Skulltoons

Stick for you

2011-03-21T22:41:00.000-07:00

I've been writing a lot and posting pretty much none of it. I've been painting just a little lately but mostly I've been drawing a lot and ... well okay, I haven't been posting that stuff either. On the upside, I have a lot of drawings that I'll be dropping on the site. Some will be typically whimsical, others will be typically whimsical with a darker edge. At least that's what I'll be aiming for.

I'll start with this one.

I'm posting two versions just to show what I'm doing. I'm doing a little clean up on the pencil drawings and just laying in some flats to show a little hint of depth.

Cruel House Gremlin

2011-01-10T21:10:00.000-08:00

My wedding band had been missing for ages; something like 18 months or more now. – I set it aside back in a hard moment – but I couldn't find it later, and I couldn't find it after.

I moved things, I looked everywhere or at least everywhere it wasn’t. I never stopped keeping an eye out for it and after a few months I began to really pine for it. Every time I would work in the studio or straighten out my car or my dresser or a book shelf I’d sort, reorganize or just move a thing or two around hoping it might be right there. But it never turned up. I looked in every little treasure chest or seeming hiding place, behind furniture, under socks, in pockets but I knew I wouldn’t have hidden it, just put it down somewhere and … and now I couldn't find it. I looked in all the places I'd already looked because I worried that it was right in front of me or just at the corner of my eye but it never would be there.

I’d have dreams sometimes about finding it in some little nook or cranny in the house and when I’d wake up I’d go looking in the spot from my dreams.

Nothing.

I couldn't understand how I would have misplaced it so badly but only remembered how upset I’d been when I took it off and so little about where I’d put it. It’s been an aching sadness to me to be without it for so long. I never spoke about it. I didn't want to bring up the pain and as the months rolled on I started even feeling guilty about misplacing it.

You put it on my hand more than 20 years ago and in one bad moment I’d been careless with something precious to me. It’s been hard to come to terms with the idea of never seeing it again.

This morning I went to pull a handful of change out of that little white ceramic dish on top of my dresser and there, on top of all the pennies and nickels, in plain sight as if it had just been set there the night before… was my wedding band.

Not much worse for the wear, one little diamond missing from its setting. Was it always like that? … Probably so. Maybe some will-o-the-wisp or gremlin exacted a price for pulling it out of the ether and returning it to me.

Either way, gremlins or simple good fortune … or you – I am relieved to have it back on my hand.

It feels like forgiveness.

Monsters in my dreams

2011-01-04T22:05:00.000-08:00

A very old car comes chugging up to the curb in a cloud of smoke, the echo of flapping footsteps coming toward me from a dark alley. A wet slap, slap, slap on concrete. A small slick creature pads into the light and glances out to the street. The corners of his mouth curl upward in an self satisfied grin... as if he had something to do with ... something. He leans back, looks in my direction and says... "Well?"

A rat runs between us and out into the street. Now I wonder if the creature was speaking to me, or the rat.

No idea what this dream could possibly mean.

expression of frustration

2010-11-17T23:25:00.000-08:00

I Had to build a new PC because when one thing doesn't work it's really important and only fair to make sure nothing else does either. So in that spirit of fairness: now that the new computer works wonderfully, the scanner is busted and none of my successfully installed and painfully expensive art software will even launch -- I can't get new artwork onto the PC and can't clean up existing artwork - arrgh!

If I wasn't home already I'd go home now. It's all "unrecoverable" on this end ...
So after posting another silly animal rhyme, I'm surrendering. So the little leopard below is a gesture drawing snatched from my sketchbook files.

I'm signing off with an unedited raw expression of frustration... we'll just pretend I've signed it DanG!

Leopard Feasts

2010-11-17T22:22:00.000-08:00

I sneak upon my hapless food,

On grassy plain or deepest wood,

I pounce and play and bite and eat

And then I have to clean my feet.

Leopard feasts and chewing toes,

That’s what I get I just suppose,

A foolish whim, a wasted wish

To never wash another dish.

