nerdvember 28, 2008

i hope you guys had a great Thanksgiving. we did. it was delicious.

now on with the show. The Jaimie Is So Awesome Show.
remember the awesome nursey i painted that time? and the trash can? well, they called back. because they are my friends and they know the awesomeness that abounds. heh, okay, enough of the horn tooting. anyway, their sweet wittle fweegan is having her first birthday this weekend and they wanted a banner made for it. the birthday theme is Goodnight Moon. aw.

it’s a sweet book, but it’s also a strange book. i guess it’s not really that strange, but maybe if you’re an artistic type and you notice things in illustrations more than say, a small child, the book may also seem strange to you as well. the strangeness is in the details. the clocks sort of keep time and the moon moves higher in the sky. the illustrations get darker. but the weirdest thing to me is the book on the nightstand by the bed? is Goodnight Moon. so it’s a bit House of Leaves-y in that way. and the little rabbit kinda looks mean.

but anyway, my friend, she says she wants a Goodnight Moon birthday banner for her daughter. so what could i do? say no?

i wish.

me? i know a lot of artists. i know a lot of really great artists. but sometimes? i’m the only artist that someone else knows.

so i found a pic online. and i printed it out in b/w cos i don’t have a color printer at home. then i cut down a huge piece of canvas i had. and i quartered the picture and quartered the canvas to make it easier to sketch out. the left hand quarter is where the birthday message would go. that way i wouldn’t have to paint the rug.

then i started blocking in the colors on the big stuff. kelly also helped with this. also, this was my table cloth for three weeks. so under all the paint is food stains and several wine rings. booyeah!

mmmm, coffee.

adding some details.

normally this would not have taken me three weeks to finish, but every time dad found out i that i had a day off and planned to work on this, he would be all, “i’ll be damned.” and he would make me go and paint at this other house. then we’d come home from working at this house all day and we HAD to drink brown party liquor cos that’s what house painters DO, so then i’d be too “tired” to work on it in the evenings. so i blame him and tequila for me not finishing this thing in a week.

then i asked laura “font mistress” catoe to find a font that would be AWESOME for the banner. and she did. because that’s what she does.

and then i painted the letters a light yellow.

then to add more background color:

i couldn’t take a picture of the whole thing on the table because it was so big (slightly bigger than 6’x4′) so i had to roll it out on the kitchen floor and stand on a chair.

things i do not like about the illustration:
1. the carpet and the bed are both red and the colors touch and that is such a dumb idea.

2. all the red and green. my god, it’s a complementary color eye rape. bah.

things i like about it:
1. i gave it a yellow border to echo the the pictures on the walls that have yellow frames. i was going to take a scissors and sort of scallop the edges on the the painting as well, but i didn’t.

2. i set the two clocks to 11:29 because that’s Lilly’s birthday.

tatdow!

Tags: painting