I just got done reading a book, Daily Painting, by Carol Marine. Look her up, she's a very good artist. In the book she talks about how important it is to paint often. If not daily, then as often as you can. She suggests painting small - many of her paintings are just 6" X 6" - because you're more likely
to take the time to do it if you don't feel overwhelmed by a large canvas that will take hours or days
to cover. I haven't been painting every day but I do try to paint at least 4 or 5 days. Monday and Tuesday I painted two small paintings. I'm not thrilled with them and they could both use more attention but at least I stuck with them until they were recognizable.
Even though I'm not in love with this painting, I do like the subject matter because it brings back memories of a simpler time. We didn't have stairs but my grandmother did and my aunt had a slinky we could play with. I thought it was awesome.
I Googled Slinky to see some pictures and learned this about it. I had no idea it was created almost by accident.
Creation[edit]
In 1943,
Richard James, a naval mechanical engineer stationed at the
William Cramp and Sons shipyards in Philadelphia, was developing springs that could support and stabilize sensitive instruments aboard ships in rough seas.
[1][2] James accidentally knocked one of the springs from a shelf, and watched as the spring "stepped" in a series of arcs to a stack of books, to a tabletop, and to the floor, where it re-coiled itself and stood upright.
[3][4] James's wife Betty later recalled, "He came home and said, 'I think if I got the right property of steel and the right tension; I could make it walk.'"
[5] James experimented with different types of steel wire over the next year, and finally found a spring that would walk. Betty was dubious at first, but changed her mind after the toy was fine-tuned and neighborhood children expressed an excited interest in it.
[4] She dubbed the toy Slinky (meaning "sleek and graceful"), after finding the word in a dictionary,
[3][4] and deciding that the word aptly described the sound of a metal spring expanding and collapsing.
[6]
With a
US$500 loan, the couple formed James Industries (originally James Spring & Wire Company), had 400 Slinky units made by a local machine shop, hand-wrapped each in yellow paper, and priced them at $1 a piece.
[4] Each was 2
1⁄2" tall, and included 98 coils of high-grade blue-black Swedish steel.
[7]The Jameses had difficulty selling Slinky to toy stores but, in November 1945, they were granted permission to set up an
inclined plane in the toy section of
Gimbels department store in Philadelphia to demonstrate the toy. Slinky was a hit, and the first 400 units were sold within ninety minutes.
[4][7] In 1946, Slinky was introduced at the
American Toy Fair.
For a few days I was singing the slinky song. It's slinky, it's slinky, it's fun, it's a wonderful toy. It's slinky,
it's slinky, it's fun for a girl and a boy.
