Project Announcement: County 101

Having successfully completed 33 on 33, my plein air painting journey across the section of Highway 33 that cuts through PEC, painting one site-specific oil painting per day for 33 consecutive days, I'm going to explore and study the subject of the County even further –going back to school, in a manner of speaking– learning what makes PEC so special to the folks who live here by asking the big question:

"What's YOUR Prince Edward County?"

Last December, I stayed awake for 100 hours and (due to a slight miscalculation) painted 101 black & white ink portraits of friends and strangers, and you can read about that project on the Burning the Midnight Oil blog. Here's a short video I made...and here's a selection of portraits from last year's marathon:

That format seemed like a good fit for my County 101 project, so at 4pm on November 18 until 9pm on November 22, I'll undertake another epic painting marathon, i.e. 101 black & white ink paintings of Prince Edward County in 101 consecutive hours. Once again, that means no sleeping for me (see how I managed this in my FAQ from last year). And, also once again, the whole thing will be streamed live so you can watch it unfold on the County 101 Ustream Channel.

Each painting will be available for purchase and half of the sales will go towards Puppets Without Borders.

For County 101, all of the subject matter will be suggested by PEC residents (of course, being a County resident, I also get a choice). I'll be accepting suggestions of subjects until October 9. If you'd like to get involved, send your suggestion of, and a sentence about a person, place, or thing that you think best represents Prince Edward County (photos welcome, too) to mm@smallpondarts.ca.

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Axel Foley's Chevy Nova (1/25 scale model)

Multiple tributes, here. I remember first seeing Beverly Hills Cop on video at my friend Chris K's house, 'cause his family had a VCR and we'd watch tons of movies (and record music videos) together. The summer of 1984 was a special time for us (having created a strong bond in school since Grade 6 a few years before), going on biking adventures around the 'burbs and into the city, etc., and home video played an important role from then until I moved to the opposite end of Scarborough just before we started high school. We liked the movie a lot, both of us fans of Eddie Murphy from his Saturday Night Live days. I don't think I'd seen the movie since then (it would have been 1985, probably summer, since the movie came out in late 1984) and I became curious to see if it still held up. It did. It does. I found Murphy as charming as ever and the comedy (and even the action) holds up very well and its very re-watchable and very entertaining. Beverly Hi

City of Angels

17" x 11", watercolour and digital, 1999 Ah, City of Angels . I thought I was getting cool film noir but got a cheesy musical instead (Google it if you must). Still, it was fun to make the poster and associated images, mostly because the research consisted of watching real films noir and buying a great book on movie posters of the genre. I made tons of sketches and a few digital mock-ups. For the final poster above, I made three separate watercolour paintings (one of the couple and one each of the two black and white heads) and composited them in Photoshop, where I also added the text. In true movie poster fashion, I wanted the actors names to be the top two names, but I lost that battle and had to use the characters' names instead. It looks fine, but it implies that "Kingsley and Stone" are the lead actors in the show. Oh, well...it's only community theatre... By making the "angel" above half black and white and half colour, th

Small Pond Arts Puppet Wagon (1/24 scale model)

I dreamed up the Small Pond Shipyard for my fanciful scratch-built sci-fi airship creations (which still only exist in sketch/Photoshop mock-up form (and boxes in my closet) for now), but more and more ideas kept coming ( this wind turbine , for example, will be part of a rather elaborate diorama I'll be working on this winter). But the Puppet Wagon was a sleeper surprise, to be sure. [Really, though, I don't know why I was so eager to build this right away since I was planning to slowly develop my modelling skills with simpler builds first and the work my way up to more complicated projects.] Not all parts were used/needed. Most of these ideas have come from watching modelling videos online, and when I saw a review of this sweet little Japanese "Ramen Shop" food truck by Aoshima (right-side drive!), my brain started making jokes about customizing it to the weird food truck ideas I'd been posting on Facebook. But the more I thought about what the co

The Naked Silo

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