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A beautiful ghost and a rather silly swan.

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Over on WetCanvas in the Fantasy/SciFi forum, there was a challenge for the month of January. The theme of the challenge was to create something, in any medium, that had to do with a song.

Mine is from a Canadian singer, Loreena McKennit. She wrote and sang a song called “The Bonny Swans”. Loreena McKennit has such a beautiful voice!

The video is a bit long but the gist of it is that a girl is drowned in the river by her jealous sister. Her sister wants to marry the girl’s love. The body is swept around where the swans swim and eventually is laid out by a miller who thinks it’s a swan. A harpist comes sees the body and makes a harp of it. He is invited to the sister’s wedding to the girl’s love. At the wedding the harp sings the story and tells everyone what the sister did to her.

I’ve been looking at tapestries and have been on a medieval binge so I did this, in a naive medieval style in material ~ embroidery floss and linen. I did a quick sketch on paper and then pretty much free styled this as I went along.

It shows the sister in her wedding dress as the ghost comes out of the harp to tell of her murder and a swan is attacking the sister as well.

The swan cracked me up, it’s a silly thing.

Please ignore the fuzz by the swan, I didn’t realize it was there till after I took the photo. (and can I say how much I loathe how long it takes and the manner in which Windows 10 downloads photos)

This is on a 12 inch hoop.

©Virginia Spencer, thepurpledogpaintingblog.com, 2018

Carp(e) diem

~ thepurpledogpaintingblog ~ 15 Comments

Fish fish fish!!

I wish wish wish

for a dish dish dish

and some tartar sauce…

Beg your pardon…I didn’t know you were listening.

There’s Henry and Fred and George and Tyrone and Mary and…

No wonder this little bird went over to the wallaby enclosure for a bath.

The wallaby didn’t care, he was rolling in the leaves.

I hope he’s careful, there’s something lurking in the bushes..

Ahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Say what!?!

Run away! Run away!

Roarrrrr…….

______________________

©Virginia Spencer, thepurpledogpaintingblog.com, 2011

Wall Drug, South Dakota

~ thepurpledogpaintingblog ~ 10 Comments

Yes Virginia, there is a Wall Drug.

Wall Drug was a little drug store in a small dusty town reeling from the Great Depression. Then the pharmacist’s clever wife realized that people were traveling like never before to see the construction and building of Mount Rushmore. So she told her husband to put a sign out on the highway offering people free ice water. It worked like a charm. By the next year they had to hire more than half a dozen people. Today it’s a 76000 square foot roadside attraction.

Now that is good old American ingenuity.

I adore their billboards. There are dozens and dozens of them.

They’re mostly in the traditional style of the 1930’s. At that time the use of billboards was widespread because of the increasing popularity of the car and family road trips. Advertisers used cartoons and bright colors to portray a sort of happy-go-lucky optimism. Buy this product and you can be happy! (in spite of the Depression).

We were getting close to Wall Drug. After so many billboards, hundreds of them, I was expecting a lot.

I had forgotten by that point that South Dakota is the king of the build up…

The entrance…

I do like the 80 ft dinosaur.

The store front..and a really crowded parking lot.  That’s understandable though, there’s nowhere else to stop. I’m serious there is no where.

But the store itself is right here, in case you needed to know.

I like the parking horses. They’re pretty.

Not a horse (or parking spot) in sight but never mind they’re pretty.

The giant monkey is a little odd. Fun odd but still odd.

It was a shame that the quarter slot to hear him play was “Out of Order”

I’ve never been serenaded by a giant monkey.

And here is the infamous jackalope

And right near the jackalope is a 6ft bunny that desperately needs a hug.

This buffalo looks like it wants to say something…

I’m thinking he is a little freaked out by all the wooden people.

Or annoyed that they stuffed him but didn’t stuff them.

Or he could just be worried that the statue behind him is ready to poke him in the butt.

This wooden guy is rather noble looking.

