Friday, November 16, 2007
An allegation that I was abusing prescription opiates was made a while back, and I took a hair test to — successfully — prove that this was not the case. Getting a hair test done is actually really upsetting — perhaps doubly so when you know you’re innocent — because it’s a physical violation as much as just an emotional violation. Anyway, turtles don’t have hair, and I don’t really know what the mechanics of a “shell test” are, so I’m going to assume my testudine friend here bending the rules need not worry too much about his future job prospects.
I’m not sure if I’m going to paint a version of this or not. It’s really just a doodle… Tomorrow I’m going to finish off a painting that my daughter sketched out — a little fellow sitting on the top of a sole tree in an empty plain. It’s quite serene — and lonely — but a wonderfully structured piece of art either way.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Earlier today Caitlin and I were looking at this amazing “natural bathtub” carved out of an immense boulder. It got us wondering — what if we got a bunch of boulders dumped on our foundation, and then built the walls around them, and carved much of our furniture out of immense stones? I mean, there’s really no reason why you couldn’t care out a couch and coffee table if you wanted to — other than the inconvenience of your furniture weighing an unmovable ton or two, it would be wonderful caveman chic, to say nothing of the thermal mass it would contribute (water in that tub would stay warm for days if the stone was at temperature).
Oh, and my daughter and I built a little tiny frame, which still needs to be painted, for one of her miniature doodle paintings (a striped unicorn-type being and a dragon climbing)…
Monday, November 12, 2007
So part of me — luckily a very small part of me that doesn’t listen to instructions very well — is saying that I shouldn’t post any more of my paintings, because their content (along with the content of other artwork) is being used against me in legal proceedings to make the case that I’m [insert inaccurate crazy/violent person term here]… I really found the idea of using someone’s art to demonize them extremely disquieting and frankly offensive. What’s next? My goofy little kid’s limericks are going to be used as evidence as something more dastardly than the fact that I have little sense for rhythm in a rhyme scheme?
On that note, work’s moving ahead nicely on the potentially damning Death Comforts You… It looks better in the picture to be honest than in real life, which I’ll remedy soon with a few minor touch ups, after which I’ll do a topcoat and build a frame… I’m motivated to get this one done quickly because it’s already spoken for and I need to make some money to go Christmas shopping! The frame is going to be a deep red frame covered with little cartoon skulls. I actually have a few frames to build right now (Tikikaiju and Rookaiju are both unframed).
Sunday, November 11, 2007
I can’t actually take credit for this painting, as it’s done by my daughter (age 4 1/2). It’s called “First Snowfall”, done with marker and tempera paint on a 24″x36″ canvas (I helped with the finish painting part but other than that it’s totally her creation from concept to execution). It’s a duck, a spider, a muscular bird-beaked man with bat-wing hands about to sit down on a chair, a “bat cat” sitting on his knee, and a couple of butterflies all caught up in a snowstorm.
We’d actually planned to go to Riverdale Farm today (which we did do), but on the walk back to the car we passed the necropolis and read the gravestones, and actually took about a two hour detour through the graveyard (and insists on returning tomorrow — future zombie hunter?). She’s at a wonderful age where rambling storytelling that’s 75% fact and 25% fantasy is what it’s all about. Because PlanetSpace is talking about building the first Canadian spaceport near our homestead on Cape Breton Island — which I’m very excited about — we spent some of our after-supper time drawing rockets and watching videos on YouTube of shuttle launches, space walks, and moon missions… The funny thing is that all of the space things that I was convinced I’d experience as an adult are now the things I’m convinced she’ll experience… I hope my predictions are more accurate now than when I was a child.