One of These

2010-05-23T22:37:00.001-07:00

I think if I were one of these,
I'd always seem about to sneeze,
I'd notice neither dawns nor dusks,
I'd only notice my two tusks.
I'd mark each change in length and size,
As my tusks curled towards my eyes.
We'd talk of tusks to pass the time.
(Though I'd care less of yours than mine).

Should I dread them? No pig knows
I know I would, were I one of those.

Inconsolable creatures

2010-05-10T20:38:00.000-07:00

The Alonely beasts are inconsolable.
I've been running into a lot of them lately.
... possibly, I've been one of them lately.

A few weekends ago I spent a few hours making couple of paintings from a series of small sketches. There are at least 4 more drawings of these little creatures. I haven't quite decided how many of them to paint or how much of their story to tell. If I post the sketches it may be a sign that I've moved on to something else.

Hugger Magnets - sweet!

2010-04-16T00:24:00.000-07:00

Hi. it's a short one today.
Managing lots of peeps can be draining.
Then off to spend 3 hours with a my favorite bar owner -- finalizing a design for the on-again off-again & now on again Anniversary tiki-Mug design. Tomorrow its time to call the manufacturer-again. I'm reminding myself to stay humble after my last frustrating go-round. The mantra on this gig will be that low expectations have a very short fall.

Dropping in a note:. Hugger has made his way onto little refrigerator magnets. Can T-Shirts be far behind? (Each magnet is 3 1/2 x 2.1/4 inches)

fresh monsters this weekend I hope & a new acrylic painting 2 weeks out.

Swan Song -

2010-04-14T22:22:00.000-07:00

My company holds this event annually -- I always bring a sketch pad. I've never been comfortable in rah-rah situations. Call me shy. Anyway, I usually get about 5 or 6 fun little oddball drawings done. Often I see metaphors for how much fun I'm not having. In this case the phrase "oh just go ahead and eat me!" must have been whistling through the chimes in my head. Someone said it looks like he's singing.. . "Okay, that's fine", I said. I'll call it 'swan song'. At least for me this passes as having a great time. It also passes for creative collaboration.

Old cat is still fine. still wary.
quick unflattering picture of him.

Cat Headaches and Lonely Monsters

2010-04-14T00:12:00.000-07:00

A handful of lonely monsters...

Feeling a little goofy...It's late and I'm punchy.

I have a really old cat that needs to be fed a little pill twice a day. He looks at me funny when I approach him now. I don't blame him I guess, but we tend to size each other up more often and more carefully lately. The longer look tends to make me believe that he's thinking about things.. Not in the way I do but still, there's that look. He's justifiably wary after months of this routine; after all, this could be a finger down the throat moment or a hug and snug moment; he can't tell. But that's not it. He's thinking about something. Inscrutable; I suppose he simply won't be scruted.

Tonight the pilling of the cat made me think about something I read a while back. That I should talk to the veterinarian if my cat experiences "headaches, drowsiness, dizziness, mild nausea, or vomiting, itching, muscle, joint, or nerve pain; swelling of the lips, or hair loss when giving him this medication". It goes on about "other side effects" but lets just try to deal with the ones they were specific about. Emphasizing again, that I should talk to my veterinarian about any side effects that seem unusual or bothersome to the animal. Heck let's just examine the first one.

How in Hades bathrobe am I supposed to know when the cat has a headache?

Cat Headaches?

It got me thinking. Given the list of symptoms and side effects I think I'm on to definitive proof that somewhere, in some hunchback filled laboratory, there is, at least one, talking cat. A miserable talking cat for sure but still...can't you almost hear it/him/her?

"Jeez Doc, this one is the worst. That Tapazole sh*t gives me such a headache, and I'm feeling a little buzzed too. But not in a good way, you know? It's more like in a dizzy, mildly nauseating way. ..Say Doc, aren't you supposed to be writing this down? Why the hell am I even talking to you man?"

A bunch of those side effects are weird, unknowable, anthropomorphic or just common cat behavior.Right? I mean really how do you know he's itchy? You mean itchier than usual? If he's nauseated but not vomiting how would you know? ... and do they mean vomiting more than the usual quantity and frequency of bile soaked hair return common among cats? And how am I supposed to tell the difference between him having joint pain as opposed to nerve pain... and ... for crying out loud, lips? Swelling on the lips? Cat lips? I don't even know how to think about that one? Do cats even have lips?

