Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I finished up my underwater painting. It’s nothing profound, but I do quite like the way it turned out because of the way I worked the paint. There’s a thick bottom coat of blue acrylic, and then the initial sketch was done in black Sharpie marker on top of that. Then the painting was done with a lot of acrylic (as you can see it’s quite thick and textured), and then lined using my “ink” that’s a mix of top-coat polymer and black acrylic. On top of that is a layer of transparent yellow oxide mixed with the top-coat polymer. While that’s still wet, several layers of color are added, bringing the levels up or down from where the glaze left it. Finally, the whole thing gets re-lined.

In addition, because the top-coat is a hard polymer, and the acrylics are soft polymers that change shape as they dry, the painting will get hairline cracking throughout the surface layers to various depths, exposing the lower coats. That’s not visible yet, but click the photo to see it at much higher resolution.

In the “aww, that’s so cute” category, last night Nefarious took all of her blankets, pillows, towels, and stuffed animals and built herself a new “bed” (or perhaps I should say “nest”) next to her window so she could peek into the apartments in the building across from ours as she was falling asleep. Minus the voyeurism, I remember doing the exact same thing when I was a kid (building alternative beds using anything I can find). There’s no greater joy than watching a child grow up, both as a joy on its own, and in the joy it extracts from your own memories of childhood.

Next, this is me, playing hide-and-seek, from the hider’s point of view.

Note to hiders: the flash gives you away!

Also, I finally wrote up a detailed outline for my BME memoirs book… History of various movements and modifications, commentary, and tons of interesting stories, many never before told.