Rejuvenation

I've spent very much of the Covid times sheltering in place, as they say. (Don't tell, but I haven't had a haircut in nearly 18 months.) When I step off my own yard, I'm surely headed to the grocery store. You couldn't fill both hands counting the number of times I've left to go anywhere else.

What with all this time to myself, I've tried to improve and rejuvenate myself. Besides the pandemic "kick off", early 2020 found me with an unexpected surplus of serum cholesterol. Not the good kind either. Happy ending though, I got it down so much my doctor was shocked. Since that glorious day, I've kept up with the regular exercise and I do feel better. I definitely look more fit. And now I have hair like Fabio except my blonde is more platinum and the ends curl.

Continuing with the themes of improvement and rejuvenation, I've been taking some online art classes, one of which focuses on designing better pages in your sketchbook, and a lot of the design can be applied retroactively to years-old sketches, as you'll soon see. These two pages are from 2013, about 5 weeks apart. I did the left side sitting at the window counter inside a Starbucks. The right side was from the top of the east Marina Towers tower, and what a great autumn day that was!

I always like these two pages, so I made them the subject of a couple lessons. The right page got upgraded in January and then I thought quite a while about what to do with the other page, to give some cohesion. A few weeks ago I got around to executing my plan and the rejuvenation is complete. Here's how everything ended up looking.

I've been good about keeping at my self-improvement and rejuvenation efforts... making new pages in my sketchbook along with elevating the older gems. Eating better, working out consistently -- although last week was so hot I didn't feel like doing much of either. But that's August for you. See you in September!

Art in the Times of Covid

Wow, things got dusty in here while I was away!

Resurrecting the blog today with this sketchbook entry. Featuring my brother's dog Smudge; the original images are ghosts of Christmas cards past.

 

 

I've picked up some tricks while I've been away. Back in the day, I would have used transfer paper to render the images and then painted them out. Instead, I went out from the nose and tongue, painting directly, then over-painted and inked. I abstracted the background grass using watercolor pencils and, conveniently, their complements for the hellish background.

 

Here's the interesting backstory. When designing the page, my hands were tied from the start... by the other side of the paper. It's got a large drop-captial A in red sharpie and so a touch of bleed-thru you can see in the "nose" photo. (Lesson learned.) Thus the need to over-ink the "A", which drove the placement of all the other text and page elements we see here. There's hardly any text, but it tells a story with an economy of words.

I've been doing a lot of sketchbook work lately because I've learned I can fit it ten minutes here and there and get things done. You'll see more of that soon, along with some more thoughtful "thoughts". Meanwhile, best of health!

Chips Off the Old Block? 2018-W12

It's still Sunday March 11th, same day I wrote the prior post. Let's reminisce a moment about yesteryear. My father used to travel a lot for business, back when you still got paper tickets that came in a bundle and used some weird red carbon paper to imprint multiple copies. Those he knew. But, Dad was never comfortable with what we called an e-ticket then (which was different from that an e-ticket is now). Even with those, you had to check in at the airport counter and obtain a boarding pass. I can't know how Dad would cope with a boarding pass on a smartphone screen.

But I feel I'd have a better guess now. I've just finished writing and posting the last blog, and discovered that the blogging system and photo support are very different now.  Consequently I have some technology puzzles of my own to ponder and resolve. Where do my uploaded pictures go now? How can I breathe new life into my Historic and current Gallery? I almost wish I had a teenager to whom I could outsource this project!

I'll get there, if not this week than sometime before... let's say July 4th. With that, I'm done writing for today and will pick up the thread later this week. <PAUSE> <RESUME> Later this day, I was reviewing the last few posts and noted some things. The world now is very different since Gretchen Carlson took on and took down Roger Ailes. Though not the worst thing yet for him as it turned out. "Woke" is a thing now, which reminds me I promised to whip up some male banshees to equalize gender in that series. I have an idea on how to make that transition. Ok now I'm totally making a hard pause until another day.<PAUSE for sure>

<RESUME> and it's now almost 2 weeks later. Stephen Hawking has died, semi-ironically on Pi Day. March Madness progresses... and I suppose by that I mean the basketball tournament and not any antics on Pennsylvania Avenue.

I haven't resolved any of my Blogger riddles, but I have recently got a reMarkable tablet so I'm busy consolidating scraps of paper-lists and planning for a more organized 2018 going forward. I also managed to paint last weekend, adhering to my pledge to transition the Banshee series toward more gender equality.

While you may think this shows the same demure subject as last week's Banshee, it is not quite her. Rather, it's the old block off which she was chipped. A 'he' masquerading as a 'she'. I admit it's a bit of a cheat, and an easy cheap shot to boot. Too bad.