The whole thing starts to feel weird. It's like asking me to notice if the cat's mustache is thinning or if his political views have changed dramatically and suddenly.

I'm looking right in his eyes. I'm sure one of us has a headache.

Thinking hard in an empty room

2010-03-24T22:35:00.000-07:00

Pondering a blank page in a dark room.

If no ideas come at least I can spend a few minutes evolving my theories on procrastinating. Seems like that's the only thing I really practice lately.

... On the other hand I'm really getting good at it.

Good Doggy

2010-03-21T20:46:00.000-07:00

Been a long long time since I've worked on this site. Apologies to anyone that still notices.
Let's have another whack at it.
The baby puffer fish passed away...
So,we tried again.
The 2nd baby puffer fish passed away.
we really love animals and it took a long time to get over the guilt that comes with losing a pet. (especially something as cute as a baby puffer!)
Then our 10 year old rabbit died. Sigh.
Eventually we tried a new baby puffer fish...
He's now 4 months old. happy and growing. We are not as hopeless as we feared. Add my pet depression to a long series of futile art projects that took lots of energy but amounted to little and that is about as much of an excuse as I can manage for letting this slide. Now that I'm less bummed and refocusing on my own art projects let's see what happens. 1st entry is Good Doggy.

Baby Pufferfish

2009-08-13T22:32:00.000-07:00

I spent the rest of July working on the secret project, and consuming myself with setting up a saltwater playpen for a bouncing baby pufferfish. Pickles arrived in late July shipped FedEx naturally. I'm glad to say we are all happy and so far thriving. Pardon the species confusion but it turns out he's kind of a night owl. ... the nightlife in there is no more lively at 10 pm than it is at 7 am but I'll tell you this; he sleeps the days away like a frat fish that's been drinking till the sun comes up... which I suppose he has been. Cute little hard drinking fishy.

Aztec Housecat

2009-07-12T20:54:00.000-07:00

Busy, Busy weekend. After doing real artwork for my secret project, I decided to spend a little time goofing around with a very old sketch in photoshop.
Aztec Housecat! ...
We recently adopted a kitten and we're suffering the problem of Alarm-Clock-Kat. Seems the little guy shares some genetics with roosters. At the crack of dawn he goes looking for a high point, usually right under my chin. Extending his kitten claws into my chest he yowls at me till I get up; which is pretty quickly now that I think about it. I don't think he even knows for sure why he does it., And I'm sure I don't know either.

A couple people have suggested that I put Hugger on a T-Shirt?

Tiki Bar with small cat

2009-07-04T15:58:00.001-07:00

Oh look Jasmine the teacup cat is already waiting in the tiki bar! ... and waiting for the bartender to show up!

A Tempting Brew

2009-07-04T15:01:00.000-07:00

A Tempting Brew!

Happy 4th of July!
As promised, more art! Today it's another tiki flavored entry.

This weekend I've been trying to squeeze out a small pile of hours to work on a few self imposed deadlines. But we're heading into the early evening now so I'm officially jumping back into BBQ & beer mode. It's time to crank up the lounge tunes, open the little Tiki bar and mix up a tempting brew of my own ... may need to run out for limes.

What Grief Looks Like

2009-06-29T21:52:00.000-07:00

Welcome back. Folks, it's time to play a new game called America's Parental Sociopaths:

Okay Mr. Jackson, you're our first contestant. Are you ready?
That's very kind of you, but no sir, Anna Nichole's mother won the coin toss so she'll be playing after you in round two, and apparently something's come up and Mr. Madhoff won't be able to join us for another 150 years.
Great then. We're ready to play? Okay, here's the scene. Your son has just died and someone asks you how you're feeling.
Mr. Jackson, show our audience the human emotion we call ... "Grief"!
...I'm sorry, were you ready? ... What?
Well, no actually. No. That's not really it... no.
Would you like another try? Okay then Mr. Jackson, can you please show our audience the feeling we call "Sad"?
Um...Mr. Jackson maybe you don't quite understand the rules. Perhaps if I explain them again?...
No, No that really wasn't very close at all. As a matter of fact that last one looked pretty much the same as your "Grief" expression.
Well, yes I agree, they are similar, but you don't actually seem like you're very sad.
... Oh, I see.

