Extra Ordinary

© Chromeheart / Oscura Photography

First off, I don't normally use my kitchen as an art studio.  I'm weird, but I'm not that weird.

I had a professor at Montserrat who was always telling me to "make the ordinary extraordinary."  Translate: draw the most boring crap you can possibly find in a way that makes it look interesting, instead of just drawing stuff that looks interesting to begin with.  It forces you to focus more on your technique, to use execution as a tool to create interest.  To say "hey, look how beautiful this thing is, that you walk past every day without noticing."

If I look around my apartment, I don't own a whole hell of a lot that isn't innately interesting; it's a side effect of having very Baroque taste.  My coffee mugs are shaped like owls, my lamps are almost all antique, and there's a jester mask on the coffee table.  Normal, normal, where to find some normal?

Hmm...

No matter what you do to it, kitchen paraphernalia always looks boring and mundane.  I'm not even sure if it's possible to weird up food prep.  So I grabbed a pen, and a brush, and pulled a stool up to the counter to draw me some normal in bright orange ink.