Tuesday 10 December 2013

The Wonder Woman Garden Gnome

On my LiveJournal, I asked people to pick a day in December and topic for me to post about.

So far:

  • Dec 10 - "What do you paint, and do you have favorite painters?"
  • Dec 13 - "The role that music has played in your life."
  • My choice of dates - "Canada"

Feel free to suggest more!

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So. Painting. Well, the sad thing is that I don't paint much anymore. In another life, I painted Barbie dolls.

Most of my 2013 creativity has gone into rediscovering a love of knitting. The good thing is that my inner voice is screaming at me to produce more artwork. I picked up a pencil and started sketching over the weekend. Part of the reason I'm clearing out a corner of my basement is that I can have a creative space.

Background information - in 2009 I discovered that I have a half-sister, Mary-Anne. She is now one of my best friends.

But I did paint something in 2013. My sister once said that she'd like to have a garden gnome painted like Wonder Woman. I kept that filed away in the back of my mind. In 2013, Mary-Anne turned (a number I won't make public). We usually make our birthday presents for each other, and I knew that I needed to really go big this year.

So I loaded pictures of Wonder Woman on my iPad, went to a Colour Me Mine shop, and with the help of one of the extremely enthusiastic employees who LOVED the idea:

Wonder Woman garden gnome

(Posing in my garden)

Her cuffs are painted silver to represent Wonder Woman's bracelets. The flowers are red and yellow as the best representation of the eagle on her leotard. (The only other female garden gnome in the shop was carrying a basket).
Wonder Woman garden gnome

Naturally she needed red boots with a white stripe, just like Wonder Woman.
Wonder Woman garden gnome

And her braids are tied with yellow. And she has a yellow belt, of course.
Wonder Woman garden gnome

The skirt could have used a couple more coats of blue, but after four coats on two visits, I was done. The extremely enthusiastic employee added another coat (with my permission) and it still isn't perfect.

But that doesn't matter. Because when I put the gnome in a Wonder Woman shopping bag and handed it to Mary-Anne for her birthday, she knew from the weight what I had done. She knew that I'd remembered what she had once said, and I made that wish a reality. She loved it.

There's a new Colour Me Mine one neighbourhood over. I'm planning on certain Star Wars garden gnomes for my 2014 garden.

As for the second part of the question - I'm fond of Da Vinci, Van Gogh. I have a Matt Busch Lost poster that I really like. My late grandmother gave me a painting she'd done of one of my cats, and I treasure that.

2 comments:

  1. Do you sell these wonder woman gnomes?? I would love one.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Awesome! It sounds great. A debt of gratitude is in order for sharing..
    komposit hegn

    ReplyDelete