This Thursday MJ's dad showed up at the BET awards in LA. He was interviewed red-carpet style. A picture of him showed up from the event via Reuters. Sigh... As soon as I saw the picture, the cynic in me just couldn't let it slide.

Photo: Joe Jackson arrives at the BET awards on Sunday night (Reuters/ Phil McCarten)

art returns later this week.

Hugger

2009-06-24T21:12:00.001-07:00

You know who you are, and Hugger is here for you.

One of Us Gooble Gobble One of Us

2009-06-23T18:24:00.000-07:00

On another note -Several family members have coerced me into creating a facebook page. Little sis said it would behoove me to do so. That sounded like some kind of threat and as Tony said, you'll never see it coming. So I did it.
So, okay, lil Sis you can call off the kneecapping crew now. I hooved, even though I'm terribly private in general and I've got a dread of the new social networking religion. It's all good I suppose, but it's getting crowded in my turtle shell. I'll feel the mountains calling me any minute now.

I'm sure there is some major reason this is all happening in June but I'll be damned if I can figure it out.This month has been seriously chock full of reconnecting. It's as if every thread in the cloth of me is being tugged. I suppose for me it all becomes fodder & inspiration for art & those colorful dreams.

There's a great quote, from a very old movie. I think it goes ..."one of us, one of us, gooble gobble, one of us"

minor regrets

2009-06-23T18:13:00.000-07:00

Apologies to anyone that read the earlier post of "Nighthare". Turns out last night instead of saving a draft in the middle of the night I posted the sloppy and uncorrected 1st draft. Cutting and pasting a word document into HTML was a clumsy way to get the copy into the blog but the bigger mistake was cutting and pasting it from the wrong draft of the little story. Well if anyone read it. Sorry. at least I hope you enjoyed the crazed rabbit picture .. and if anyone read it and thinks the re-post is worse then I have no sorrow to offer, I wasted it all being sorry about it already.

NightHare

2009-06-23T17:58:00.000-07:00

A giant rabbit perched on the roof across the street. Silhouetted in the moonlight, its head, featureless in the dark, turns towards me. Noticing. I can't see its eyes from here but it's clearly watching me. Specific and dreadful. There's a quick whoosh and chunk; sounds of a spear thrown from somewhere unknown, drawing a black line in the moonlight, making its own slashing silhouette into the chest of the thing. I hold my breath at the sight of the beast reeling back, sliding behind the crest of the roof before toppling backwards, disappearing with a brushy crash into shrubs behind the fence.

And for a moment there is just the night sky, the house, the fence, the dew soaked grass under my feet. Everything is placid, domestic. Harmless. The moon is setting toward the cold night's horizon but still, I'm staring.

Suddenly, the long inanimate pause is ripped into predatory life when the creature heaves itself over the fence and begins bounding across the street. Arrow straight for me; red-eyed, spit flying from it's fanged mouth... thump-thump, thump-thump, breath rasping but otherwise silent before raising up and stretching out in one final open mouthed leap -- springing at me as I fall backwards into wakefulness.

So of course, after scratching out a handful of drawings I went downstairs and opened the front curtains and stared at the house across the street as the nighthare replayed over and over again.It's no wonder I never went back to sleep till the sun began to rise.

Where's my nightlight?

Garnish With Lazy Frog

2009-06-13T21:18:00.000-07:00

I want to send big blushing thanks to everyone that commented or shared my site and my artwork recently.

Rather than blather on about which aspect of my psyche is driving the skull bus this week, I decided to keep it simple and just drop in a few preliminary sketches for some of the stuff I'm working on. Each of these is getting jammed through the design grinder in my head on its way to being fleshed out and painted. ... or ripped to shreds & discarded in a fit of frustration.

1st one is called "... and garnish with one lazy frog."

