It occurred to me that I am a jackass and probably should have taken a better picture of my great-grandmother’s paintings. This is me taking the pictures, so they still stink, but they are better than before:
The middle one needs to have the matting replaced, and I will get around to it eventually, it’s just so damned expensive.
rikyrah
You just stomped on Silverman.
P.S.- The paintings are beautiful ?
Major Major Major Major
Love the third one.
Yarrow
Love that last one. The man in the cap, the house, the trees, the hedge. Just love it.
Steeplejack
Beautiful paintings.
Sab
Phuck the matting on the middle one. The painting is lovely. Why do old paintings have to have new matting.
I really like the top one especially.
Major Major Major Major
@Sab:
You don’t find the water stain a bit distracting?
Waratah
They are lovely. I have several my mother in law painted, and the ones with flowers are my favorites.
trollhattan
Agree the third is quite evocative. Think I see Steve back there, in the hedge.
Sab
@Major Major Major Major: Not really, unless the old matting is acidic and eating the painting. I find spiffy new matting on old paintings to be really jarring.
Jay
Stock matting’s not expensive, Custom is, but you can overlay different sizes of stock matt’s for a nice custom effect.
Check online but ship USPS or UPS.
Apropos of nothing, but Hitler is the guy who finally killed Hitler.
Hitler’s also the guy who killed the guy who killed Hitler.
Jager
Your great grandmother had a nice touch and feel. They are very good and a wonderful thing to have in your home.
My Judge grandfather used to doodle on a legal pad during trials. My baby Aunt discovered a stack of his things from his chambers a few years ago. The pads have notes about the trial and sometimes a cartoon sketch of someone in the court room. I recognized his drawings of the district attorney since I had gone to school with his son. We’re trying to figure out what to do with them. One pad has “Prosecutor’s motion re: (legal mumbo-jumbo) BULLSHIT!
Aleta
I like the people who loved pansies a long time ago.
MomSense
@Aleta:
I still love hem. They may cause me to finally learn how to embroider
cain
Is it wierd to expect to be rikrolled somehow while scrolling down looking at hte pictures?
NotMax
@Aleta
I believe Oscar Wilde said the same thing.
:)
SectionH
John,
late comment, I was having a few hours of life, so don’t even want to try to jump into earlier threads.
Your ancestress was very talented. Watercolor is the hardest medium to work in, imo. It’s so beautiful when it’s done right. And she got a lot of how to do that down.
I think your framing’s mostly fine. Pay what it takes for good framing, if you srsly need to get something reframed, but try to have your own idea of what the end result should be.
/someone who’s running out of walls
SectionH
@NotMax: Oscar said many clever things. I’d be interested to see where he said that one.
Mnemosyne
My grandmother took up oil painting in her 60s. I managed to secure my favorite of them, an impressionistic painting of some poppies. She was never going to be a great artist, but it’s nice to have something she made.
SectionH
Oh ow. Also too, since we’re looking, when did WV have cottages with several small chimnies in contiguous buildings?
Oh, and that perfect circle with initials in it, was that a thing your g-granny did? I mean srsly? I feel like a really evil person, but I’m afraid your ancestress didn’t actually paint at least the 3rd picture.
Juicers, tell me I’m wrong, but ?
NotMax
@SectionH
Giving the benefit of the doubt, could be a remembered scene from the old country.
SectionH
@NotMax: Yes, I so get that. Or srsly just recreating a picture seen a long time ago. I’ve never done anything like that before.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
Just in case the older thread is dead…
I have started a new online business to sell my handicrafts and I’m prepping for a Game of Thrones fan conference at the end of May (Con of Thrones May 25-27 Dallas, TX). You can see my website at designed-to-a-t.com. I’m the T in the name. I’m Tina, nice to meet ya.
My products will include scuplture (with a practical aspect, like a Winterfell Tower that is also a desk organizer), mixed media canvases, GOT themed journals, bookmarks, jewelry, etc, etc
Jay
@SectionH:
Using an inked “signature stamp” on a watercolour was fairly common amateur practice at one time, due to the difficulties of using pen and ink on paper that had already been “lifted” by the effects of water and brush on paper.
Professionals would often press the finished watercolour for several weeks after drying, before attempting a pen and ink signature.
Debbie(aussie)
Nice paintings. Like the second one best.
I recently mentioned that I was going to be a grandma for the first time. My daughter called a couple of hours ago to tell us that it’s a girl. All being well, come October, there will be four generations of females in our family ?
SectionH
@Jay: I didn’t know that. That’s srsly cool! As I said, I’d love it if Cole’s pictures are all legit his g-grannies’.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@Yarrowme too, the last one, it looks like a memory to me
SectionH
@Debbie(aussie): 1st time grandma here: Best wishes for your daughter and granddaughter, and the rest of your family too.
NotMax
@Debbie(aussie)
Being an oldster, was mightily confused there for a while until the proverbial light bulb above the head illuminated and realized that nowadays the sex of the child can be discovered during pregnancy.
opiejeanne
@Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ: She may have seen a photograph she liked and painted from that, or she may have traveled.
