Hannah and the Doctor

This is a digital painting I finished recently of my daughter Hannah. She loves Doctor Who, so I thought it would be fun to paint her in to a popular Doctor Who, Tardis, picture.

Game of Thrones Art, Tyrion Lannister

This is my painting of Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones. I decided to add a canvas to for fun. Let me know which one you like better.

Original look:

 

Canvas look:

My Rose Complete

Well here is the completed version. It's a bit cleaner, and a bit sharper. I want to ad color, but not today.

My Rose

Here is my next piece. It's a work in progress at this point, but I thought it would be cool to share anyway. I'm really new to digital painting. I've used photoshop but drawing and painting directly into the program is new. Every effort brings improvement.

This is a picture of my wife when she was a bit younger. I really like how it's turning out.

Paul Newman Art

I'm still struggling with my new Bamboo. I love it, don't get me wrong, but it's new to me, so I struggle. This is my first real effort drawing with it directly into adobe. It's a bit rough, but it looks like Paul Newman and that's an accomplishment in itself I guess.

I'm still working on the actual painting part of this. Time to watch a few more YouTube videos.

Paul Newman by Shawn Swanson

Washington Young Farmers Coalition Pot-Luck

In Washington there are all types of rain. Most of the time it’s just a drizzle, but on Monday as my family and I drove out to attend the Washington Young Farmers Coalition Pot-Luck, it was raining.

The evergreens seemed to inhale the droplets and the clouds darkened to a charcoal grey as we traveled over the oily black road. My wife sat beside me on the verge of giddy, I wasn’t feeling quite so excited. A Young Farmers Coalition Pot-Luck is not exactly on my bucket-list. It’s kind of like a chamber of commerce mixer for hippies.

As we pulled into the antiquated church parking-lot a multi-colored Organic Valley bus pulled in behind us. Obviously having visited many of these events, the bus had the appearance of being painted by some bohemian artist right out of a 60s love fest.  Admittedly I was intrigued.

My patent leather loafers stepped out onto the wet gravel, blatantly out of place. The common at this event included dreadlocks, patchouli oil, and the ever present “Iron and Wine” full beard. My look sat firmly on the other end of the spectrum with Dockers and a classic black button down. The best way to segregate yourself is by the clothes that you choose to wear. Say what you will, we are judged by our choice of attire. I felt like a salesman amongst farmers, deeply out of place, and sort of ashamed.

Being a farmer, that’s something to be proud of. Farmers work hard. These people aren’t ultra wealthy, they aren’t selling their food to big chain grocery stores. These are the little farmers, the growers who sell those incredible tomatoes at the local farmers market. These are the farmers trying to do it right by using poly crop methods and avoiding pesticides. They are the revivalists of traditions many consider dead. These people are my heroes.

We wandered through the booths until our sweaters were soaked and our hair stuck to our heads. We traded some seeds to be planted in our balcony garden, and we stood on the outskirts of a world mysterious to us. We were left to wonder what these people’s lives are really like, and to secretly long for that life.

Farming is tangible. It’s a living thing that can be touched and nurtured. It’s a way of life that allows a person to feel. I envy these farmers. From the outside they appear to be a rag-tag bunch of hippies, but then… I like hippies.

One day maybe I’ll get the nerve to kick of my shinny black dress shoes, give up my corporate medical insurance, and walk away from a life that asks for too much and gives too little. One day maybe I’ll find the courage to grow my hair into dreads and spend my days working with my family on a farm. One day, I like to believe it will happen, one day.

The Young Farmers Coalition: www.washingtonyoungfarmers.org

 

Long Live Film

I miss film cameras. Every shot matters when you only have 24 pictures in a roll. I miss the complexity involved in threading the film and the thrill of picking up the developed photos at the drug store. It was like opening up a present you made yourself, a surprise present none the less. You had no idea which shots would turn out and which wouldn’t, that made it fun, and sometimes disappointing.

These days I can cram a thousand crappy shots on my iPhone without missing a beat. The Cannon SLR can blow through 15 shots in a matter of seconds. I now have hard drives, online storage, multiple CDs and DVDs loaded with memories, but they don’t seem to mean as much. These days you take a picture and you store it. No one goes through a thousand pictures on a trip down memory lane. Isn’t that sad? When I only had 24 shots, I thought long and hard about each one before I clicked the shutter, I cared about every single picture in a way that is lost in this digital age ours.

Things change and I totally get that, but I think there should be room made for the things that require patience and forethought. Our children are growing up in a world on-demand; don’t you think that’s sort of sad?