arts

Daily Drawing #173, Twilight Comes But Once A Painting

| Whitt’s End Art

Twilight the word and not the movie was the prompt for today. The title of the picture is, “Little Girl Watching The Moon.” The painting was created using a light wash of watercolor on a canvas. The little girl and the cat are outlined in pen. I love art because sometimes when you’re just playing around art comes out of it. I am not going to talk about the twilight of an evening per-say but the twilight of creating art. A painting of me comes in stages.

The dawn of the painting is the stage where you lay out your painting. Then as the painting progresses you move to the noon time stage. This is where you have some color washes in and the painting starts to take shape. As you move past the dinner hour you get to the twilight of the painting. This is where you step back and decide for yourself if the painting is done. It is in this twilight stage where I have many times stopped and declared a painting or drawing to my liking. This simple painting is one of those twilight times. I hope you like it.

Daily Drawing #172, Warning! Letters Can Lead to Words

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I have discovered in my lifetime that letters when put together can lead to words. Shocking right? It was to me tomorrow the way the letters are assembled is entirely up to you but be warned letters formed into the wrong words can be harmful. The Bible warns us in Proverbs 12:18, “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” So the next time you’re forming your letters into words, choose wisely.

Daily Drawing #167, Cool Nights, Warm Summer Breezes

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Warm is the prompt word of the day and my daily offering is simply entitled, “A Summers Eve Camping Trip.” I have only been camping several times in my life and I can say for sure it is not one of my favorite things, even for a guy from West Virginia. While I may not like camping I do like summer and cool summer breezes. So if you like camping as part of your summertime festivities then go out and camp. God gives us the gift summer for three months so enjoy it wisely and safely.

Daily Drawing #166, 6 Things in the Junkyards of our Lives

| Whitt’s End Art

We all have junkyards in our lives where we throw the things we think we are done with. These are the things we store in the back of our minds which come out every now and then to taunt our way of thinking. I know my junkyard has 6 things in it I would love to have hauled away:

  1. Past Failures
  2. Promises ill kept
  3. Failed follow-throughs
  4. Wrong roads traveled
  5. Self seeking decisions
  6. Tests wrongly answered

I did not compile this list to be a Debbie downer or because I like to dwell on the negatives because I don’t. I try to seek out the positive in every situation.The list is meant to show you the danger of dwelling what is in our junkyards instead of seeking to learn from what has come before in order to make our live more satisfying.

 

 

 

Daily Drawing #162 Living the Golden Life is Not Always Good

| Whitt’s End Art

 

The prompt for today is the word, “yellow.” I created the little illustration entitled, “Mr. Fox Watches the Tree.” The title of the article is meant to be reflective of the fact that many people put there trust in things they believe to be golden The problem is that in they end up possessing worthless yellow imitations. What I am talking about is can’t miss opportunities or get rich schemes which fail to live up to their promise. The true golden worth of a person is not how much they have it is how much they have to give away.

In my walk from birth to sixty I have come across many people who had lots of money. These people however lacked the one thing they needed in order to be truly successful…kindness.  I have also known many people who had nothing but still gave away what they had to those who had even less. Who of these people shined like gold in the sunshine and which of these people had the gleam of faded yellow paint. In Mark 12:41-44 Jesus tell the tale of the widows offering. It is good parable to read in times of ego (times we seek our own golden lifestyle).

Daily Art #153, The Noisy Pencil

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The prompt for today is the word,”noisy.” Right away my thoughts turned to music because I work at a place where the students are always listening to music…out loud. I like music but when you’re trying to help the instructor teach a lesson it can be downright distracting. My mind also hearkened back to when people actually used a pencil to write on pages. Words on a page can make a lot of noise when read out loud or just to yourself.

When I was in school teachers used to tell us to read our papers back to ourselves so we could find our mistakes. Still in my case the choice of the pencil for my drawing entitled, “The Noisy Pencil,” was more because as an artist my favorite tools to create my noise on paper is the pencil. I love to draw and create using a pencil first then filling in the details later. There is something fulfilling about picking up a pencil and creating. God who is the ultimate artist put the desire to create in our hearts. It is up to us to use our gift and create.

Daily Drawing #148, The Woody Woodpecker Show

| Whitt’s End Art

Of course the drawing is not Woody Woodpecker, trademark issues being what they are but the bird is a woodpecker. Growing up Woody was one of my favorite cartoons along with many others like Magilla gorilla and Quick Draw McGraw. Each week I would sit in front of my television and watch episodes with great delight. Woody and the others were the foil of each episode (the things which the needed to be stopped). He was usually seen trying to take food that didn’t belong to him. Over the years I have seen less and less of those old cartoons but still enjoy them from time to time.

Woody is another one of my bird pictures. Like I have mentioned many times I seem to draw a lot of birds but feel they are not my greatest renderings. Bird drawings seem simple to draw but in the end are very complex in their renderings. I guess I will keep on drawing my feathered friends because as they say practice makes perfect.

Daily Drawing #140, Life is a Landscape

| Whitt’s End Art

When I survey the landscape of my life I see may empty places I could have filled opportunities not fulfilled. Well enough of the waning philosophic. The drawing today is entitled, “The Mostly Barren Landscape.” It is a study piece for something I plan today later in acrylics. I hope to put the piece on as an extra offering sometime in the future.

While I usually try to write some kind of inspirational epitaph based on situations in my life this time it is a little tougher. You see my landscape (life) has never happened the way I envisioned. I thought when I was a teenager the rough times would be all behind me, back beyond the trees. I was wrong. There are many decisions I have made which I’ve wished I could unmake or get a redo. None of them have been major choice just ones where a second opinion or some advice from others would have been helpful.

So all I can say to anyone reading this is to not go it alone. If you’re in the process of some decision, big or small, first pray about the decision and then seek out wise council. You’ll be glad you did later. Also there will be less crabgrass and weeds growing in the landscape of your life.

Daily Art #136, Stumped

| Whitt’s End Art

The prompt I chose for today was the word, “wooden.” I had this picture of a stump for a while so I decided to use it for today’s drawing entitled, “Stumped.”  I have a lot of trees near my house. In fact at one point I had two of them by house removed some time ago. When the tree service took the trees down they gave me an estimate for taking out the stumps. I was amazed to find removing the stumps would cost as much or more than taking down the trees.  I asked, “Why?” The guy went on to explain that the base of the tree carries into the ground so they must bring in a stump grinder to get rid of the stump.

I am reminded that how deeply we are rooted into something is a good indication of how well we will stick with the task at hand. Of course this applies to faith in Jesus Christ. The deeper our faith the more we will stand like a tall tree when the storms come. However I think the simile of the tree stump applies to anything in life. How deeply rooted we are in loosing weight, trying to stop smoking, being a good employee at work and any number of things is how strong we will stand. The shallower our roots (belief in what we’re doing) the sooner we will fall when the strong winds come. So remember to make sure your stump will be hard to get out of the soil anytime you commit to something.