Contest: Who is that?

First the good stuff. If you can tell me who or what is going to be revealed in the foreground of the painting I am showing in this post you will win. The first people to post the correct response on my blog, facebook page, facebook fan page, or twitter will receive a no-prize that I will give them. Is the prize real? Yes. Will it be amazing? Maybe not, but it will be cool. There is no deadline to this contest so you can wait until I reveal the picture and then post if you like and be eligible to win the prize.

There will be one winner for each the media sites I mentioned. People that live in my house are not eligible to win.

This painting was started with a crude sketch and then the darkest areas were filled with black paint.

After that more colors are added to make sure the composition of the painting will be sound. It is better to know these things before spending hours on fine details.

Once the composition is confirmed to be acceptable paint is used to define the base shapes that detail will be added on to.

Next some background detail is added. Now the painting is ready for the fine detail step.

Shoebox Dungeon: A cautionary tale

A while back I went a week without watching television and you know what happened? This

That is a diorama of a dungeon in a shoebox. Take heed or this could happen to you.

(Click to enlarge)

You will spend hours creating wallpapers and gluing them to the inside of a shoebox. You will make tables and doors out of popsicle sticks and carefully painting them.  See the shackles on the wall next to that eye? You don’t want to know how many twist ties had to perish to create those.

Do you know how many hours it takes to paint these tiny portraits. More time then I have so I had to use stamps and make little frames with cereal boxes and markers.

You have eat at a lot of restaurants to get enough toothpicks to make a portcullis like this one.

Staging photos like this is time consuming as well.

I had find just the right bottle lid for this cauldron. Once you find the lid you like then you have to eat all of the olive oil so you can use it. Nailing feet at just the right angle is no treat either. Cutting those little sticks to the right size for tiny firewood requires the precision of a Swiss jeweler.

This just one of the examples of the horrors of going without television. Other side-effects include: exercise, book reading, talking to friends and family and the cooking of healthy meals. Don’t let this happen to you.