In Riverside, CA I went to a yard sale and saw a scene very like that of the house and the hedge, but without the sitting fellow. I’d never been to England yet when I saw that scene, but I’d seen enough photos and movies. There was also something very east coast about the place, too.
WereBear
Love them all, but pansy one particularly lovely. And I do love me some pansies.
Debbie(aussie)
@SectionH:
Thank you and the same to you and yours. Are you close to your grandchild, location wise? Our daughter and husband are 1300km away in Canberra. Thank goodness for the internet.
@NotMax:
It does sound a bit weird. They decided to have the genetic test that is done via blood test that advises on risks of chromosomal abnormalities as well as the sex. Fortunately in this case risks are low.
WilliamC
Sorry to change to tone of the thread but Gosh darn it, this is an Artist in Our Midst. I really stopped by just to admire the grandma art and then I thought, “but wait, I’m an artist” I should plug our project, see if someone tech enabled could volunteer to build a WP website for us, I’d love to get JC himself on film talking to us about his hopes and dreams for the future when we are in WV to talk to part of an out gay couple in Morgantown about the same, and if even everyone, wanted to help out with the feeding of the homeless that we do on the main. We are on fb at Hopefully Ever After:An American Story.
Since the election, my crew and I have been traveling the country talking to Americans about their hopes and dreams for the future. Times seemed so bleak at the time, I thought, why not try to find something optimistic to do, and helpful? Optimistic; hopes and dreams. Hopeful; as we go, we randomly do drop by homeless feedings. I thought it’d be more professionalized by now, pop up soup kitchens in every town we stop in to film. But real life in Pussygrabber’s America, amirite? We’ve managed to feed thousands of hungry mouths in the past year (really, in the real world, we have a fb page and stuff, and a YouTube account and everything!). I’m really going for a gritty anthology-type feel of what an on-the-road-documentary film can be like in the age of social-media and hashtags, while trying to do something helpful at the same time we are exploiting the world’s resources for “art”. Fronted by me, erudite, handsome black Southern boot-strapper, leading an ever-changing band of white men. I really have sat down with a super-interesting cross-section of Americans already, around the country, based on a diagram I designed a year ago that samples the country, I narrowed down that sample to a reasonable 150 (we are a third of the way thru, we could be further, but life and feeding!), and it’s been happening. We took a month or more off to help run a food pantry in South Atlanta that some friends started a few years ago, and some time off to trim weed in NorCal to fund this whole thing (I have a penchant for loosing phones, even though I’m sober, and gasoline and feeding homeless people isn’t cheap). Weed trimming is not as lucrative as you think, and besides, it’s all Europeans anyway. Like I said, a gritty road anthology. You learn about a lot of stuff on the road when you are a black man in a suit. With that, I don’t need any of your dissing of how vain this is or whatever. It’s what’s happening. I’m not some rich Ivy League brat out to prove a point. I’m trying to show the country that we are all so crazy that we all imagine eerily similarly futures (so far), perceive the past very similarly (so far), just don’t share the idea of the causes, but do all sense the coming ‘Storm’, and all seem to dream of a very similar future. It’s facscinating work. And no, we are not filming the homies people we are feeding. I don’t tell most of them what we are doing as our full-time work. I don’t want anyone to feel exploited. Oh yeah, I’m a chef. Or I was before this documentary directing/feeding hungry people thing we do now, so there’s that too.
I’m not trying to make us hashtag famous, I can’t get stoned in places if that happens. And I really need to be stoned in middle America. To not ever talk about politics? To never be on social media. To rarely read the news or brows the blogs? I’m degreed in History, Political Science, and Sociology from the University of Georgia. I have been reading the newspapers since I learned to read at 3. I just can’t do it. To connect with the real people in Pussygrabber’s America, I’ve had to really disconnect from it all. Hence the long bleg for webhelp? I’m really just looking for a decent website and to connect with you when we are in your town. Maybe we can get something going? Feed some local homeless folks if we can? Again, this is why I’m trying not to blow this up. I don’t want anyone stealing my idea, I do want people getting fed, and I do want people to be connected to each other in a network of people willing to help each other, all while I, the son of two poor southern black people, now, somehow a fancy gentleman, get to sit down with people in their houses and talk to them about their hopes and dreams for the future. And cook homeless people yummy food. And people who aren’t homeless yummy food. We have a twitter (I can’t be bothered, and it’s hard when you are trying to do all of this, it hasn’t been used in months, we have a fb page, but our webpage just got killed because we were in the woods trimming weed to raise $ to keep this enterprise going, this is really going to be a killer book one day…). Sorry, I ramble-typed because it’s 2am and tomorrow we are driving to Humboldt to maybe finally get paid for all that weed we trimmed (!@!), but I thought, why not asked if some well-intentioned tech-enabled jackal might want to help a brother out? And if you’re not a total creepster and not too out of the way, we’ll probably be passing by your town soon (don’t tell the law, I’m one of the good ones!), let’s pretend we’re gonna hang!
