Saturday, February 8, 2020

Peppers, Bananas, Faces, and Paint Night


This is a still life with four different colours of bell peppers. I chose a blue table cloth to complement the orange pepper. My favourite peppers in this image are the orange and yellow ones. I gave this image to my mother and brother in Guelph.

I feel like bell peppers have some of the most "attitude" in the vegetable kingdom. They have those vibrant, diverse colours and grooves....

This painting replaced "Stirfry Ingredients" which I'd donated home. That one involved carrots, bell peppers, snow peas, onion, and cauliflower. I botched the cauliflower, but my family wouldn't take down the image until I offered them something better. "Bell Peppers" is simpler, but better


This is another still life. It's a bowl of fruit with an apple, a pear, a mango, and a bunch of bananas, The apple and mango should complement the bowl, but I find the bananas are what really draw attention. This was my first still-life that I did based on my own initiative. Previously, I'd done one during an art class I took in University.  This is another painting donated to home


My brother on the left, and myself on the right. My brother's is based on his Facebook profile picture at the time. I'd like to learn how to create a gloss effect, because I think that would have really improved how his glasses look. Right now, I kind of just drew the frames.

The orange background is supposed to compliment Duncan's blue shirt, and the green background, is supposed to compliment my reddish shirt. I actually did a painting with my mother having a yellow-purple contrast to complete the set, but she didn't like it, so I'm not including it here.

I look really sheepish in my picture, which wasn't the intention. My reference image was my profile picture when I worked as an Independent Facilitator. This painting was my second attempt at a profile painting. My first happened to be someone with a darker skin tone, and when I did myself, I thought that I just needed to do the same formula, but with more white paint. I was wrong, the colour blue needs to be omitted when painting someone of caucasian descent, and I ran out of white paint when I was  making it, so unfortunately, the initial attempt had me dark-skinned and wearing bright red lipstick. As I painted over it, my recreated image seemed to remember it's unfortunate origins, resulting in it's embarrassed expression.



I went to something called a Paint Night, where an instructor teaches an audience to recreate an image. I'm the image on the left, and my girlfriend is on the right. Y'all are going to commentate that my best painting is the one where someone gives me a reference image and tells me how to do it. Fair enough.

Everyone in the course drew a denser forest than in the reference. I don't know how they did it, but the reference image gave really thin trees that complimented the background.

Lee-Anne definitely has a more cosmic and awe-inspiring sky. I don't know what the "white accents" were supposed to be, but her's look a bit like Aurora Borealis, while mine look like smoke rising from the water. I think I had nice, smooth edges on my forest, and the reflection on my island looks nice.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Patrice Butts Fund Beard-Off


One of my final assignments for the Social Service Worker program was to do a fundraising event for the Patrice Butts Fund, which acts as an emergency support for Social Service Worker students facing financial crisis. One of the events that my team decided to do was shaving my iconic beard of five years. For $250 I would shave my beard, and the highest bidder would get to choose a facial hair style that I would wear and maintain for a week before completing the shave.


This is my standard look. A professional, trimmed beard.


One of the stipulations to the event was that I had to grow it out as long as possible before the day of the shave. I judged the length by testing how many pencils it could hold. At its maximum length, it was strong enough to hold 14 pencils!


On the day of the event, the highest bidder, with $100, had selected to pluck three hairs off the left side of my beard. Since this left the class feeling dissatisfied, we put it off a day and the social work students made a collaborative effort and vote which resulted in an extra $114.75 and left me looking like this.


A week later, before finishing the shave, I had some fun and experimented with different styles. Because my chosen style took off my chin hair, I didn't get to do a goatee or soul patch. But here I am with a handlebar moustache.


Standard moustache.


And finally, clean shaven.

In the end, I got:

$46.50 cash
$31.25 to save it
$261 from online donations
$114.75 in the final class bid

$453.50 total


Almost twice our original goal of $250!

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

More Karadie



Some women are pounding millet.



We're developing eyes on potatoes to divide and distribute among the village women.



Stephen's posing with some sorgho plants, a crop similar to millet. I didn't take this photo.

More CWY Photos



The Malians would make these little shot-glasses of really strong tea and pass them around. It was the very most common premise for a social occasion. I did not take this photo.



Little baby goat.



It took me forever to get a picture of one of these Guinea hens.



The Malian men were afraid of cooking, but Ousmane overcame his fears while in Quebec.



Abdulaye's showing his skill on the soccer field. There were daily soccer games. It was one of the two most necessary recreational skills, alongside dancing. I didn't take this photo.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Living Quarters and First Billet Hosts



My first host family in Quebec.



The room I shared with my counterpart in Mali.



My second Quebec host family's house.



My first Quebec host family's house.