All Things Van Gogh

I recently started cross stitching again, and I thought I was doing pretty well so I wanted to challenge myself with something bigger and what better than to fuel my ever growing  love of Van Gogh than to do a cross stitch of one of his paintings. Now when I looked into it, I didn't think it would be as complex, but I am having a brilliant time working it all out and here's the progress over the past week and a wee bit.

You can totally start to see it come together, bu that is just on panel out of four, my plan is to do it a panel at a time, and move forward that way so I don't get too ahead of myself!

Also while we are on the Vincent Van Gogh topic, I stumbled upon a kickstarter for an entirely handpainted animated movie of the story of Vincient Van Gogh as told through his paintings, unfortunately the kickstarter wasn't funded but the good news is they are going to relaunch it! Its well worth checking out what they are doing!

You can find their Facebook here and hopefully a link will pop up for the kickstarter too!

And finally, I got a few surprises in the mail, one from Amber, she had been to Harry Potter; The Exhibition, in Edmonton and passed on some goodies to me! And a Parcel from my mom full of sweets and a Tim Hortons mug, now I will just need to get my hands on some Time Hortons Coffee!

Witches and Wicked Bodies

October is coming to a close, and I have hardly done anything Halloween-ish but that is now remedied. I have wanted to go to the Witches and Wicked Bodies Exhibit at the Gallery of Modern Art since before it came out and what could have been a more appropriate day than seeing it on Halloween. The Exhibit was beautiful and everything I expected and more.  I loved seeing the works of Goya and learning new artists like Salvator Rosa and Frans Francken II.  It was also fun, and perhaps a bit childish on my part to giggle when the family who came in just before us quickly rushed each of their kids in and out of the exhibit. For some reason the painters penchant for drawing and painting witches with there bosom exposed seemed to make them zip right through. Plus it was a beautiful day at the start and the grounds of the Modern Art Gallery were beautiful. The only thing I wish I would have come earlier for is the book for the exhibit, it was unfortunately sold out, and it seems to be sold out everywhere.

I could add more paintings and sketches that I loved, that would probably meant the whole catalog, but here are some I took of the gallery.

And along the Water of Leith, just up from the gallery. 

From there we headed up to the Union of Genius, for some amazing soup and salads. I need to learn to make more kinds of soup, cause theirs was awesome!! And afterwards we nipped into the Greyfriars Churchyard because it has been recently found out that Tom Riddle (AKA Lord Voldemort) has his grave there. I had heard before that J K Rowling used to look at names in the graveyards around Edinburgh, but this is the first one I have seen with a full name.

I know I am pretty cool, but graveyards are always interesting to take pictures in and Greyfriars is particularly beautiful.

Goodbye Computer

So it looks like my laptop has officially died, though I am trying the tried and true Courtenay method of Leaving It Alone. That usually works to fix my electronics, at least it has with my iPod and I've had that for like five years, and is still on perfect working condition.

So should the LIA method not work in the coming weeks, I suppose I will need a new one.

As such this post is coming at ya via mobile blogging so I'm not sure it will look right but here it goes!

I did something a bit different in comparison to what I have done lately in the painting world. And you know it was nice to change it up! These are for Amber cause she asked. Can you dot the Harry Potter reference? They were a lot of fun to do!