The next one has only a working title for me because the whole design isn't finished yet ...the design is getting saved simply as "Bear Wave"

The 3rd one inspired by work-a-day thrills could end up being be called, "Ask me how my day was" ... or possibly just "Ouch"

Who's Next

2009-06-13T21:03:00.001-07:00

I'm finally posting another painting! I've been asked what the creature is supposed to be... and the best I can do is shrug my shoulders. This one is supposed to be hungry; more or less.

Bad Dreams 2 - Indulging the Darkness

2009-06-07T08:20:00.000-07:00

After some direct, humbling & flattering encouragement about showing the juxtaposition of the dark & light swings in my art I decided to clean up & post another one of the sketches from that black mood. Keep in mind; what usually happens is that I claw myself out of of some gasping nightmare in the middle of the night, grab a Sharpie and try to tear a few of the images out of my head by scratching them onto a page. It's all pretty rough, & impulsive, and pardon the unfortunate imagery but creatively it's a lot like throwing up. It's cathartic and there's a lot of relief in getting it over with. It's usually a miserable, scary, wrenching and traumatic experience but with art you can't just brush your teeth afterwards.

Dark and light aspects of my work usually come through much more subtly in the benign monsters that I've been painting, like the little Sad Monster in the shadows of his room (wait for him in the slideshow) or in the Canon Beast painting on Charles' Otherbeasts blog.

I've always been reluctant to give too clear a voice to the to the screamers and horrors of the toothy, jump-from-the-shadows stuff. I suppose we all have twitchy things that have been haunting our dark dreams since childhood. Then our childhood closets get populated with beasts that are fuled by our grown-up fears and passions and it can get a little overwhelming. I confess to metephorically needing to leave the light on once in a while.

Great Promotion for A Field of Colours

2009-06-04T21:47:00.000-07:00

One quick little addition.. do yourselves a favor and check out this great little promotion for Charles Lennox' A Field of Colours and after you've done that pop over Keyhole Magazine and buy issue 7. Not only will you get a free copy of Charles' story but you'll help support another great venue for some terrific writers. Oh heck, be extra super supportive and subscribe to both ML Press AND order Keyhole #7 too.

Dollyfly - odd photo

2009-06-03T23:44:00.000-07:00

This one was just an eerie little photo op and fortunately enough this one happened while I had a camera with me.

I looked over at a pile of leaves strewn between a few trees and a cinder block wall and there was a doll's head. Her body; nowhere in sight. I steadied the camera and pulled the focus to catch the surreal little scene. Whatever she was when she was whole was a mystery, what her painted expression used to mean was lost to whatever carelessness or malice separated her from her body. So now her expression took on a whole new meaning. Her glance; furtive, her lips; tense and pursed. A fly walks across her face and it feels like she's holding her breath.

interlude for terrible inspirations

2009-06-03T21:37:00.000-07:00

I Actually pulled back creatively for several days back there. Only dark scratchy things were coming out of me.
Troubles and irritating human stuff began to overwhelm me. The work days couldn't be over soon enough and I seriously felt that was a perfect bookend for my nights. I mean, why shouldn't my days match my snarling nightmares? Stark, colorless, & frightening; sleeping was becoming as undesirable and dreadful to me as dragging myself to work. Someone asked me if I were in the doldrums and I told them not unless the doldrums have knives. Any way at the peak of that dark swing I was making dark rough sketches of the odd images barking around in my dreams. I finished one of those sketches and dropped it in the blog as a tribute to terrible inspirations.

As the dark mood started it's back swing someone close to me wrote me about bitterness welling up inside her so terribly she couldn't stand it sometimes. The unusual part was that she brought it up literally moments after I had read an article about Psych doctors putting together an updated DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for all of us that aren't hardworking Head Shrinkers out there). At any rate, there are ongoing discussions about whether bitterness should now be considered a mental disorder. After reading it ... she wrote me back simply ..." Post Traumatic Embitterment, I have that!"

The article kind of sums up by describing the problem as not being able to '...let things go'.

