Two Year Anniversary Give-Away!

This week marks the two year anniversary of moving to our home at Small Pond Arts.

It really seems like I’ve done more things and accomplished more goals in the past two years than in the five years previous...

• Moved from downtown Toronto to a farm in Prince Edward County

• Bought our first home

• Renovated and furnished this old house

• Started a small business

• Learned to grow abundant glorious food in our garden

• Buried a time capsule
• Designed posters for all of our events • I'm learning how to ride a unicycle • Learned some basic construction skills • Had a few art shows (in no particular order): Field to Canvas, Sommerfest, Art in the County 2010 and 2011, Something About the Garden, Blizzmax 2011 Season Opener, Cousins, Terroir, Artevino, Arts on Main 2012

• Worked at a couple of PEC vineyards • Helped bring Stickfest to life
• Actually got some people with this April Fool's joke • Became a projectionist at the local theatre
• Opened my own gallery
• Met a couple hundred new people, made a lot of new friends

• Learned how to make pickles
• Built a website for and started a blog about Small Pond Arts
• Walked up and down Main St. Picton dozens of times...on stilts
• Was in local newspapers and magazines a bunch of times
• Learned how to use a scythe

On top of that, I painted some pictures. Assembling the (non-chronological) list of paintings I made in the past two years was interesting:

• Full-bodied a, b, and c • the Carmen mural in Chesterfields • Paint the County 2010 and 2011 • The 12 Field to Canvas portraits • Leaning Poles (small version) • Near Lake Saguaro • 14 Barnscapes (so far only blogged this and this and this)

• Lipstick Levins
• Nest
• Tractor and Barn • BB Mono 1 and 3
• Brollies
• Life Jackets
• six wine paintings (plus a test) using Baco Noir, Cabernet Franc, and Malbec
• and my own big head

This is more of an itemization rather than simply bragging, but there are many new skills in there that I never dreamed I’d have or ever need to have. And, as hard as I’ve worked on all this, I feel I should have done more.

Krista and I did a lot of that stuff together, but for a list of her own impressive accomplishments, click here.

A lot of people ask how we did all this. How did we make a life for ourselves that seems to most people like a crazy dream?

Well if you have a crazy dream, guess what? You can actually do it. Well, probably. But it’s not for the faint of heart. It takes fearlessness. Courage. Support of your friends and family. A little bit of foolishness. And lots, and lots, and LOTS of hard work.

anyway...
***CONTEST DETAILS***

Now it’s your turn.

We want to know what you’ve done in the last two years. What are your accomplishments? What are you most proud of?

Tell us in the comments section below by 7 PM on 15 March 2012 and you could WIN one of these great prizes:

I could be yours.

First Prize: A custom oil portrait of you, or someone of your choosing, painted by me.

Second Prize: A Yeti puppet (pictured above) by Krista.
Third Prize: Two CD's from our friend, Arlene Bishop: Snarky Girlpop and Begin Again.

One entry per person, please.
We’ll post the winners here on 15 March 2012 by 8 PM as selected by random.org

Now toot your own horn, and good luck!

* * *

UPDATE!

See the result for the winner of the custom oil portrait
HERE.

Axel Foley's Chevy Nova (1/25 scale model)

Multiple tributes, here. I remember first seeing Beverly Hills Cop on video at my friend Chris K's house, 'cause his family had a VCR and we'd watch tons of movies (and record music videos) together. The summer of 1984 was a special time for us (having created a strong bond in school since Grade 6 a few years before), going on biking adventures around the 'burbs and into the city, etc., and home video played an important role from then until I moved to the opposite end of Scarborough just before we started high school. We liked the movie a lot, both of us fans of Eddie Murphy from his Saturday Night Live days. I don't think I'd seen the movie since then (it would have been 1985, probably summer, since the movie came out in late 1984) and I became curious to see if it still held up. It did. It does. I found Murphy as charming as ever and the comedy (and even the action) holds up very well and its very re-watchable and very entertaining. Beverly Hi

City of Angels

17" x 11", watercolour and digital, 1999 Ah, City of Angels . I thought I was getting cool film noir but got a cheesy musical instead (Google it if you must). Still, it was fun to make the poster and associated images, mostly because the research consisted of watching real films noir and buying a great book on movie posters of the genre. I made tons of sketches and a few digital mock-ups. For the final poster above, I made three separate watercolour paintings (one of the couple and one each of the two black and white heads) and composited them in Photoshop, where I also added the text. In true movie poster fashion, I wanted the actors names to be the top two names, but I lost that battle and had to use the characters' names instead. It looks fine, but it implies that "Kingsley and Stone" are the lead actors in the show. Oh, well...it's only community theatre... By making the "angel" above half black and white and half colour, th

Small Pond Arts Puppet Wagon (1/24 scale model)

I dreamed up the Small Pond Shipyard for my fanciful scratch-built sci-fi airship creations (which still only exist in sketch/Photoshop mock-up form (and boxes in my closet) for now), but more and more ideas kept coming ( this wind turbine , for example, will be part of a rather elaborate diorama I'll be working on this winter). But the Puppet Wagon was a sleeper surprise, to be sure. [Really, though, I don't know why I was so eager to build this right away since I was planning to slowly develop my modelling skills with simpler builds first and the work my way up to more complicated projects.] Not all parts were used/needed. Most of these ideas have come from watching modelling videos online, and when I saw a review of this sweet little Japanese "Ramen Shop" food truck by Aoshima (right-side drive!), my brain started making jokes about customizing it to the weird food truck ideas I'd been posting on Facebook. But the more I thought about what the co

The Naked Silo

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