amo

Lantana
A.M. Otwell, 2008

Cards and prints are available here.

Here’s a little bit of goofiness from the old web site design that won’t quite fit into my new plans for a “gallery.”

When you look at a painting across a room, or even from just a few feet away, you get a different perspective than you do when you look at it on a monitor. It’s smaller in your field of vision.

And I’m starting to wonder why people take their artwork outside to photograph it. No one buys a painting and hangs it up outside!

However, I dutifully took this one outside and took the photo, then spent a lot of time correcting the color back to what it looks like hanging on a wall inside.

And here it is in the size I normally would have plopped into a blog entry without a second thought. See those warts? The roughness? The imperfections? You can’t see this much detail in person unless you get really close. . . closer than you’d get to anyone’s art but your own, probably.

(Of course, that doesn’t explain why the other artists I showcase here don’t HAVE any warts on their paintings, but I’m not famous or dead yet. Lord willing, I’ll have plenty of time to improve.)

This one (Boat, A.M. Otwell, 2008, Acrylic on Canvas, 11 x 14) is spoken for, but just in case you wanted to buy Pacific Fireworks for exterior use, here’s a photo for you.

(Email for pricing if you’re interested. Paintings stored outdoors will deteriorate significantly faster than paintings stored indoors. Pine needles not included.)

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention this was part of a “Different Strokes” challenge at WetCanvas, where a bunch of artists painted from the same reference photo. I chose to participate because I was drawn to the photo; it reminds me of the fishing trips I used to take with my grandfather, even though the boat really isn’t all that much like his.

Greensboro, Georgia, in March, 2007
A.M. Otwell, 2007

More about Greensboro here.

I was starting to think it would never snow in Greensboro. Since we’ve been here, Greensboro has generally been at least a degree or two warmer than metro Atlanta, so even when there has been winter weather there, there hasn’t been any here.

I took this picture of Percy in the back yard right after it started snowing. It got too dark for pictures, but we got a light dusting that turned everything white. It’ll likely be gone by morning.

(By the way, those lights in the background are from our local library. Others might disagree, but I think we’ve got one of the best locations in town!)

For some reason, this is by far the most popular page on my web site. I can’t explain it, but I can tell you that a couple of foreign language search engines list it early in their results of a search for “birds.” The image was also being used (bandwidth theft) by an Arabic language web site, though I think I put a stop to that.

Anyway, in view of its popularity and because it’s actually a pretty good photograph (if I do say so myself), I’ve created a CafePress store featuring this image.

Here’s the story behind the photo: I was renting an apartment above a garage a few years ago, and there was a tree just off of my deck/landing at the top of the stairs. I went out of town for a week or so, and when I came back I was surprised to see a bird nest in the tree, within 4 or 5 feet of my deck railing. I’m sure they were surprised to see me, too, but the parents stuck around, the eggs hatched, and I got to see the baby birds grow up. I was even watching when the first one left the nest!

Story here.

Memry is the classic game of concentration using Flickr photos. Pick a tag and play. I used balloon, butterfly, and bubble, to name a few.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!

Lord willing, I will see you very soon!

(Photo A. M. Otwell © 2003)