drawings and I walked an exacto knife around them trying to keep the basic playfulness in tact. Needless to say, we are looking forward to this winter ending.

Legos are a staple. Even after years, I can still get the little girla excited about creating something in Legos and filling in the gaps of her stuffed toy collection. Here are some examples: Mo Willem's Pigeon with his hotdog and duckling sidekick, SpongeBob (No) Pants, Patrick...and finally...two random skeletons. A white skeleton and a yellow one sporting a pumpkin on his head and an ouie leg.

We rented Wizard of Oz and got obsessed with replaying it. We took a large piece of paper and tried to reproduce the entire movie. The hair ties were little girla's idea.

Here is another paper adventure from The Paper Architect which we got from the library. I received two requirements from the little girl. One, we had to color it, and two, we had to be able to play with it. Otherwise there would be no patience. So I decided to have her color it first and I would fold it out in the wrong direction (cutting lines shouldn't be visible). As for the playing part...it was mostly drawing brown cat paw prints all over the place...a form of cat protest over the small doors.

"Starfish" is a painting that was commissioned for a little girl named Marion which loosely translates to "Starfish". I was able to see the room and take photos so I did all my color studies with a good idea of the context. I experimented with lots of cool blues and green initially, but they all had trouble in the warm yellowy reds of the room. The painting was finished with a custom handmade floating frame painted a deep brown.

Title
Seasons
Medium
Giclee

Little print I did from a cloud I was playing with for another print. I wanted to find a less trivial way of incorporating the multiple blocks of color. The seasons go in a circle so the bottom row goes from right to left...]]> octopikids octopikids octopikids octopikids octopikids http://www.octopikids.com/post/fish-painting Wed, 31 Dec 1969 18:00:00 http://www.octopikids.com/post/fish-painting

Color

type
oil on panel with custom black wood frame
size
15" x 15"

A frog painting that I have donated to Wisconsin Wetlands Association's Silent Auction Fundraiser. I was playing mostly with green for the auction, but I really, really wanted the poison dart frog to work for a later print. An intimidating frog such as this deserves to also be dangerous.

title Frog Colors
medium Giclee
size 24"x24"

Little girla and I saw an art show at the Overture Center (Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt: The Absent City) a couple years ago when she was around 2. It seems to have made a big impact on her since she still talks about it and plays out our experience (in cats or deer of course). That was a couple years ago, and just recently she asked when we are going to make our own ribbons. I had totally forgot, but was happy to indulge such a fun idea and bought rolls of crepe paper to segment her room into colored ribbon squares.

On a little girla and Daddy day just before the holidays, we realized that we had two homeless stuffed kittens and two identically sized cardboard boxes. The simplicity is fun; just cut out triangles with the shorter top flaps, cut off one of the long flaps and taped down the other long flap. Made for a convincing house with plenty of reach in room to play inside. It was the girl's idea to paint everything inside bright blue....like how it fights the shadows and brings out the shapes of the interior.

What could be better than a huge piece of blank paper? A huge sheet of paper and a rubber bat, wooden alligator and a 4 year old directing the layout. Bats live in caves...cave added...alligators live in water...pond added...both go to the farmers' market...farmers' market added. Not sure how, but they both navigate with paper bags and portable carrots and onions.

Our favorite cat, Nosey, does not like to be left out of any celebration, so he demanded a central roll for Christmas. He is such a proud kitty.

This week's "Downtown Charlie Brown" (a.k.a. Kids in the Rotunda) was Daniel Barash's shadow puppets. We of course had to make our own frogs, mice and cats as well as the house for them to play in.

Some more paper creations made with the child for Thanksgiving. She really wanted feathers and deer on the hat, so I thought some moccasins would go well with it. She followed up with a headdress of her own based on hand tracings....must have looked like feathers to her.

Pinky and Chat are characters that little girla and I devised on one of our nightly made-up stories. They jumped out of Stinky McGouda's mouth and off of his hand and had great adventures. The hair just below the knuckle made more sense when I was first holding Pinky and drawing him.

Got some time to play around with color and overlays for the Sheep print (just preliminary...photos versus scans). I have decided against the squiggles in the middle...it gets busy quickly. I did overlay the original pencil lines which seems to work. Still some more to do, but they are on track.

I involve my child in constructing bedtime stories by asking her to choose characters and, to manage expectations, help decide on 3 or 4 adventures. They have evolved into a simple theme, possessions of the "owner", dubbed Stinky McGouda, gain consciousness and play at night. At first they were simple objects (suspiciously things that could be found in the room) but recently they have become body parts; mischievous pinky toes, teeth and even eye brows. So for Halloween, and to combat a rather long Sunday afternoon, Stinky got a costume. A very bright and very hairy costume...

I started a new print based on some marker sketches. The squiggles are going to be several layers of pencil on tracing paper scanned and digitally overlayed on the usual black and white oil painting scan. I am also experimenting with painting the sheep at multiple scales at one time in order to find the scale that works best for the line density. First I got to get some white paint as soon as I scrape a little Tom & Jerry zombie off the floor.

Title Ice Cream Print
Medium Giclee Print
Size 16" x 20"

I just got the final link in the chain of print development last night, a full sized, full color giclee. The process for all of the prints in the shop came primarily from how I did this print. I didn't have a clear idea of how I was going to do the prints (actually thought I was doing studies for a painting), but what I stumbled upon is fun. Isolating all the parts so distinctly...form, texture, color...is exciting. I was much more absorbed into each process. I thought it would be fun to stitch it all together.

After a rough couple weeks and many hours getting the images and prints working, I've finally got basically a new store. Bugs, trucks, birdhouses, ice cream cones and clouds are all living together in high color.

My house is overloaded with tomatoes from CSAs, our garden...half the kitchen is tomatoes. I love this little bowl full of greens, oranges, and yellows. A painting of misshapen circles with that variety of colors and little squiggles of tomato tops would be so fun.

Title Truck
Medium Giclee Print
Size 16" x 20"
Price $50

Title Rhino
Medium Giclee Print
Size 16" x 20"

Medium Giclee
Size 16" x 20"

Medium Giclee
Size 16" x 16"

Medium Giclee
Size 16" x 16"

After having a baby girl I spent a lot of time building absurd things. Here they are..."Studio Time".]]> octopikids octopikids octopikids http://www.octopikids.com/post/birdhouse Wed, 31 Dec 1969 18:00:00 http://www.octopikids.com/post/birdhouse

I started some studies for a new painting, a birdhouse. Thought it would be fun to see if I could push the sky color to orange and still not feel like the world was burning.]]> octopikids http://www.octopikids.com/post/birth-of-a-potato-beetle Wed, 31 Dec 1969 18:00:00 http://www.octopikids.com/post/birth-of-a-potato-beetle

Got some sketches and a tempera painting started of a Potato Beetle. I was looking for bugs; get back to some more complex organic shapes. Mosquitos were my first choice, but Alexia informed me that no one, no one, not even those who like bugs, like mosquitos.]]> octopikids octopikids octopikids octopikids