Deck The Halls Christmas Carol by Pomplamoose

Lately I have enjoyed watching the Hyundai car commercials (really!) and recently learned that the singing was done by two people in a "group" called Pomplamoose.  Say that really fast several times!  Anyhow, Nataly & Jack do all of the singing and play all of the instrumentals!  I guess they use some electronical musical gadgets - DUHHHHHHH do ya think?

Here's a link to their Hyundai car commercial and a link to their song.  (Use your browser "back" button to come back here!)  At the end of their song they talk about giving away some MP3 tracks of their songs if you buy a book(s) for the Richmond, California schools from Amazon.com.

Here's a link to their rendition of "Up on The Housetop".

Nataly and Jack

THE CROSS GUY - A WORK IN PROGRESS

Work In Progress

THE CROSS GUY  8 x 12  Oils on panel

A WORK IN PROGRESS

12/27/2010: With help from a friend, I renamed this painting from "A Mean Dude" to "The Cross Guy".

I woke up early (4 or 5 AM) and I got this far by 9 AM more or less. It's rather small so it didn't take long. DUH!  :-)

I saw this photo on Jilly Bennett's blog Menton Daily Photo a while back and the fellow was . . . . abrupt(?) and Jilly took his picture so that he would move on.

I'll work on this tomorrow - probably. Or I might work on the painting with the boys running. Maybe not.  :-)

UPDATED December 21, 2010.  I still need to do something more - or maybe something less.  Anyhow the photo of the painting is "shiny" and I'll work on that as well!  :-)

Boys Running In The Countryside - WORK IN PROGRESS

WORK IN PROGRESS

Boys Running In The Countryside   16 x 20  Oils on canvas panel

WORK IN PROGRESS

This is a combination of four (4) reference photos:

The background ground, trees and sky are a photo of the neighborhood where we live.  The boys are two photos from Jilly Bennett's blog Menton Daily Photo.  The dog is patterned after a photo from the internet.

Lady With Sunglasses

$50.00 plus shipping

If interested, contact me at ken.barclay@yahoo.com

Lady With Sunglasses  8 x 10   Oils on canvas panel

UPDATED - December 20, 2010.  I glazed some blue and violet on the sunglasses.

This started off as a "landscape" (orientation and subject) experiment and when that went bad, I made it a portrait (orientation and subject) painting of a lady with fancy sunglasses.  You can imagine the landscape if you look at the painting in landscape orientation. There's a blue sky on the right with snow flakes, a brown shoreline in the middle and blue water on the left side - or that's what I was trying to do.  When I put paint thinner on the "landscape" the paint sort of shmeared, dribbled and ran from top to bottom.  I thought that it looked sort of nice then I left it and went inside our house for the night.

The next day I decided to make a portrait and ta-da! There was the canvas panel already "prepped" for an off-beat portrait of a lady wearing "fancy" sunglasses.

I'm going to leave it alone for now. Maybe it's finished, maybe NOT! :-)

The Rogers Art Guild Holiday Party

December 13, 2010.

Each year our art guild has a Christmas Party then we visit a local Assisted Living home. The members exchange gifts and we have gifts for the residents at the assisted living home. 

This year we ate at a restaurant instead of having a pot-luck lunch at our regular meeting-place.  Our wrapped gifts for each other in the Guild were placed on a table then each member could choose a gift from the table OR "steal" a gift that another member had chosen. It's a lot of fun with some "serious" (wink wink) threats of retribution if the gift is "stolen"!

After our luncheon party we went to the nearby assisted living home where one of members and two of his friends played and sang some Christmas music.  The band played almost an hour and we were all sorry when it was time to leave and go home.  One of the band (Dave) is an artist and a member of our guild - he makes really good paintings as well as singing & playing guitar very well!

Please excuse my translated wishes for a Merry Christmas. I used a free online translation program and I meant well! :-}  I hope that you all have a:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! 

Feliz Navidad  y  Feliz Año Nuevo  para  todos! 

圣诞快乐，新年快乐给大家！ 

Prettige Kerstdagen en Gelukkig Nieuwjaar voor iedereen! 

Joyeux Noël et Bonne année à tous!

Fröhliches Weihnachten und Gutes Neues Jahr zu allen!

Buon Natale e Felice Anno Nuovo a tutti! 

С Рождеством Христовым и С новым годом все!

Some photos of our holiday day are posted below. 

Most of our members and guests before the party started

The band (Joe, Dave and Roger) playing at the assisted living home.

A view of some of the residents and staff

Another view of some of the residents and staff

Cat - (Fantasy painting)

$50.00 plus shipping

If interested, contact me at ken.barclay@yahoo.com

Cat - (Fantasy painting)  8.5 x 11  Oils on panel

This is the second in what is apparently going to be a series. The first "fantasy" cat painting was posted on Wednesday, October 20, 2010.  You can see it here.  I used the same drawing as the first painting.  I changed the color scheme - a lttle! (In case you're wondering)

As usual, my camera and I couldn't agree on focus and blah blah blah whine whine whine. So this is the photo I chose to post. Not the best but definitely NOT the worst, either!  :-)

Merry Christmas - Happy Holidays to all!

I have to share a sad, sad story with you.  Yesterday I baked  about two dozen bread rolls and put them on our kitchen counter to cool before storing them in a bag. A VERY BIG MISTAKE on my part as it turned out!  :-)

Our Boxer, Simon, sneaked into the kitchen and ate most of them off of the counter!  When I confronted him about it he totally denied eating the rolls. He blamed the missing rolls on the boogey critter (a chipmunk) that lives under our back yard deck!  I know it wasn't the chipmunk because Bella, our Miniature Schnauzer, pointed her paw at Simon and told me that Simon was the culprit. 

As it turns out, those rolls weren't all that good anyhow.  I made another batch today and these are much better tasting and they are SAFELY put away so that neither Simon nor the chipmunk can get them.  Simon finally apologized this afternoon - too late though!

You can see the guilt in his eyes!