Franken Babies

Like toys? Ever wanted to be Dr. Frankenstein mixing and matching body parts to make something new? Perhaps you have a fetish for genetically modified organisms. Celebrate by making a Franken Baby!

I first saw this concept while attending Burning Man back in 2006. I saw some kids kicking around a large "Poo Ball" which consisted of about twenty Winnie the Poo, stuffed animals sewn together into one large, Poo ball. About a year later at another burn event in Florida I saw some kids making "Franken Babies". I loved it and thought it was a cool, and slightly twisted concept. At the event I made my Cat / Dog shown in the animation below. Cat / Dog was made out of a Winnie the Poo Tigger, dog head and arm, and a nice kitty face growing outta his back. I was proud of my creation and a nice souvenir from the event.

Go down to your local Goodwill and get several stuffed animal toys, rip em apart, mix and match the parts and sew em back together again. Maybe you could make a cool, conjoined twin, two headed Beenie Baby. It's a fun little project that's really easy to do and I guarantee you will enjoy your twisted little creation.



Weeeeeeeeeee!!!!

Time Lapse Ceiling Mural

Time Lapse of a huge ceiling mural I painted in 2008. Roughly 360 hours condensed into 47 seconds. This painting creates the illusion of extended archetecture within the dining room ceiling space. There are four European landscape scenes painted within four decorative medallions. There are two Roman styled, trompe-l'œil statues at each end of the ceiling, along with columns and balconies and decorative elements throughout the mural. The entire scene is quite awe inspiring when seated at the dining room table below the mural. The ceiling is roughly sixteen feet wide and the entire project took about three months to complete.

The time lapse itself was fun to create. I had to make a "fish eye lens box" so my video camera could capture the whole ceiling. I had some extra reducing lenses around that I acquired from an eyeglass store, (they actually just gave em to me as I originally needed them for a college project years ago), however since they weren't specifically made for my video camera the movie was possibly just slightly lesser of quality, but it worked, and that's all I cared about. The picture below shows the "Fish Eye Lens Box" I created for the video. The entire box fits snugly over my camcorder.

Visit my website for more photos and examples of other murals I've done.
www.ebgallery.com

~ Decoration Sketches ~

Here are a few decoration sketches I painted for different jobs. I've always found decoration and ornament really interesting and beautiful. In the early days, prior to 1900, artists looked to things that surrounded them for inspiration. What surrounded people back in those days was nature. It was a simpler time as the artists looked at natural forms like shells, plants and flowers, growth patterns of roots and trees as inspiration for decoration and ornament. All decoration generally evolved from these natural forms and are still used today for decoration. A simpler time indeed, perhaps we are missing some of that in our modern era.

Current mural project.

Here is a mural project I'm currently working on. It's a large, (46' by 6') Hawaiian landscape mural and it is currently in progress, perhaps maybe half way finished. I started this mural about a month ago. However during that time I had hired a plaster company to smooth out the wall surface, since it originally had a stucco finish which obscures the details of the painting. Also I had a builder make the scaffold that goes across the pool. So basically I've been actually painting only for about three weeks. I'm doing a time lapse video of the entire project, start to finish. I did another time lapse of a big ceiling mural about two years ago, and you can see it on my website under the (Media) section ~ www.ebgallery.com . I will post more photos as this mural project progresses!

The journey starts here, welcome to Bart's Blog!

Well, here we are at my first posting on Bart's Blog. A few friends have suggested that I start a blog that pool together my various interests in one place. I have many interests, too many actually, and I am constantly researching and following up on stuff that I like. My friends know me as a professional artist. I've been painting murals and fine art with my own business since my first mural back in 1993. My website is located here... www.ebgallery.com There are many exquisite examples of my work to be seen at that site. On the other hand, I have much interest in scientific related things, and I'm some what of a mad scientist either building, breaking, or hacking things together. Really the art and mad scientist side of my interests are interwoven because they both generally involve making or building things. I hope to add stuff on here showing everyone my current projects. I hope you might find something of interest to you on here. If you like my blog, please link to it, tell your friends... After all I made this for you! Enjoy!