10-31-11. Hibiscus 19.

Graham Co., AZ (Peridot 5)

"Graham Co., AZ (Peridot 5)". 16x20", oil on canvas. For sale on Etsy.

This fifth painting in the Peridot series moves away from the actual town of Peridot, AZ. Peridot is still referenced by the tiny chemical formula for peridot hanging inside the print shop window. This time, the Google Street View source is in Safford, the county seat of Graham County, Arizona. I virtually "drove around" Safford, taking screen shots of several interesting buildings. I settled on the building with the most pleasing and simple geometry. I also liked the old motel sign on the right and the row of neat palm trees on the left. I enhanced the actual colors of the building. Safford has an unusually large number of thin Mediterranean cypresses, but I didn't find a good composition that included them.

10-30-11. Hibiscus 18.

10-29-11. Hibiscus 17.

10-28-11. Hibiscus 16.

10-27-11. Hibiscus 15.

10-26-11. Hibiscus 14.

Hibiscus

"Hibiscus", oil on canvas, 16x20". For sale on Etsy.

For this painting, I combined a photograph of a hibiscus plant with some computer wallpaper patterns composed of stylized hibiscus flowers. All of these were found through a Yahoo search by using Spezify. As a companion for this piece, there will be a book of 31 drawings of hibiscus flowers by me. This book is still being completed. I'm about halfway done with the drawings. When the book is complete, I plan to sell one copy of the book at a time through Etsy.

10-25-11. Hibiscus 13.

10-24-11. Hibiscus 12.

10-23-11. Vancouver, day 3.

10-22-11. Vancouver, day 2.

10-21-11. Vancouver, day 1.

My internet access was unexpectedly very limited during this trip to Canada, so posts are going to be rougher than usual for the next couple of days.

10-20-11. Seattle, day 3.

10-19-11. Seattle, day 2.

10-18-11. Seattle, day 1.

10-17-11. Hibiscus 11.

10-16-11. Hibiscus 10.

10-15-11. Hibiscus 9.

10-14-11. Hibiscus 8.

10-13-11. Hibiscus 7.

10-12-11. Hibiscus 6.

10-11-11. Hibiscus 5.

10-10-11. Hibiscus 4.

Juniper (Peridot 4) [SOLD]

"Juniper (Peridot 4)", oil on canvas, 16x20".
For sale on Etsy.

This is my last painting of Peridot, AZ (for now, at least). If I can sell this one, my plan is to paint one building from each county in Arizona next, and if those sell, I'll move on to paint things from other US states.

10-09-11. Hibiscus 3.

10-08-11. Hibiscus 2.

10-07-11. Hibiscus 1.

10-06-11. I don't like the "wild blue yonder" Crayola color name.

10-05-11. A spool of thread on top of my closed MacBook Air. RIP Steve Jobs.

10-04-11. Steak and potatoes and green stuff.

10-03-11. "Rio Grande Hot Springs", 2009 painting by Sarah McEneany.

406 Green Shadow: "Shadow Shadow" [SOLD]

Shadow Cake & DJ Shadow by Kamilah Gill

"Shadow Shadow", oil on canvas, 18x24". SOLD.

This painting is about the word "shadow". For this piece, I did several things related to the word. Using Google's Recipes search filter, I found a recipe for chocolate shadow cake. I prepared it from scratch (cake, frosting, and glaze). After photographing it to use as a reference for the piece, I ate the cake. It tasted pretty good. The icing was a little bit fluffy and marshmallowy, but the cake was nice and moist.

chocolate shadow cake made from scratch
for this piece

While I was making the cake, I recorded my kitchen sounds and descriptions of how to make the cake. Then I added two songs by DJ Shadow to play in the background of the recording. I uploaded the result to SoundCloud. You can listen to the recording from the embedded file at the top of this blog post. (If that's not working for some reason, visit the link here.) While I was painting, I listened to the DJ Shadow station on Pandora.

The other half of the painting depicts the case for our copy of the PlayStation 2 game Shadow of the Colossus, including the GameStop sales label. I played the game. So far I've defeated the first two of over a dozen colossi. It's an interesting game.

The painting and the SoundCloud recording are records of my experiences related to the word "shadow". I can't keep the cake forever, the video game has to be turned off and put away, but the painting will remain visible. Perhaps it will inspire others to play the game and bake the cake.

10-02-11. Fancy pants.

10-01-11. A fashion model.