In Which We Invent a Whole New Internet Thing.
You ask, I giveth. Dear Reader and Commentor Casey asked if I could put up drawings for the Triscuit watering cans I’ve painted for the super-duper Triscuit Quartet Give-Away:
So I enlarged the waterings cans and re-drew their outlines so they’d be nice and clear, and here they are, for your printing and painting pleasure, both the Before. . .
. . . and the After:
Before:
After:
I couldn’t find the drawings I used for the other two/quarters of the Super Duper Triscuit Quartet,,so here’s another drawing I did that you might like to paint anyway:
Don’t forget to enter the Super-Duper Triscuit Quartet Give Away!
Did we just invent the latest internet craze????? Probably not, because artists can be stingy giving away their stuff. But not me. Right, Monique?
Last week, Dear Reader and long-time Commentor Monique mentioned me and the GoAaF in her beautiful blog — Merci Monique!, and she also wrote about the painting lessons I offer here in VivianWorld. Monique thinks my generosity is the sign of a very confident and mature human being. Ha! I have no idea how I’ve pulled that off, giving the impression that I’m a grown up. Although it is true that, when I bitch and moan at life for making me the Wrong Swift, that is, making me Vivian instead of Taylor Swift, I do use very grown-up curse words, so there’s that in the “mature” column.
Now, you might think a grown-up writer of my, ahem, stature, would wish to be the other famous Swift, Jonathan Swift, but nope, not me. I don’t want to be remembered for my wit and smarts 269 years and counting after I die: I want to be 25 and in Paris and wander rooftops in a gauzy gown right now, right this damn minute.
Did you watch it? Did you see her in the Square du Vert-Galant?
She even sat under the willow tree I wrote about in Gardens of Awe and Folly!
But getting back to my actual non-Taylor/real Vivian Swift life, and to Monique’s compliment as to my mental state, I want to say that I have no qualms showing you all how I do what I do because, to me, it’s not giving away professional secrets. In my opinion, it’s the same as teaching someone how to write cursive script (not that anybody’s doing that these days). See, I could teach you how to form a cursive A . . .
. . . or B. . .
. . . but you’d still end up writing your As and Bs in your own, unique, organic, unavoidable you-style anyway:
Right? So here’s me showing all you crazy individualists everything I know about painting a tea cup Triscuit:
The rotten part of painting tea cups is getting the perspective right, which means getting the oval right. So, since it’s my No. 1 Rule to always start a picture buy painting the hardest bit first, I began with the oval shadow under the saucer, and the oval “tea” in the tea cup. Notice that I shaded the “tea” lighter around the edges: if you’ve ever looked at your tea, you’ll see that that’s how it is in real life, because of physics, or math, or gravity, or something.
Next, I use acrylic gold paint to outline the decoration on Tea Cup No. 1 in the foreground:
You have to use acrylic paint here, because watercolor simply cannot do what acrylic does, i.e., shine. See how it shines when I put it in a raking light? (See: below.)
Oooooooo…pretty!
Anyway, the rest of this tea-cup waiting thing is pretty much an Instagram so here goes:
And DONE. Or, I should say. . .
One – Quarter DONE.
Next week there will be three more from where that came from in order to, you guessed it, make a Super-Duper Tea Cup Triscuit Quartet to be given away in May along with the Super Duper etc etc etc (because not everybody likes watering cans). And Thank you, all you Dear Readers and Wonder Ones, for your kind 5-star reviews on Amazon. Your words are like champagne to me, and you all know how seriously I take champagne.
I have to go now and pack for New Orleans, baby! Because of this:
Wed., April 13 2016 6PM
at Octavia Books in New Orleans, cher!
513 Octavia Street in fabulous Uptown, NOLA
You know what you get when you get three or more New Orleanians in one room? You get a party! Because in New Orleans, every day that you’re alive is worth celebrating!
So if you’re alive on Wednesday, April 13 this year, here’s the deal:
You bring your Go Cup and I’ll bring mine, and we’ll let the good times roll.
Come join the fun and convo about life, gardens, Triscuits, roses, voodoo, cake, hurricane parties, etc. OK?
(It’s the “etc.” that New Orleans does best.)
And on May 3, Seattle, here I come!
And on May 5, it’s Portland, here I come!
And on May 7, it’s Canon Beach, here I come!
Are you in?
