Yep, that’s where we’ve been the last couple of days. Our friends have, yes, some full-sized carousel horses, and we got to help paint. We took one look at the available horses, and fell in love with Rocky Stonecrusher the Triceratops… Jane doesn’t have pix yet, but there will be.
Rocky is a very cheerful young triceratops..bouncing along with all four feet off the ground—we figure it’s a mid-gallop frolic…and we decided he should be blue, at least on his bottom.
I’ve decided my specialty is the underpainting, the first layer of color that sets up the color areas on the critter before the highlights and detail go on. And in the likely event of more horses, that’s the way we can work together: I tee ’em up as the apprentice, and Jane, who, between us, is the master painter, does the sparkle in the eye and the blush and gloss that makes the skin come alive. The old masters did things much the same…the students started out doing three square feet of the Virgin Mary’s blue robe, two feet of gown, and the base color of her face and hands…plus ten feet of brown and grey rocks and several yards of blue sky interspersed with several square feet of grey cloud-base-color.
It starts out like a giant paint-by-number gone free-hand. And then the master painter gets down to the highlights and details. There is a great similarity to house painting in doing the underpainting, but a bit more fun, because you get to decide of two skin tones whether this is the side of the face or fingers, versus the surface the light will be hitting. IE, it’s like paint by number where you get to assign the numbers and make decisions. WHich means there are two levels of apprentice: the one who gets to make that call, and the one who is just starting out, who gets assigned the ten yards of blue sky—just keep the color even, please. 😉
We have had great fun at this…and Jane will have the pix when we get sorted out.
Sounds like a blast! And interesting/useful info on Medieval/Renaissance approach to painting!
Thought you were being unusually quiet… 😉
A triceratops?!?! That you can ride on?? Oh, to be five again! 😀
‘Oh, to be five again’?
I only get fives as the second digit, and I still love riding carousels.
Bring on the triceratops!
You and me both, ducks.
This is why God invented grandchildren!
Saw Jane’s picture. What a delightful triceratops! Even adults can ride carousels, you know; you just have to find a small child and explain that you are making sure the tyke doesn’t fall off.
In Spokane, we have the Looff Carousel, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverfront_Park_Carousel
which is scaled for adults…as are the horses in the carousel we’re working on. The Looff is big, it’s fast, it has brass rings, and it is generally occupied by adults having fun…along with some scatter of kids, but the smaller ones should have an adult with them, again, because of the size and speed. Recommended!
There’s one in town here too. Not sure exactly where now. It was out on Hayden Island in (beside, more appropriately) the Columbia. There was a lot of redevelopment that went on out in that shopping center, so I’m not entirely sure where it got put. There are horse painters down in Salem, so I understand.
They found a nearly-complete (!) Triceratops skeleton in Wyoming, along with two smaller ones.
http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/rare-nearly-complete-triceratops-skeleton-unearthed-in-wyoming/article_18a79e2a-6f10-591f-b98b-a2f7347b50b6.html
Neat! We don’t tend to have so many fossils in WA: the ice age floods scoured our area so violently it stripped away a lot of geology…we do have a Miocene rhino near George, WA. http://fossilnews.com/1999/rhino.html
The find is being reported as a T-rex feeding site–the report I read said that one of the adult triceratops’ thigh bones had been muched in half by T-rex jaws!
Here’s an interesting fact about Protoceratops (ancestor of Triceratops): Adrienne Mayor, a classicist from Stanford has made a persuasive argument that classical legends of Griffins are based on fossils of this animal.
A griffin has the body of a lion and the head of an eagle, and if you look at a skeleton of Protoceratops (try Wikipedia) you will see it looks exactly like that. There is a site in central Asia where there are many almost complete fossils of Protoceratops visible without digging.
There may be other cases of fossils connected with ancient myths as well.
And the connection between the Cyclops and skulls of elephants has long been known. Look at photos of elephants’ skulls to see why.
Mayor’s book on Amazon.
I’ve read speculation that “ghosts” were actually due to sightings of creamy-colored Barn Owls hunting in the late evenings and night. Probably also responsible for the superstitions about entering old ramshackle buildings, especially at night–just where Barn Owls would nest.
Don’t know how to get the photos from there to here, but I just shared wedding photos on my facebook wall at Thomacine Ann Davis Murotake…
Wow!! That’s awesome! Wish we had a grown-up carousel here. I’d pester hubby to take me for our anniversary (that’s today)!
The pics are as always gorgeous 😀
And btw, a shout out to Jane, because I just read her essay in the Big Elfquest Gatherum – the one about how Wendy Pini uses film techniques to frame her story. It was a really good read 😀
Triceratops has always been a favorite, and how could I argue with blue? 😉
Jane’s earlier pix of the seahorse / hippogriff, just beautiful.
I’m sans broadband, some combo of billing glitch (solved) and hardware outside the house (not solved). Still unresolved. Hope it will be before the weekend. Will grumble at them again tomorrow.
I saw news yesterday that Primeval: New World will be on iTunes. A sequel or spinoff of the UK Primeval series. Also, Falling Skies’ third season starts this weekend.
Continuing with my off-topic posts, I was wondering…How much, percentage-wise, of your work day would you say you spend on writing new stuff (as opposed to paying bills, researching, editing, taxes, corporate stuff, etc.)?
I get, on average, 3 typed singlespaced pages a day, but 10 on a good day. On a really sucky day I get two sentences. And on a totally depressing day I get to erase 20 pages.