Matthew Engel

This fall, I was invited to attend the wedding of a good friend of mine. It was one of the most spectacular displays I have ever witnessed, with extravagant foods presented over 12 courses and enough flowers for 3 weddings. It was truly amazing, and I will try and post some photos.

As a wedding gift, I painted him a watercolor piece depicting the first line of the Shema, a Jewish prayer. Alex met his fiance in Israel, while studying at Yeshiva.

Below I show the evolution of the piece starting from my inking, to the watercolored layers, to the frame. Enjoy!

Hi, I added a new plugin this week to my site which allows me to display photo thumbnails on my blog through flickr. This is extremely convenient and looks pretty cool on my front page. It also creates a /photos page where all the albums are displayed. I’m still trying to figure out how to customize that page. Right now, my problem is that on the photos page, the flickr widget is set to display photos in a very small format, and I would like them to be larger. It probably requires editing the css or php code for this template page. The plugin’s homepage explains in brief detail that this is possible, but not how to do it. In summary, I would highly recommend this plugin for creating a photo blog with embedded thumbnails. I was hesitant at first to use flickr because it meant that these images were now property of flickr, but I realized that this was not material to me. It should be noted that almost any image on the web is free game for someone to download and use in any way they see fit. For instructions on how to install and download this plugin, click here. The help forum is here.

Two weeks ago I came back from one of the most spectacular trips of my life. You can read all about it on my travel bog. When I returned, I realized there was no picture of me on this page! That is now fixed, and there is a shot of me below, the genuine article.

Athens, Greece - The Acropolis