Days of Shades

I've posted the last three years worth of News Years card animals over at www.skellingtonart.com.

Muskox (2009)
Reindeer (2008)
Polar Bear (2007)

Hie ye hither!

..and the first job waiting for me is a pile of Wizard of Earthsea posters for me to sign.

Fame is surreal.

Even teeny tiny fake fame.

Someone who collects antique glass marbles should NOT have this much trouble painting what is basically a glass orb.

Fricking sheep helmets.

On t'other hand, I finished Erik's birthday painting last week, and it looks pretty decent for an experiment! Only a month late, too!

To-Do lists are usually irish polkas, in that they're made up of fairly simple items that go by incredibly fast. If your to-do list is a four part reel or a slip jig, woe betide you.

Fiddletunes is behind me, I have no free evenings to myself for the forseable future, my laptop won't power up, and I'm feeling not exactly overwhelmed, but somewhat a-sea.

( For the sake of internal clarity )
I'm not despairing - in fact, I'm pretty damn perky. But I still don't know how I'm going to get anything done. Having the laptop fail is really the icing on the cake -- hopefully Dad or I can get it working. Failing that, I'll take it to fourth dimension, and if I can't figure something out in the next few weeks, Erik said he'd loan me his.
Thankfully, since I just did that round of reformatting a few weeks ago, everything is happily backed up on an external hard-drive.

With regards to money, if anyone knows of someone looking for fiddle lessons in the greater Olympia area, I'll take anyone who's touched a violin before.

In unrelated news, Otter's Holt (Dad, Gerald, and I) has a gig this Saturday! (not public).

After the tropical cyclone devestated Myanmar, Laura Bush "...criticized government leaders for not warning citizens about the storm." Now, obviously it doesn't phase her, but if I was remotely connected to the bush administration, the last thing I would criticize another country for is their storm preparedness. Note: This does not in the least mean that I think Myanmar's military regime is clean and squeaky.

pharyngula, normally ready to point out the follies and bizarre credulities of Creationists, bemoaned ridiculous new-agie mumbo jumbo in Portland - without apparently checking up enough to see that the whole thing is a conceptual art project, and a pretty damn good one. About half the commenters start foaming at the mouth, but a few stay sane. Abysmal lack of fact checking due to too much anti-CAM credulity, or poor reading comprehension? I'll overlook it this once since it's finals weeks and one can't expect professors to be sane during finals week.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have for your perusal several fine specimens of the Ovine persuasion, who feel themselves lost, adrift - bereft of identity.

I need names for these sheep. I need them by the first week of March, so that I can have them ready to bring to a gallery. I'm looking for funny, silly, cute sobriquets or captions.

"What's in it for me?" I hear you ask. Besides my undying appreciation, a PRINT! If, after my highly subjective and no-doubt alcohol fueled judging process, I decide to use a name which you suggested, I shall send a high-quality print of the named piece(s) to your domicile.

( The flock )

It might not be speedy (sheep aren't, as a rule) - I won't send out a print until I'm happy with the quality. I certainly won't be making any from these snapshots (currently I'm leaning towards paying my good neighbor Steve over at Vento Photographyto make the dig files - he makes my art look good.

Only two pieces already have names - "Stargrazing" and "I don't know - how did you get here?" If that helps you out any.

Since so many of you...er, a few of you....er, bluwyngz...have asked what I've been up to artistically lately, here you go! Hot off the drawing/painting table, finished within the hour, 5"x7" acrylic.

( BEHOLD! MY OPUS! )

I really need to do some coding, and I'm really looking forward to installing KotOR, and I suppose I ought to eat soon, but I'm going to go start another painting instead. Boo. Ya.


EDIT: Apparently phalo blue doesn't come out of carpet.

It's that perfect crisp shiny kind of autumn day, and I took myself, some postcards bound for Japan, and a few frame-less art pieces downtown to run errands. My print of Hangover by Justin Hillgrove is now at the shop awaiting it's frame, and my wallet is $50 lighter (it would have been $100, but I had a gift cert for acting as shop translator awhile back). Now I go to the website and see that he's offering stretched canvas giclee for $100 - damn, I could have had a limited run hangable pieces for less than my little paper print will have cost to frame. Oh well...

I also stopped in at Radiance while I was downtown. I didn't mean to, but on the way from the post office to the bus station I walked by Jefferson and Legion, and therefore Planned Parenthood, and every single corner was staked out by multiple people on both sides of the abortion debate. The shock of the mutilated fetus pictures was such that I immediately had to run to the most feminist, goddess-worshiping, lesbian-owned shop in town and spend upwards of thirty bucks, just to bring my day back into balance.

Seriously, though - I feel really sorry for the PP patients, especially the ones there for other services. Come on, people - the majority of people there are getting their bc prescriptions, annuals, and STD checks, and they have to walk through THAT. For the record, I'm anti-abortion but pro-choice, which is to say that I think it's nasty but should be legal. Really, we ought to be focused more on avoiding the whole unwanted pregnancy thing entirely, but that wouldn't have gone over well on the street-corner (I'd have more sympathy with the anti-abortion protesters if they were PRO birth control, and if they weren't, y'know, such god-awful jerks).

Bile aside, I saw Celia (of the days of yore at Columbia street session) in Radiance and Erik in Otto's (He came out from behind the counter to hug me, prompting the other lady in line to complain that he never hugged HER. So he did. I think she was a bit surprised...). He has a car now and pointed out gleefully that he could abscond with me. Wish more people threatened to abscond with me...

So that's a beautiful day, a nice walk, and chance encounters with two friends, none of which I would have enjoyed if I'd had a car.

This weekend...

I pretty-much finished a painting I've been working on for years, which already has a buyer lined up.

I finished and delivered a postcard/invitation design  job.

I did some figure-drawing (from photos).

I attended a Jason Webley concert and left with CDs.

I went on a couple-hours long bike ride.

I regrouted half the kitchen counter.



Of course, when a client called late Sunday night to say she was concerned with how little progress I'd made on her project, it was THE project I hadn't worked on all weekend. Can't win 'em all...

Immediately after I posted that long-ass project list, I sat down out in the sun and worked happily at a totally different, unlisted project, for an hour. That was kind of silly.

BUT, now I have a colored cartoon to work from for the my fishhook painting ("cartoon" in this case, is the sketch used as reference/exploration for a painting, not something by Disney). It's only a pale, poorly drawn imagining of what the splendid actual oil painting will be,* but bluwyngz has been asking me to put up some art, so ( here it is. )

The image came to me out of the blue one evening, then the details were inspired by the Yeats poem "The Song of Wandering Angus" -

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.



*I HOPE.