Afternoon of Monsters & Painting Inspiration

I went to the Strong Museum this morning with my mom's class she works with. I guess after I came to the beach with them the otehr week, they really like me and the teacher specifically asked mom to call and ask if I'd like to come to the museum. It was fun. A little exhausting trying to keep up and contain the kids we were with (I give Mom a lot of credit!)...but still fun. This has been my third time there. CJ and I went there once by ourselves, and once again with our friends and their kids. Anyone with kids (that live fairly close) should take them there at least once!

When I got home, I photographed a bunch of monsters I'm planning on putting in my Etsy shop. I just finished a set of monsters yesterday...two monsters I call Cor and D'Roy (named so because of the scraps of courderoy pants I made them out of). I'm selling them as a set and just put them on Etsy today.

"Cor and D'Roy are brothers and come as a set. Cor is grey with a brown belly and arms, D'Roy is brown with a grey belly and arms. They get mistaken for each other all the time, but like to take advantage of the confusion and use the opportunity to play pranks on people. A secret to remembering the difference so they don't trick YOU...look closely...Cor has 3 teeth, D'Roy has 4...Cor came before D'Roy, and 3 comes before 4!"

Then through my daily blog browsing, I quickly glimpsed a picture at Design*Sponge that had a picture in the background on top of a cabinet...

I left a comment asking what the picture was, only to find a few minutes later that the blogger had mentioned it earlier in the post ("a photograph by Lightleaks"). When I went to the photographer's website and found a closeup of the actual picture, I found that it was in actuality really quite creepy and surreal (like most, if not all, of the other photographer's work). The photograph shows tea dribbling out of a girl's mouth into a stack of teacups. Creeeeepy! The photography is "good" in the technical sense, but some of the images themselves are a little disturbing. But I was inspired by the initial basic image I saw on Design*Sponge, and had made a quick sketch with oil pastels for a possible painting...

Still kind of semi-surreal because of the half face...but trust me, it's a lot less creepy than the image that ispired it! The image of glowing red is remeniscent of a piece I did a long time ago that involved the symbolism of love, trying to hide it, and being unable to...a self portrait I started before my now-husband asked me out when I was unsure of his feelings for me and afraid to reveal mine for fear of rejection. Later, when we were "a couple" and the painting was finished, I gave it to him as a gift.

I definitely think my painting blood is up again. I've been reading up on artists like Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso and have been inspired to start painting again.