Utah’s Colonial Heritage Festival at Orem

Laura and I had the opportunity to attend "The Sixth Annual Colonial Heritage Festival" last weekend. It was fun and free. This living museum, called the Village at Aubin’s Grove, features a gathering of Colonial artisans, military exhibits, and period craftsmen and women.The village celebrates the Colonial period from 1607 Jamestown through to the signing of the Constitution in 1787.

You can view Laura's future blog http://lauranielsonbaxter.blogspot.com/ on our adventure there if you want to see pictures she took of it. We have a friend who is one of the organizers of Colonial Days and she has asked me if I would be one of the dressed up historical figures in it next year. What do you think? Should I go for it? I can teach people all about bed bundling!

I think the most memorable moment for me was I noticed at the blacksmith shop the blacksmith had a young son who was drawing pictures of people for 99 cents. I let him draw me as well.

He signed it, and signed my name too. What do you think? Does it look like me?

In the name of Art (part 6 of 6)

Our final was supposed to be an illustration of a costumed figure in a similar setting to the character prior to the 1900’s. I decided on three different choices: Rasputin, Stonewall Jackson, or Porter Rockwell. What can I say...I love drawing pictures of hairy men. 

My indecisiveness was wasting time so I defaulted to Porter Rockwell. Porter has been in most of my artwork for other art and drawing classes I took before this one.

The background is actually traced from a photograph Laura took in Copperton, Utah. I used tones of blue in every color on this picture to help add to the midnight feel of it. My teacher loved the uniqueness of my project. She said “Everyone else picked beautiful people in elegant settings and you picked a butt ugly guy in a graveyard. There is definitely a story here, what is it?” I was short for words because there was no story. I just randomly put images and colors together.

The funny joke to this painting is this headstone was actually traced from Porter’s headstone in the Salt Lake cemetery.

I am debating on whether or not to enter one or more of these into the next Springville art show. What do you think?  Are these showroom worthy?

In the name of Art (part 5 of 6)

In any art class you take in college they sooner or later make you do a self-portrait. We were required to film ourselves with light hitting our face in an obscure way and to only draw the negative space to it. Instead of getting a current photo of myself I got an old sketch a friend drew of me back in high school. My teacher made me alter it because she said “it doesn’t look like you.” My hair was significantly longer from when I was in high school so I put longer hair on the sketch. This was all done on Adobe Illustrator.

In the name of Art (part 4 of 6)

We had to do an animal for our next project. Picasso did a bull once so I decided to do my own spin off on a cubist bull. We were supposed to get the entire animal in the picture (no cropping) so I broke his horn and gave him big testicles. I hated how the color turned out for this one but my teacher loved it. Oh well, at least I got an A in the class. After this, a fellow classmate and I vowed to always hide male genitalia in every one of our pictures for the rest of the semester. See if you can spot them in future pictures.

In the name of Art (part 3 of 6)

The room painting was assigned next. This one was supposed to be all in cubism. We were supposed to pick a room in our house and paint it like Picasso. Picasso once said, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal." You may notice that the fireplace looks like it could’ve come out of a Tim Burton movie. I think Tim Burton is an artist as well and I might have gathered inspiration from him.

In the name of Art (part 2 of 6)

For my second project I had to make a second design following the same rules as the first and then paint over it with “soft brush strokes to give it a cloudy structure." The trick behind soft brushing is to use more water with your paint. You can see at the top where it dripped off the board. What do you think of my color arrangement on this one? Too much?

In the name of Art (part 1 of 6)

One of my last classes I had to take to graduate was a 2D design class. In other words, 2D design is the art of abstract things, like cubism. The best way to describe this class’s concept was to make everything warped and unnatural. I told a confused classmate to think of it like drawing a picture, drinking Robitussin, and then retracing it all from memory. Who’s to say it looks like crap because it’s in the name of art. This class mostly helped us grasp a better understanding of Pablo Picasso’s work.

This was my first project for the class. I had to paint a design that was asymmetrical and didn’t repeat itself anywhere. The color scheme had to be complimentary colors that look good together. To add a quirky twist to it, when I completed the piece I turned it upside-down. What do you think?