The conclusion of this painting’s 700 mile 20 year round trip is a fitting end to this series of my work and I feel like my summer projects have been finally completed.
A quick backstory on the painting’s subject in case you are catching up on this at the end: The cotylorhynchus is an early Permian synapsid that was first described by OU’s own J. Willis Stovall in 1937. The species name for the specimen found just north of Norman is Romeri for Alfred Romer (1894-1973), the founder and first president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology which now grants the Romer Prize to predoctoral students for work excellence of scientific value and oral presentation at SVP’s annual meeting.
For me, History is filled with people and things. I have never really indulged in the movements and theories and isms that seem to infect the past presently. For a historian this is a professional character defect, for me it is what brings history alive and allows us to find our connections to it. It is likely why I spent so much time learning archaeology and paleontology. I believe it is ultimately what lead me to the history of science so I could talk about all of that at once.
When I first came to OU and was getting settled across campus with the few people I had some connection with I was shown around the Sam Noble Natural History Museum. On the second floor back in the hallway to the VP lab and collections there are these two enormous paintings (13.5 feet long by 3.5 feet high). After taking in the scale and content of these behemoths I immediately looked for the signature. “Ralph B. Shead ’42” and “Ralph B. Shead ’34 (or 39 it is obscured by the frame I believe it is 34).
When I first constructed the schedule to get through all these readings there weren’t full days built into maintaining sanity. The plan was to have these large “scenic turnout” posts when I completed a full section. After trudging through the first few weeks I realized that in order to actually survive this road trip was to have at least one day each week that was devoted to specifically not reading anything.
To that end, most Sundays are spent doing something as far removed from comps lists as possible. Productively this usually means painting, like the one highlighted in Scenic Turnout 1. This last path cut through the American Cultural Studies had more days of rest but less art production than the days would have provided.
This weeks installment is a nice urban landscape, which is fitting since I am starting the Art of the American West section of my comps and the American landscape features prominently in the myth-building of the new nation.
These are, by default, just one day adventures. So I haven’t had any extended canvasses sitting around unfinished during the week. I might attempt a longer, more complex (probably not less cartoony) piece after Christmas as I near the end of comps prep completely and our special collections offices are closed for the holidays, but I haven’t decided yet. As with all the ridiculous, useless things I create I do it as much for the time-lapse opportunities as for the finished products, which, as meager as they have been I have grown to like more and more.
There were far more days off than paintings painted. A lot of these ended up being wasted away on other side projects as exciting as shampooing the carpet and waiting for the cable internet tech to come and fix all our internet woes. Otherwise it was spend in the most time consuming manner imaginable: video games.
I have never been huge into video games, especially the sandbox games that require 416 hours to complete without doing any side missions. I do have Red Dead Redemption which is a great game when I have two days to play through, although I think I have been asleep in the bunkhouse now for four and a half years and never did master playing horseshoes.
Although there is a new one coming out, but I don’t know if it will be enough to warrant cobbling the cash together for a PS4 since Drake 4 wasn’t and Uncharted was the only reason I ever got a PS3, which happens to turn 8 this Christmas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqCwa8CZ5rU
More recently, I have replayed Ghostbusters and the whole lack of backwards compatibility is one of the reasons I haven’t seriously looked into getting the 4. It is great because you can pick it up, play awhile, and quit like the old beat ’em up arcade styles. Some creative youtubers have clipped and edited the cut scenes with some gameplay and it is actually an excellent Ghostbusters 3. (I’ve watched the “movie” twice).
Most recently, I actually bought a new game when it was released. I have no idea how that happened. Maybe I was preparing for comps earlier than I thought. Some of the reviewers hated it because it was simple, a quick play through, and didn’t have a gazillion side missions. Those are the very reasons that I have loved the game. It is a blast to play, and I can pick it up and play for an hour or so and go back to something else without feeling like I need to complete just one more mission. The graphics are great, the mechanics aren’t bad and the AI isn’t overly problematic if you aren’t running on “Easy.”
Of course all this is offset by having my old, original NES system hooked up to our giant-for-us television to play Kung Fu and (what else) TMNT: The Arcade Game. For the record I have never, ever, in the history of having the first TMNT nintendo game, gotten past the disarming the bombs in the reservoir.
The final undertaking that I have been putting off has been to paint the miniatures that came with the The Ghostbusters and Ninja Turtles Boardgames from Kickstarter. I suppose now might be the best time to tackle it on the Sundays in the future since it should start to ice and snow soon and the yard won’t need mowing again– at least after I mulch the leaves.
Intro texts for the art section coming up and with the holiday weekend, I will be back on the road to comps in just a couple days.
