After my Super-Fantastic failure and decision to try my hand at oil paints, I did some quick Google research.  Bob Ross came up over and over during my searches.  I decided to watch a few of his episodes on Youtube to see if it was something that I thought could help.  My son liked watching Bob and the "Happy Little Trees" that he painted.  We decided to give Bob's method a try.  We chose to paint the picture called, 'Christmas Eve Snow."  Thanks to my friend from the previous weeks post, I had all the necessary colors, plus some extra ones incase I felt creative.  My thought process was, if Bob can paint a picture in half an hour, I should be able to do it in two.

Since this is a night picture, I needed to paint my canvas black.  This was my first experience with using oil paints.  Not at all like other types of paint I've worked with.  My wife and I painted the inside of our house in South Carolina twice, the inside of our current house once, plus halping others paint houses, and various art projects I've done for school and fun.  If you have never painted with oil paint, it is more like messy putty than paint.  No wonder Bob Ross was able to do an entire pinting with just the putty knife.  It was a pain to cover the canvas with a "thin layer" of the stuff.  However, I acomplished my goal and covered the canvas with black.

The paint had to dry for two days.  That is something new to me.  I had no idea that oil paint took that long to dry.  No wonder it took the Italian masters like Leonardo da Vinci months to complete any of their works.  I didn't know that the Mona Lisa is an oil painting, however, now that I've taken a second look at it, the background of the painting looks similar to what I attempted to do with the paint.  I guess I learned some tools to help me spot an oil painting.

We began by putting clouds in the sky.  Tiny circles to make them, then just blend the bottoms of the clouds, don't over do it.  Well, I blended the whole cloud, and over did the blending on top of that.  Making mountains is fun.  You take some really dark color on the putty knife and trace the outline of mountain peaks onto the canvas.  I then had to make a big decision.  Decide where the moon is, and then put white paint onto that side of the mountains with the putty knife.  Put a thin line of paint onto the tip of the knife and lightly spread the paint cascading down the mountain.  I then took the white paint, added some black and blue to it to make a greyish color and did the same technique on the shadowy side.  My mountains looked awesome!

So lets talk a little about perspective and all that blank black space below the mountains.  I wanted to add some trees, especially since the "happy little trees" is why my son wanted to paint this way in the first place.  So, being an inexperienced painter, I put the trees right in the middle covering my awesome mountaint.  I did learn that you can take your putty knife and trace a line up the middle of the tree, while subtle, it can help create the illusion of the trunk.

The next task was to create the snowy field.  Again, I over blended everything and it looks like a blue-grey blob.  Lastly I added a church and some more trees in the foreground to give the illusion of perspective.  Personal notes: I need to work on my straight lines, perspective, and looking at the whole canvas before I cover my really good mountains with trees.  While I was painting with the oils, Anthony chose to paint one tree with the sky around it using his washable paint.  He wore an old work shirt of mine as a smock, which looked pretty funny, considering I am 6 foot 4 and he is 43 inches tall.

One thing I need to plan for next time is how to clean the brushes and dispose of the paint thinner without violating any laws or killing myself.  The warning lable is pretty specific about how you can do both.  I think I am going to get a bucket for the brushes to soak in, and then a funnel to move the thinner back into its storage container.  Paint thinner fumes are flamable, so leaving it in the bucket for storage is not an option.  I plan to go back to Michael's to see if they have any tips, or equipment to help me safely handle the thinner.

So what did I learn?  I learned that I like to use oil paints.  It works pretty well with how I think and what I want to make.  The history of oil painting is fascinating.  Oil based paints emerged as early as the 12th century in Northern Europe, somewhere around 200 years before the Italian Renaissance.  It is almost as fascinating as the history of painting.  Just about every culture in history has some kind of painting or visual art.  Anthropologists belive that the first paintings served a religious or ritualistic purpose of some sort.  There is also evidence it was used to communicate complex ideas in pre-literate societies.  The Greeks and Romans used art to educate and commemorate important events.  During the Medieval Era it was used to warn against sin.  The renaissance moved art to a more decorative role.  It is also one of the most versitile paints.  I also learned that I need to learn more about brush cleaning and how to properly handle the chemicals involved in oil painting.  I am going to let my son decide again what we paint next.  He has two different scenes in mind, so we'll see what happens next week!