I do have a subject in mind for the first Mr. Banshee. He's a world class twat, and refreshingly not part of any current administrations. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here without further delay is Banshee number 12. Hope you enjoy it's misty mood. I'm fixing to try for back-to-back posts, so fingers crossed we will meet here next Saturday. Peace!

Banshee XII

I'm Coming Up 2018-W10

In retrospect, my 2017 tally of blog posts — one — is at least unimpressive, and possibly embarrassing in the face of unfulfilled promises I made to post more regularly. But now, as they say, I have nowhere to go but up. Besides, how relevant are blog posts any more? Blogging per se seems a little old school when set alongside the Instagram/Twitter-verse that sucks all of the internet oxygen these days.

I am an Insta-virgin (ha!, what a great product that would be), but do have a Twitter account gathering dust, a remnant of my tour as a web-dev boot camper. A personal goal: never tweet again, leaving my total tweet history comfortably in the single- or low double-digit range. As an "old",  I engage the internet rather differently than those Millennials.

I sit on the train to work and watch the youngsters, necks bent, scrolling past endless feeds of #word-barf and #pic-porn on their phone and I roll my eyes... Figuratively, if not literally. In contrast, I read articles. (When I'm not otherwise occupied by looking out the window.) Sometimes news of the day, sometimes so-called "long reads", and sometimes brief essays not unlike this here.

Shortly after the train pulls out of the last stop before mine, I will have put the phone in my pocket in advance of deboarding and walking from the platform into the building. At least once a week, a Millennial oaf — eyes glued to their phone (no prize for guessing that) —walks into me and mutters their typical "sorry" out the side of their mouth. One day I will hear it when I'm just not in a mood for a lame apology from a phone-enthralled mook. I'm not sure how that moment will go, but the telling of it could make for a future blog post.

A post that is sure to be read by no more than three Millennials. All of my personal acquaintance.

Anyway, with the exception of their walk-swipe-bump-sorry.notsorry bullshit I like Millennials just fine; they are not destined to ruin civilization as we know it. Although they will probably over-photograph it.

And speaking of photographs, here comes a painting. Finally! It turns out that the paucity of posts is down to this: me and painting were on a break...

• I was seeing other hobbies
• My painting group has hiatused itself to near extinction
• what I will refer to as socio-political distractions not otherwise specified 

That last item furnishes the model for my return to painting, a continuation of the Banshee series which is explained here. I sheepishly admit I had to look up what banshee number was next.

Banshee XI

I felt rusty and not so confident as I went into and through the process of painting this one, but I like it okay. Same story as I sat down to write this post. No idea what I'd write about, but in the end I'm okay with how it turned out. Thanks to all that mild enjoyment, I now aim to ramp up momentum and get through eleven more paintings and postings before July 4th. Yowza!

Thanks for stopping by

Where in the HELL Have I Been? 2017-W24

That is well-asked. As I begin this post, I don't even know yet how long since the last post... is it nearly a year, a bit over a year? We'll all soon see once I log into the blogger. Update: it's been almost 11 months. Wow. But heck, at least under a year.

I haven't done too much art in that time, but during the hiatus I did start (and eventually complete) today's painting which is the next in my Paintbox of Horror series. Every Halloween I plan to do one, and often I do do one tho in this case I don't think I finished it until around Easter time. I'd like to complete another 18-20 paintings this year (not to mention some sketchbook work), and more would be... more than welcome.

I have a bunch of other art reboot schemes underway, or under contemplation. Is this all a delayed-onset reaction to the madness that seems to have descended on the world? Maybe it's nothing that deep, but still, I am looking forward to taking a retreat into a world of my own making for at least a few hours a week. [Let's be real, twice a month for re-starters.]

Perhaps the idea of "reset" will soon be shaping larger events -- and we need it after the recent string of violence and mayhem. Case in point: I can't call myself a fan of Ted Nugent (nor most of his body of work), but I have to give him some respect for coming out in public to say that maybe everyone should be dialing things back a notch, starting with himself. Alright man, let's do it.

That's enough of current events for one blog, and I won't unfurl a newsletter-style update of what I did between last July and today. But I may take an interesting highlight or two from those eleven months and weave them into some blog posts down the road. I have been fortunate to be doing some work lately that is very rewarding emotionally.

With that, I guess let's turn back to today's painting, which I like looking at — and not just because it's me. I enjoy the contrast in how, on the one hand, I appear vaguely like an upper echelon member of the Catholic hierarchy. Whereas of course on the other hand I'm a dimestore Beelzebub*. I know many people who would say with emphasis, "you're both". But would they mean figuratively or literally? I've heard solid evidence from both sides of that case.

