Painting at Mariners Park Museum

Welcome!

Today I had my first of two painting sessions at the Mariners Park Museum in Prince Edward County as part of my big World War One Project entitled To the Sound of Trumpets. I'll be spending two days in each of PEC's five museums (not including the Museum of the Stick), the idea being that people can come out to a museum they might not have been to before (or revisit one), or watch me paint (if they haven't already been bored by that yet), and ask me questions about this project, or general questions about painting...or about anything*, really. Surprise me.

I'd scheduled myself to paint from 1–4, but I arrived early to take a look around the grounds and the museum itself...

House of Light!

Appropriately, they've got a life-sized lighthouse outside (and tiny models of them and parts of ones inside).

They also have bits of ships all over the place, as though they all crashed right here:

What's left of the Florence.

And this thing!

I love this thing.

Like any good ship, they even have an engine room:

My initial setup was just inside the entrance to the main building, but it was a little warm and the light wasn't so great for painting...

Also not boaty enough.

So I went further inside and, not only was it cooler and had much better light, it was full of amazing artifacts (my favourite was the taffrail log that measures a ship's distance travelled –no photo; come and see it!).

Nautical but nice.

So, surrounded by items from and information about hundreds of years of sailing (much of it local history), I got to work on a painting of two soldiers and their mail (one reading, one writing) during a break in the fighting. I had a few visitors (and a couple of friends brought me treats!) and, in a little under three hours, working on and completing small sections at a time, I managed this much:

I kinda like it like this
(but here's the finished painting).

I'll be working further on the above painting during my second session tomorrow (August 7) and then I'll be painting something completely different at the Ameliasburgh Historical Museum on August 13 & 14 from 1–4pm, both days.

*Like: "Do you really think Phil Collins's version of Behind the Lines isn't as good as the original Genesis version?"**

**The answer is yes, and I'll tell you why if you show up to one of my museum sessions.

Comments

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...

Time Travel Helmet

The theme for this year's Firelight Lantern Festival is The Time Machine , and Krista and I were going to put together steampunk-inspired costumes for ourselves (which is why the helmet's painted in hammered bronze), but, after shooting the announcement video (second video at the bottom of this post) I decided I'd look better with a lab coat, bow tie, and goggles for a generic 20th Century scientist look. I'd previously built a jetpack as sci-fi costume accessory for stiltwalking purposes back in 2015, so if I were to combine this helmet, the jetpack, and my refurbished blaster and I'd have a pretty good, mostly homemade, sci-fi costume for...something...down the line... Creature! It sorta looks like a weird electronic sea cucumber or sea anemone from the top. More dieselpunk than steampunk; I like it. They were originally crystal clear plastic, but I sanded the insides and outsides to better disperse the light from the LEDs (which I bought, pre-wired...

YT-1300 Freighter w/Cargo Carriage (scale model), Part 1

For a couple of decades, now, I'd been curious about two things concerning the Millennium Falcon: what it looked like as a brand new, unmodified ship ...and how exactly did it work as a "freighter," anyway? That other build takes care of my curiosity about the ship, this one takes care of my curiosity about the freighter question... Hail, Bandai. Bandai Star Wars kits are amazing. Their larger models are super detailed, but even these tiny kits (the Falcon here is about 1/350 scale) are superior to many previous and current Star Wars kits by MPC, AMT, or Revell. Mini sprue tour. Interestingly, this version of the Falcon is the one from Star Wars , having only three landing gear boxes (two more were added to the front for Empire ), but the larger version I built as factory stock had five because it was the version from The Force Awakens . My only (very minor) complaint is that these smaller kits only have stickers instead of decals (the larger kits...

The Naked Silo

Search This Blog