 Ainsworth, M. (n.d.). Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Retrieved June 30, 2015. 
 Ross, B. (n.d.). Bob Ross. Retrieved June 30, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/user/BobRossInc 

This is my first blog post about my experinment with painting.  I completely failed to create anything resembling what was in my head, which is exciting, because I learned something by not succeeding.  To begin I put paper onto my 4 year old sons easel, but since I am six foot four inches tall, I had to put it onto my daughters art and crafts table.  I took a trip to the local Michael's Arts and Crafts Store to purchase paints and brushes.  I picked acrylic paints, mainly because they were the cheapest option.  I wanted to paint something from recent memory, so I chose to paint the beach and ocean, my family went there last weekend, and it was a fun memory.

I've worked as a cook in a kitchen before and I love to layer things.  I put down a base coat of paint hoping to add layers above it to bring the day at the beach to the foreground.  Apparently, with acrylic paints, you can't really do that.  What I was left with was an oversaturated piece of paper, and some wierd looking brush strokes.  In the picture it appears that there are white spaces, but those are supposed to be yellow or light blue.  Since one lady at Michaels was helpful I took a picture of the painting, described what I wanted to do and asked how to fix it.  She suggested trying some glitter paint to give the ocean some shimmer.  Adding more paint to the paper, just made it wrinkle more.  I've never been a fan of glitter, but the effect seemed to make it slightly better.  Still I'm not satisfied.  You can see the glitter shining off of my camera's flash in the picture below.

I returned to Michael's to discuss my next piece with the people working in the paint section.  I met a young lady who had recently graduated with a degree in art.  I showed her the picture above and she told me that for what I wanted to do, using acrylic paints as a medium, it wasn't actually bad.  This is an exaple of what happens when you use a painting style for one type of paint with the wrong type of paint.  She said that for the style of painitng that I seem to be naturally drawn to, I need to use oil based paints.  She turned out to be extremely chatty and helpful.  We talked about a number of things, including ideas for my next painting.  I decided to paint a winter scene.  The art graduate and Michael's salesperson helped me pick out my paints, tools, and a couple of canvases.  Next, we'll see how I do with oil based painting.

So what have I learned?  I learned that various paints have styles that are specific to that type of paint.  I learned that if you are using acrylic paints, you can't just paint for a couple of hours straight, or the paper will become overloaded and wrinkle.  I learned that I should probably paint with a canvas, not paper.  I learned that I seem to be naturally drawn to the style for oil based paints.  I learned that you should model your technique to the type of paint, and as such, using a variety of paint on one canvas won't work well.  I haven't learned yet, but perhaps my next door neighbor is right when he says that anyone can be an artist, perhaps I really can make a nice painting, if I use the correct type of paint.  I'll update next week, hopefully with something that looks a little more exciting!

I have made my decision for my 20Time project, along with some assistance from nature.  Those who commented on my original posting thought that I should make wine as a cultural and family historically driven inquiry.  I did some research and visited the local wine making store here in Simi Valley.  The store proprietor told me that Summer is the wrong time to start a batch of wine in Southern California.  He asked me if I wanted to make beer instead.  I don't have any connection to beer so I respectfully declined.  I still want to make wine now, especially with the connection I have to the process.  The wine expert told me to come back in late September or Early October because that is when the wineries sell their extra grape juice from the pressing process.

So I am going to go with my second option, learning to paint.  I am going to try to see if I can just pick up the craft.  If I can't, there are free classes through the Parks and Rec department available that I can attend to get some pointers.  However, I do want to see if I can improve my own talents through successful failures and self anaylasis.