Besides today's painting, you can see other entries in the Paintbox of Horror series in my historic gallery by using the link up top/left. While we'll have to wait on the next in that series, fear not for I have a bunch of Banshees that I can bring to life for that series, and not to mention some future landscapes from Cape Cod and the great state of Maine. Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy!

Paintbox of Horror V: Hell YEAH!

*Very literally a "dimestore Beelzebub" owing to the fact I bought those horns at a Woolworths in England many years ago

One Down, Many to Go 2016-W29

Let me first say Gretchen Carlson isn't the impetus for the Banshee series I've been painting of late. But yes, she's been floating around the overflowing pool of potential subjects — those generally blonde females who comprise the blathering talent at Fox News. Prior to last week, I'd still be laughing now if you'd told me that Gretchen would soon earn my grudging respect.

But she has done. She must have known that to come forward with her accusations against the powerful predator Roger Ailes, she consequently would have to prove her case and at the same time fight back attacks on her character and her reasons for doing so. Because that is often the way it plays out in America when women accuse men of sexual misconduct in the workplace. I don't know if I like much else about Gretchen Carlson, but I admire her courage. Best of luck to her as she presses her case.

Which brings me to the other player in this drama and to another series I painted circa 2011: the Faces of Evil. For this series, I selected (evil) people of whom I was aware but (it turns out) the public at large were not. Sure, they knew Dick Cheney and maybe one or two others, but nobody ever correctly guessed FoE #4... Roger Ailes. I suspect that after the events of this week, they might do better — at least in the short term.

Time will tell if Ms. Carlson prevails in her legal actions against Mr. Ailes et al, but we didn't have to wait long to see Roger's fall from the top of the Fox News mountain. What all this means for America remains to be seen, yet one can hardly imagine it could be anything besides a change for the better.

The other Faces of Evil can be seen in a special section of my online gallery. As for Roger Ailes, who knows what he might do or where he might be seen next? (Probably in courtroom sketches.) With that said, if ever they decide to remake The Maltese Falcon, I urge the producers to consider Mr. Ailes to take on the role of the despicable Kasper Gutman...  "the Fat Man". I smell Oscar.

Faces of Evil:  Roger Ailes

Too Much Time 2016-W26

I've been off work for the past two weeks, but don't ask me what I've been up to because the answer is: besides gardening, not much.

I don't know if a universal truth underlies this experience, but in my experience too much time inhibits progress. To wit, I have found that when I have all the time in the world to do something I often end up doing nothing. Or at least I will procrastinate until suddenly there is only just enough time to get done whatever it was needed doing.

Three loads of laundered and line-dried clothes sit in my dining room awaiting folding... but I can do that later. While I watch TV. Or tomorrow. Because it might rain and can't do much gardening when things are wet. And so on and so forth. Now it is a week later and the clothes are still very tidily awaiting the overdue fold-n-stow process. In my defense, I haven't yet worn anything I've peeled directly off the folding queue, except for some sweatpants (it got very chilly here the past two days) and besides they were already folded and on top, ready for the drawer.

In this same vein, I have been procrastinating writing this blog post for a few weeks now. To get started, I figured I would need some synonyms for "procrastinate" and there are some good ones: Delay. Loiter. Putter. Fritter. Trifle & Dabble. And my favorite: Loaf. I don't mind plenty of the latter after a good productive day. Occasionally however, I make Loafing the primary output of my day's efforts. To paraphrase an old didactic aphorism, any job worth not doing is worth not doing well.

I have been diligent about keeping after all the pent up yardwork and some re-work while I'm at it. In fact I thought I'd take some pictures and use the "art" of my garden as fodder for the post. Sadly, when I signed in I see that I have already did that last post.

Which brings me to the painting I want to show you today but which I did a few weeks back now. It continues the Banshee series and I really like a lot of things about it. Seasoned painters can often look back and identify breakthroughs in their artistry or technique and I don't want to be premature or pompous but I do feel like the last few entries in the Banshee series have been a breakthrough for me, artistically. I need to say "enough" with the garden and get back to painting. And folding laundry and whatever else has "gotten sidetracked" (another good, passive synonym for procrastinate — thanks Z).

In closing, let me note that Banshees are female figures in Celtic mythology and so all to date have been women. But I fear that gives the impression of misogyny so the next marcher in my parade of banshees will be male. In fact, the painting is ready to get started on. If only I would stop procrastinating...

Banshee X