Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Thanks to Jon for heading down to the server room and restoring BMEworld and the mailserver. We've just doubled the size of our server room to give us space for more boxes, so that may mean some downtime (hopefully just a few minutes/hour at a time at most), but the good news is that it will mean that we can finally start rolling out all the features I've been promising for, oh, twenty years or something.

Yesterday I was asking people in my house to smell my paints to see what they thought (since they're all flavored with spices). I don't think I explained very well why I do that. I do it for two main reasons:

1. It makes subtle changes in the way the paint dries and can be manipulated.
2. More importantly, I believe that by being exposed to a unique smell, it helps bring out ones synaesthesiac abilities on a subconscious level… That is, because the paint smells differently, it will affect the way you use it, causing you to paint differently with different paints.

Anyway, I know I've blabbered on about using different polymers. I'm actually moving a little past that in this painting, and suspending different types of pigment inside resin (I'm thinking about painting part of the background with shredded, partially melted crayons suspended in gray/brown transluscent polymer), and using liquid resin as a wet medium to combine paint on the canvas.

Here's a few closeup examples of the painting's current state:

Those are photos from the painting that are a few entries below, to give you a better idea of what it looks like if you see it up close. Because my hands shake I have been painting larger and larger, with less and less detail, so in order to make up for that shortcoming (and the fact that while I can draw, I can't really draw that well), I do my best to at least make the paint itself seem interesting.

EDIT: I was asked if I was concerned that I may be creating paintings that don't last, because they fall apart in the future. My feeling is that, yes, this is a possibility, but to be honest, I cover them with so much thick polymer that the whole thing is basically sealed in plastic and almost bulletproof.

I saw my trainer's blog today (I'm installing stuff on his new computer before I head in to the gym at noon, right after Saira who trains with Daniel as well) — I think I should send him a link to Vegan Body Building, because it really is possible to build a gigantic body without the diet one common wisdom suggests is the one for bulk and definition.