Putting Our Art Skills to Work

I was raised in a very artistic family.  It goes way back to my Grandma Nickels. I blame her for my "creativity." You see, my Grandma Nickels took art classes at the local studio when she was younger.  She often brought her family a beautiful still life complete with organic flowers, landscaped scenes with sunsets and running water, and the occasional nude portrait (which is another story).  But the point is, Grandma could paint and did so with a flourish.

Then she taught my mom about art.  Mom has bright and vibrant paintings hanging all over her lake house.  They are all  fun, whimsical, and  interesting to look at.

So, it was only natural that I would be interested in taking a class or two in college, which brings me to the Payne family Saturday evening at the lake.  What did we do you ask? We spent the evening exercising our artistic skills.

Our medium of choice was not acrylic or oil. Oh no. It was bic; as in bic pens.  Yes,  hours and hours of prep were spent to get our artwork in order. Our subject of choice was portraits. But not just any portraits. We drew each other.

Please scroll down to see our wonderful finished products showcased on this blog.

 Here is Ben posing for his masterpiece to be completed.

Please note the random tooth protruding from Ben's lips in his picture by Laura.

This is a portrait of "Man in Trench Coat," who happened to join Twitter last night with the help of sister Laura.  Don't worry he took notes, so he knows how to operate his Twitter handle.  If you would like to follow him, click here:  https://twitter.com/Manintrenchcoat

This is the family portrait that "Man in Trench Coat" completed.  Can you guess who is who?

I decided to do this interpretation of Laura in a Napoleon Dynamite style.  Note the wonderful nose on Laura 

Here is Ben's picture of mom.  Yes, she is still recovering from nose surgery. Hence, the glasses taped to her forehead.What? You thought a night with the Paynes would be "normal?" 

Laura drew this pic of me.  I guess I need to start using eye opening eye shadow.

I would also like the readers to take note of the artistic choices of varied line usage and the positive and negative space on all of the portraits above.  We all really thought about proportion and used the rule of threes quite regularly in each picture.  They will be selling for $500 a piece and you can make a bid on each via my new Twitter account at: https://twitter.com/stephscozynook.

I would just like to put a shout out to Ole here because he was my 5th follower.  I now have 15 followers, which is kind of exciting.  If you would like to also follow me on Twitter, you will find live action thoughts and pics of my life in real time.  I know you cannot even comprehend the entertainment that awaits.

Thank you.