Helmet

I found some old photos of a project I did in high school for an art class, so I scanned them in for an old art post.  As I recall a demolition derby driver wanted his helmet to look like a skull.  So I was lucky enough to paint it.

After removing some of the hardware pieces, we sanded it first, to remove gloss coating.
Then I sketched on the design.
Then we painted it with some kind of enamel paints. 

Last I think my art teacher helped me apply a glossy layer.
He had a black visor so the mouth area was a big black hole. 

Jane Austen

I decided to take a stab at painting Ms Austen for my wife's birthday.  I based it on several popular versions, but I added my own ideas.  Most descriptions I saw described Jane as having a small mouth, dark hazel eyes.  I tried to make her look thoughtful.  But I never really liked some of the paintings based on Casandra's drawing.  The drawing made by Jane's sister was considered at the time, "most unflattering" and a poor representation of Jane...so I didn't let it tie me down too bad, although I am using the same pose etc.  Of course once I gave it to Erin she pulled out a huge book with lots of paintings of Jane's brothers, sisters, mother...  I probably would have changed a couple things having seen that book most notably her nose may have more of a button to it.  But I'm still pretty proud of the drawing.  I sketched it out first on paper, scanned it in and painted it digitally. Then I printed it out and framed it.

Painted it to fit in a oval frame.

Jack-O-Lanterns

These are our Jack-O-Lanterns from 2 years ago.  Last year we didn't make any but this year we are going to try again.  I really want to try out this technique of carving away at the pumpkin.

Erin and I at a friends house.

I used a yellow pumpkin and I kind-of messed it up pretty bad last time, but still managed to get a skull out of it.  I tried to make some kind of tentacle thingy that lived in the scull but it ended up looking dumb.  Erin made a cute little Mario Mushroom from one of those turban squashes turned upside down.  We didn't come up with that idea on our own.  Our buddy made it first.

I was trying to make it look kind of like a Goa'uld from StarGate. 

I burned up and dripped a red candle all over to make it look bloody. 
It still looked pretty stupid.

Cute Erin!