BS: Opal eyed cat

Subject: BS: Opal eyed cat
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 12:28 PM

I have noticed that opal colors (Created in a similar way as butterfly colors) are rarely captured by my Kodak digital camera. Is it just that Kodak is crap? ??

Anyway I started making a figurine with "alive" opal eyes...

The a Cat Laughing. http://usera.imagecave.com/donuel/don/catl4.jpg


http://usera.imagecave.com/donuel/don/call7.jpg

http://usera.imagecave.com/donuel/don/catl.jpg

http://usera.imagecave.com/donuel/don/catl2.jpg

http://usera.imagecave.com/donuel/don/catl3.jpg

http://usera.imagecave.com/donuel/don/catl4.jpg

http://usera.imagecave.com/donuel/don/catl5.jpg

http://usera.imagecave.com/donuel/don/catl6.jpg


hey Kat didja find the picture rock picture yet?

Subject: RE: BS: Opal eyed cat
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 12:30 PM

I still have yet to finish the ivory claws and clean up the collar.

Subject: RE: BS: Opal eyed cat
From: katlaughing
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 12:34 PM

Ah, she's a beauty, Donuel. I had to get my scanner working, but did over the weekend, so I can scan in my boy'o's picture. I'll do it this morning! Thanks for reminding me.

Subject: RE: BS: Opal eyed cat
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 12:35 PM

Yikes after seeing the pics I really need to vaccum the floor.

Subject: RE: BS: Opal eyed cat
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 01:11 PM

I am doing 2 more Egyptian opal pieces.
Here I added one to a Scarab pin http://usera.imagecave.com/donuel/don1/scarab.jpg

and the other is a Sphinx carving in an opal boulder. (very dusty work)

http://usera.imagecave.com/donuel/don1/scarab2.jpg

http://usera.imagecave.com/donuel/don1/scarab3.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Opal eyed cat
From: katlaughing
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 01:29 PM

The scarab is beautiful, too, though the last photo was out of focus.:-)

I cannot find the whole 8.5 x 11 artwork my grandson did, but I do have the 2-3 inch circle within it which I'd already scanned in. It is HERE at myopera site. The dark red around is the other part of the whole painting and coincides with the red sandstone which is prevalent in this area. I *see* so many different elements in this. He was 2 years and 2 months when he did it...Jan. 2006.

I don't think he is necessarily a genius but he definitely has some talent with art, creativity/imagination, and music. We recently made a robot dog out of a piece of paper with paper ears stapled on and four legs made of foil-wrapped gum, which gave it a stiff-legged bulldog kind of stance. It was pretty funny!

Subject: RE: BS: Opal eyed cat
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 02:25 PM

thats just about the best picture stone I have ever seen.

Its sort of a Frontier Springtime photo.

Subject: RE: BS: Opal eyed cat
From: katlaughing
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 03:47 PM

It does look like a picture stone, doesn't it? Thanks...also springtime frontier, too. I have a rush of work coming on this week, but I will do my best to find the full painting and post it, too. It's almost uncanny, the tiny bit this one takes up of the whole thing. Took me a few days to even notice what was going on in that tiny space. The scan doesn't really show it the way it looks. There is a clearly delineated sort of structure, with upturned eaves in the centre where the figures are and the banshee-like thing on the right doesn't show up well. I love the reach of the spindly black branches...they remind me of the dead statues of pinion pines up in the red hills with the green looking so much like the juniper trees with their springtime fresh colours.

Subject: RE: BS: Opal eyed cat
From: Bee
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 04:16 PM

Very nice work, Donuel.

Kat, if he was just past two when he did it, you can take it from an old pre-school art teacher that he is a little genius. There's a suggestion of advanced-for-his age fine motor control there - he may yet learn to play the banjo! ;-D

Subject: RE: BS: Opal eyed cat
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 05:24 PM

Um - aren't butterflies not the color they are, if you understand me? The way polar bear hair isn't white and bluejay feathers aren't blue, I mean. Would that make them hard to photograph? Polar bears always look muddy on camera and white at the zoo, to me...

Subject: RE: BS: Opal eyed cat
From: GUEST,dianavan
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 05:34 PM

Donuel, the cat is beautiful.

Subject: RE: BS: Opal eyed cat
From: katlaughing
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 06:22 PM

Bee, thank yew! He has always had incredible fine-motor control - don't know about the banjo, though!**bg** I have encouraged a lot of what I think nurtures his natural abilities. We have art fun several times per week, as well as music going on most times. Most of all he and I play at seeing things differently...clouds as blankets, faces in trees,grandma being a variety of characters as he does also, anything fanciful which gives him a different perspective on the world and nurtures his creative imagination.

Subject: RE: BS: Opal eyed cat
From: open mike
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 11:12 PM

ah ha! I am a member of the Dung Beetle Clan
and that scarab is beautiful!
They fly the sun across the sky, you know?

Subject: RE: BS: Opal eyed cat
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 04 Mar 08 - 04:43 AM

Donel, they are wonderful & Kat, your grandson's masterpicce is a masterpiece!


sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Opal eyed cat
From: Bee
Date: 04 Mar 08 - 10:28 AM

Kat, letting him know that you like what he does is the very best form of nurturing abilities.

My experience (and study) regarding children and art, music, stories - anything requiring imagination and creative effort tells me that almost any child can be encouraged to excel as long as the environment is nurturing of that effort. Children are always hungry for approval, and their innate abilities are easily drawn out and just as easily suppressed. I've seen kids who were very promising in one area (say, music or drawing) completely abandon efforts in that direction just because something put them off it, often just a parent's lack of enthusiasm, or an older child telling them what they 'did wrong'. The upside is that they usually find some other area (I can't draw like my scornful big sis? Fine, I just discovered I like making stories!) towards which to direct their efforts.