So Far Saturday

New thing, I'm going to try and post a progress-on-a-painting-so-far picture on Saturdays. I might not make it every Saturday since I don't post progress pictures of portraits until they're finished (or till they go to the person they're for when they're a gift.) But I try and always have other paintings in the works that aren't commissioned portraits...and maybe this will be motivation to make sure I keep that up. Or maybe I'll forget about it by next week. We'll see.

Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers

I've posted pictures before of some of the square paintings I did in college, but I didn't have any good pictures of this one. This one lives at my sister's house in Ohio, and I took a couple pictures of it hanging in their living room while I was there over Christmas. (I hope she doesn't mind pictures of her living room being posted on the internet.) The canvas is 4 foot by 6 foot, which works well with their high-ceilinged living room. I wish I could do more paintings this large, but currently I don't have a good place to paint something this big.

Soda Review

Pops is a novelty tourist-y restaurant-y destination on Route 66 just outside of Edmond. It's on the way out to Luther (where Stormy is boarded.) So I drive by it frequently. The parking lot is always packed! Their food is nothing special, and really not worth the crowd. The reasons to drive out to Pops are the giant neon soda bottle outside (which looks much cooler at night) 

and the humongous variety of sodas you can buy nowhere else. They're not cheap, but you can build your own 6-pack and try some new things. Recently the boyfriend and I went there and picked 7 soda's to try. Not included that we tried were a key lime pie soda (it was good) and a cherries and cream soda (also good but made my stomach hurt.)

First up:  Reading Draft "Blueberry Birch." We drank this first bottle before I thought to take a picture, I really wish I had...this stuff is BRIGHT blue. Probably has all kinds of bad-for-you food coloring in it. It tastes like blueberries and root beer  Which once you get used to it is pretty good. I really liked it but could see how maybe it's not for everyone. I would recommend at least trying it.

Next up, Empire Bottling Works "Spruce Beer." THIS was by far the grossest soda I have ever tasted. In the bottle it looked like an unfiltered beer, with a slight opaqueness (It's actually a white-ish color but clear-ish). We opened it and were surprised by a strong pine tree smell. Bryan bravely tried it first and commented that "it tastes like Lysol smells." He convinced me to try it and I agree. We threw the rest out.

And to end on a tastier note, Waialua "Mango" soda was very fruity. It was a pale pink color and tasted like mango and a little like pineapple. I definitely recommend this one.

We still have two more sodas to try, but since neither of us are huge soda drinkers really, it might be a while before I review those. If I remember to at all...

Wordless Wednesday: The Ears Say it All

Roman has Grown

But Gypsy still gets the bed.

My day job

As I've mentioned here before, I'm one of those lucky artists who is actually employed by someone else to draw every day. (And yet I still feel the need to keep drawing and painting when I get home..) Anyway, I thought I'd (again?) show off a random selection of stuff I've drawn for Embroideryonline.com that I'm particularly proud of:

Also, they are doing "staff profiles" on their new blog. They don't really give you that much info about us staffs, but, hey, I guess it shows that we're real people. Check mine out here. (I didn't pick the questions they asked me.)