McLovin

This week the teacher didn't really say what to do for homework. Marc suggested I paint our african violet, which he affectionately named McLovin. Yes... McLovin. But look at how healthy he is, Mallory, he has tons of flowers! We must be taking good care of him.

Ooh, colors

This week's homework was supposed to be an orange, but the thought of painting another sphere bored me, so I picked a different orange-colored item from the produce section. :)

How not to dig up grass

There is a right way and a wrong way to dig up grass. The right way makes use of chemicals, tools, ingenuity, and patience -- none of which I have, of course. The wrong way is to brute force it with a shovel. As you might have guessed, I do have a shovel.

But it was worth the effort! I got to plant flowers. Now I also want to think about what to do with the rest of the yard since it looks so awful in comparison.

White + Black = Grey

This was our first painting in class. The teacher was like, these are awesome! And we were like, right, well... they're all paintings of a grey cube. It seems like the maximum amount of awesome is somewhat constrained by the subject matter.

That's the best thing about art teachers -- they can find the good in anything!

This was my (completely optional) homework. What's next after a cube? A sphere, of course! I deviated somewhat by putting seams on the softball, but I doubt anyone will mind.

Aziz, light!

There are a range of flatbed scanners on the market. You can get a cheap one for like $60; better quality ones are a few hundred; even really good ones are well under $1000. They differ in things like speed, dpi, and color quality. But every single one of them is exactly 8.5x11.7, and you cannot buy a larger one.

Seriously. Epson does make a 12x16 scanner that's a whopping $3000, but that is it. If you want a large format scanner they start out at $10000. There is no middle ground.

If your artwork is bigger than 8.5x11.7, you have three options:

1. Scan your artwork in usually 2 or 4 pieces, and meticulously stitch the scans together in photoshop.
2. Photograph your artwork.
3. Pay Kinkos to use their large format scanner.

I normally go with option #1. I've tried option #3, once, but it's not cheap either ($30 per piece or something like that). #2 is a pain, since you need to set up your artwork, two light sources, and a camera with a tripod just so, but I did it a couple times with oil paintings (they're too glossy to scan) and I'm starting to think it might be a better option than #1.

Where is this leading? I don't own any light sources! I need like two of these. Or maybe these, but they seem less versatile and look a little hard to store. Normally I paint small watercolors to avoid exactly this problem, but now I'm in acrylics class and teachers never let you paint small. :)

Penguin!

Penguins are awesome. Hypothetically, anyway. In reality I'm aware they smell like fish, but on video -- say, in March of the Penguins -- they are adorable.

They do create a paradox, though. Seals are also adorable, but seals eat penguins! What am I supposed to make of that??