The Belyoak Landscape

At the Salt Lake City ComiCon, we stumbled upon Kat Martin, an artist who takes cheap landscapes and paints different characters onto them.  Like this Doctor-Who themed one:

We loved the idea and decided that if we ever found a cheesy landscape, we would upscale it for our home by adding characters representing each of us.  Because Mr. Charming is crazy talented like that.

So, a few weeks ago we found this at DI:

And because we were at the onset of a kid-free weekend, we decided to go for it. 

First we picked characters for the kids and us.  And then Mike worked his magic and transferred his representations of those characters onto the painting.  I was his paint-by-numbers assistant--filing in the outlines with the appropriate colors--and he worked behind me, shading them so they looked real.  He’s super good at it, and I’m not just saying that because I sleep with him and stuff.

See for yourself.  This is the Spiderman I painted:

Mike took that sad sorry thing and turned it into this: 

Mr. Charming's pretty amazing, right?  He’s also blindingly handsome with a rock-hard heiny.  

With each picture, I became more and more amazed at my husband's talent. 

Claire’s Peace Sun:

Carma’s Rarity:

Greyson’s Minion:

 Leah’s Rainbow Dash:

My Alias (Sidney Bristow) Pony:

And Harrison’s Banksy Mouse:

We almost finished the entire picture in one weekend, but ran out of time after painting the TARDIS and Mike’s Cthulu tentacles.  But just this weekend there was a window of time where Mike was able to finish shading both.  Here’s the finished product:

I heart this.  Almost as much as I heart Mr. Charming's heiny.  Almost.

And that’s why we decided that instead of hanging it in the basement like we first planned, we would hang it over the mantel in our family room, for all to see.  Because we’re nerdy like that.