I told my son that we are going to be learning to paint together he was excited.  Then he looked confused and let me know that he already knows how to paint, "Daddy, you put paint onto the paintbrush, then you put the paint onto the paper."  I am going to have him accompany me on this journey.  Who knows?  We might discover that he has some artistic talent.

Questions:
1. How do you even start creating a painting?
2. Is there a large difference in technique between different types of paint?
3. How did the craft of painting evolve?
4. Is there a culture on earth that doesn't have some form of painting, or visual art?
5. Can you blend various types of paint in one painting, or will that look riddiculous?
6. Is there any coorelation between the raw materials a culture has available and the style of paintings it produces?
7. What should I paint?
8. Will my paintings be any good?
9. Could I potentially sell my paintings, like the people on the beach walk in Santa Barbara every Sunday?
10. Is art as powerful and informative a method of communicating complex ideas as writing?

Option 1.
My grandmother never drank wine.  That statement on its own isn't necessarily odd.  If you put it into context of our large, loud, happy Italian family, it starts to seem out of place.  My Italian family, with the exception of my immediate family (and Grandma), all lived in Napa, CA.  Most of them still do.  For many people Napa means wine tasting, for me it will always bring back memories of getting my cheek pinched by older relatives as I hear about how big I am getting.  I remember going to Napa every Christmas to see my family.  We cousins would run around and play tag or hide and seek in the vineyards while the grown ups did boring things, like sit and talk.

I once asked my Grandma why she didn't drink wine.  Her two younger sisters drank wine, but she never did.  She said that the smell of wine reminded her of her childhood.  When my Great Grandfather immigrated from Italy he brought his wine making talents with him. Talents he put to good use during the Great Depression by bartering his wine for food and other supplies the family needed.  My grandmother would help him make the wine, since she was the oldest, and the smell of fermenting grapes made her sick.  She told me that she couldn't even smell wine, or she would become nauseated.

I think that it would be fun to learn the art of wine making, the knowledge has skipped a few generations, but if I learn how to do it properly, then I can teach my son and daughter, and we may be able to resurrect a family tradition and embrace our cultural heritage.  I know that the wine wouldn't be finished by the time our project ends, but after some preliminary research, I should be well into the bottling phase by the time our project presentations are due.

Questions:
1. How does a person make wine?  Is there more to it than putting some yeast in grape juice and letting it sit for a very long time?
2. How much Chemistry is involved in the wine making process?
3. What region of Italy is my family from?
4. What kind of wine is produced in that region?
5. Was there a "push" factor occuring in Italy that served as a catalyst for my Great Grandfather to immigrate to the United States?
6. How do I get the cork into the bottle so it stays?  Does s special machine squeeze it and then it expands when it is in the bottle?
7. How do I design a lable?
8. Can I sell the wine I make legaly?
9. Do I need to get a special license to make wine?
10. How many other Italian Americans survived the Great Depression by using their wine making traditions?

Option 2:
I have never been an artist.  I don't have the patience for it.  I don't understand how painters can stop working for periods of time and then come back to it later.  My best friend Jon was an artist.  He could draw or paint anything he saw.  I don't know if he ever "learned" to draw and paint, or if he just did it.  As you can guess from my use of past tense to describe his talent, my friend died long ago. I would like to learn how to paint, and be an artist like he was.  I don't have any natural talent, so I am not sure how successful I will be, but I want to try.

Questions:
1. How do you even start creating a painting?
2. Is there a large difference in technique between different types of paint?
3. How did the craft of painting evolve?
4. Is there a culture on earth that doesn't have some form of painting, or visual art?
5. Did Jon have a particular style of painting that he specialized in?
6. Is there any coorelation between the raw materials a culture has available and the style of paintings it produces?
7. What should I paint?
8. Will my paintings be any good?
9. Could I potentially sell my paintings, like the people on the beach walk in Santa Barbara every Sunday?
10. Is art as powerful and informative a method of communicating complex ideas as writing?