I think they meant this lady one as a compliment but she looks a little grumpy.

Maybe she should go give the bunny a hug.

I like this one, he looks pensive.

I mean he is flammable but he is also sitting next to the fire extinguisher.

Cheer up buddy.

And then it was so interesting. There was a long hallway with a photo gallery.

We were looking at them having a good time when..

What the ????!!!

An animatronic T-Rex.

And not a damn tree to hide behind anywhere.

A final note on 9/11

~ thepurpledogpaintingblog ~ 7 Comments

This is a photo of my mother. She is standing on an unfinished floor of the World Trade Center.

My father had worked on it as an electrical engineer. My mother bribed a construction worker to let her go up.

We watched it being built. It broke our hearts to see it fall.

Our deepest thoughts and sympathies go out to all those who lost so much that day.

The drive out…

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It was a dark and stormy morning…..

Well it wasn’t that dark, since we didn’t leave until 9:30 as we hadn’t any water. Our well was being cleaned..we had forgot all about the maintenance schedule…

*sigh*

So we took our dirty selves to the store and bought bottled water to have quickie baths in and then smelling pretty we left…

As we drove over the Mississippi River into Iowa, the wild sunflowers were glowing in the sun. At this time of year the wild grasses have a silvery feathery top on them. It is so lovely. We decided to drive north through Iowa to Minnesota then over west to South Dakota.

We drove past the world’s largest truck stop. As you can see the sky was starting to darken. We hit hard rain several times, hard enough to have to pull over. We saw several cars in ditches but thankfully everyone was fine.

The skies cleared as we reached South Dakota.  We realized fairly quickly that people in South Dakota really like signs. I mean they really like signs.

We started to see a few signs here and there. But then we saw one we couldn’t ignore..

Hmmmm. A Corn Palace? The world’s only Corn Palace?

We tried to resist but then we saw this one…

A Corn Palace and a ban pun and Free!…I like corn, I like bad puns..and free is always good…we needed to stop for the night but Dummy would not let us forget that we were so near the home of the Corn Palace…

At the hotel he nagged and nagged and hogged the remote until we agreed to go over to the Corn Palace the next morning…

The little so and so….

The next morning dawned bright and crisp and clear. A perfect September day. A day made for seeing corn palaces…

And there was a corn palace..and it was free.

These people like corn. A lot.

Even the street posts..well you can see for yourself. They like corn.

And then we saw the Corn Palace in all it’s glory. I had envisioned a sort of Lincoln Log type of model built with corn but oh no this was much bigger. In fact these people took a perfectly good building (albeit one with Russianesque onion domes and medieval turrets painted in glaring greens and yellows) and glued 300000 pieces of corn and various grasses all over it. It is pretty impressive. I can’t even get two sheets of paper to stay glued together. If I was the one who glued all that stuff on, people would be getting boinked in the head from falling cobs..so kudos to them.

Apparently they’ve been doing this every year for a good long time. Every year has a theme. This year’s theme was American Pride and Transportation. Cause you know we are just not a patriotic enough country..and lord knows none of us drive enough.

A closeup of the corn.

 Why did they do it?  And how do they stop the lights from setting the dry grass on fire?

I don’t know.

Sometimes it’s best not to ask.

We made a quick stop at Cabela’s to look at dead animals and an iron sculpture..

Smile..

Dummy lost his manners and ignored the signs telling people not to climb on the sculpture.

So he had to go in the glove box for a while.

And we continued on..

Some older paintings.

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These are some older works. This first one is of my son, when he was a small baby. It was one of the first portraits I ever tried to do.

Watercolor

 

 

This second one is another miniature of a frog I came across. It’s about 2×3 inches. Watercolor.

 

 

This is a house I used to drive by in Northern New York.  This was one of my first acrylics.

 

 

This was one of my first oil paintings. It’s of my cat Kitten. I’m thinking of doing another of her. She’s such a character. Oil.