Whew, for the speed readers who cared, made it through all the sleepy commas, and the whatever that cannabis vanilla iced-coffee I can blame for this later, thanks! I really do need some webhelp, why not ask my favorite web community in a forum made for it, while I mock federal law, and all of you who don’t visit or live in weed-legal states? You can also donate to our go fund me? We really are legit. I really don’t want to make this into some thing (It’d be hard to do what we’re doing so low-key), and I’m also wary of dis-engaging the President’s supporter’s to know that I call it “Pussygrabber’s America” or that I read a liberal rag, but my reasons for both are simple. I was once a Republican, like the bloghost here. I was born on an Air Force Base in South Georgia, I was raised evangelical. I am also a sociologist and a writer. The President, by his own words, grabs ladies by the “pussy”. I rest my case on that. I figure the worse that happens from this I get a WTF or a nothing read from JC, but maybe we get one more set of eyes on what we are doing? Again though, not too many? How do you manage this in the media age? Just posting about it on this blog, someone could read it, cut it, tweet it, and then I’d never be ever to hook up with a tiny Latin man anonymously ever again maybe. I don’t want that. But I do want to build a network of caring individuals who share at least enough common sense to read BJ comments, go to a fb page and get involved with something that is real that they can get involved with in the basest way imaginable (like pointing out my grammar errors, criticizing my tie choices, making harsh put-downs over mis-spellings, donating $, meeting up with us and helping us feed people or just blazing up with if that’s legal where we are at the moment, like-helpful)?
Besides, I have only ever really commented on DougJ posts, years ago, maybe once recently when I was sick in bed and did a dive into Russiagate (WTF, am I on barbituates at burning man and hallucinating that a large fraction of the country has some reason to believe that the real-life POTUS might be a Russian Intelligence asset?), but hey, shot in the dark, I’m stoned, Pussygrabber’s America, anything can happen, maybe somebody here wants to help us build a functional website?
Again if you got this far, or read it at all, of if this makes it out of moderation, check us out on fb, Hopefully Ever After: An American Story. This is really where it is great to have spent all those years grinding it out in admin jobs to be able to type 90 wpm cause you’re stone cold sober and wide-awake but wicked stoned at 3am because you made your weed coffee with espresso beans and a sativa based coconut oil. What’s the worst that can happen? Someone I know realizing we read the same blog? Someone helping us? Us all helping some homeless or just regular working hungry people? Some of you deciding to just randomly make lots of food and go out and feed your local homeless? Hippie Shit? Again, Hopefully Ever After: An American Story on fb. WP webfolks, hit us up!
SectionH
@Debbie(aussie): Oh yes, very close that way. I can pick her up from her school in an emergency. I’m far away from being her best Nana right now, which is fine.
The “kids” are busy planning their trip to Malawi this summer. And letting L hang out with her other Nana.
I’m srsly ok with them not taking her to Malawi. I must admit that I’m a bit envious of that trip.
eta: things are simplified if your actual close family is tiny.
Gindy51
We ha some pictures like this from my husband’s mom. We ditched the matting and bought some cheap black plastic frames on ebay. The pictures look a thousand times better. The white matting washes out the lovely pastel’s your grandmother used and are not necessary.
debbie
@SectionH:
Never underestimate the value of color choice for the mat. I have one of my great-grandfather’s watercolors and the frame was falling apart. The framer suggested replacing the off-white mat with a double mat that echoed the periwinkle color in the painting. What a difference!
donnah
John, the watercolors are lovely.
I posted a link to one of my recent rug projects last night. This is a portrait rug I hooked of my oldest son, Nick. His image is ghosted over the skyline of downtown Dayton, where he lives. Blue was his favorite color when he was a little boy. And if you look at the night sky, you can see the constellation Gemini, which is his birth sign.
https://i.imgur.com/RMmzllf.jpg
kindness
Wow your Grandma was good. From those works she shows she liked what she did there too. It’s nice. Any of that talent rub off on you John?
Ohio Mom
The most expensive part of framing is when they start to upsell you. Just hang these lovely watercolors where they won’t be in direct sunlight and you won’t need fancy glass.
I sometimes go to Michael’s with a half-off coupon for framing but I am not framing heirlooms. You want to be sure to get acid-feee mats and backing for Grandma’s watercolors.
Tokyokie
Cole, You can cut your own matte with a straight edge and an X-Acto type knife. And you should be able to find matte board at a framing store or some such. Be sure to get the acid-free variety though.
Sis
Lovely. I especially like the third one.
Miss Bianca
The third one has a wash of pale color right in front of the seated gentleman that for some reason has me thinking of a ghostly presence! Very evocative!
CindyH
@donnah: WOW – that is wonderful!
John Cole
@SectionH: You’re wrong. She was from Maryland, from a good bit of money, and she was given the choice between college and going overseas and she spent several years in France learning how to paint.
EthylEster
JC wrote:
Years ago in DC I was amazed at how good the local Ben Franklin was at framing.
And not horribly expensive. THEN I was surprised to find them in many locations.
J R in WV
The third painting seems to have the same style as the first two. Many people have painted from magazine images, or pictures in other media – it was very common back when everyone was expected to have creative hobbies.