We talked alot about life frequently sucking & happiness being unfairly elusive. Are we all just accidents of birth and semi-carless choices? The whole thing can seem like such dumb luck. The guy right behind me gets the winning lottery ticket. Hell, my mom could have married Robert Blake... okay, bad example but you get the idea. We all feel like we deserve to be happy and we can grow bitter because happiness is pretty fickle. It's painful to accept that happiness is not a state of being; it can't be, it's too damned hard to hold onto. So, I think happiness takes work and like love, it's a deliberate act. It's something you do not something you are. We pursue it. ... And in my case I struggle to pursue it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm talking about a patch of bad weather emotionally, what I'm going through is barely even related to true depression. Like me bitching about slivers and cheering myself up with Hello Kitty band aids to someone that has a lion chewing off a limb.

For me, I spent a few days talking to the people that matter, wrestling through a weeks worth of having my subconscious bludgeon my conscious with brutal metaphors and eventually my clouds began to lift.

Still, if they do invent a pill for post traumatic embitterment, I'm buying some, especially if they make them taste like crunchy Cheetos.

Bad Dreams

2009-06-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

Small interuption in charming art due to nightmares

Not So Mysterious Past

2009-05-19T17:31:00.001-07:00

Today is 5/18 and when I looked at my old posts I found a mystery entry from 4/26 siting there. A mostly blank page reminding me again how messy I've been with this poor thing. Sure, I could delete it but why not just hop in the way-back machine and and drag it to the present. So, I'll treat it like a reminder that I should have posted that day.

As long as I'm time traveling back there I should pop over to a sports book and bet the Lakers win the 2nd round in 7.

... Just a quick post of a happy little dino in the woods.

Slightly Wounded

2009-05-09T21:02:00.001-07:00

Star Trek - was awesome good fun. I hesitate to spoil anything for anyone that reads this but since wikipedia prides itself on spoiling every last detail I think my only reason to hold back my thoughts ... well damn it I can't really think of a good reason so, I'll just hold back long enough to not ruin anything for my friends.

Spent most of last week with back spasms. One word for that. Yeeeouch! Avoid em if you can, they are not fun.

just squeaked out one little toon to post...knocked out while I was watching the Laker's win against Houston. Great to see Jordan Farmar having a great game, eager to see if Andrew Bynum can stay on track for a whole game. Really sorry to see Yao Ming come up lame - and T-Mac standing on the sidelines. I can only imagine how great this series would be if Houston and LA were full strength.

Mine for Me

2009-05-04T22:19:00.000-07:00

X-men Origins Wolverine - was a guilty pleasure. Like chocolate cake for guys. It was terrific, and I just love this kind of movie when it doesn't suck. Anyway, simply put. Good News Everyone, way more things blow up in this movie than did in Hugh Jackman's other movie, Australia.

As far as this week's art installment goes, I almost regret naming this painting "Mine for Me" because I can't help thinking that naming a painting like this fills in too many of the blanks for the observer.This painting made perfect sense to me... but as I've shown it to people I've heard at least 3 unusual little stories about what's going on here. They're all wrong of course, but why spoil it for them.The important thing about art is of course, does it match the couch or the bedspread?

I spoke to a friend recently about how responding to the creative impulse demands an new internal self discipline that is really difficult to master. We don't think about it much but first school, then grades, college, work, and job security all ingrain a self discipline on each of us. Butt once we're separated from that enforced self discipline, that fear, that's when creative people have a real hard time giving the same level of effort and energy to the thing they love doing. This is probably true of most people but creative people suffer because their talent is being ignored. Isn't it amazing how people work so hard at something they hate doing and are so lazy about something they love doing?
I am really speaking for myself here. Hate work, love art. My job, like everyone Else's I'd guess, expects focus, concentration, fixation on detail, striving at perfection and all that other cliche work-a-day BS. Then I come home tired and make excuses about why I'm not painting. I don't have high hopes for beating back my nature but I'll keep staggering along - sometimes just aiming at creative fulfillment can get me through the doldrums & other complicated bits.

The next couple weeks I'll be off my painting schedule and aiming in a slightly different direction. In a manner of speaking, I've been challenged to try and come up with a quality Tiki mug designn for a big anniversary occasion, with any luck it could end up even being embroidered on a Jacket and all manner of flotsam . Actually I found myself sort of being double-dog-dared to come up with a better idea. It'll be fun.
The little painting here isn't related to the double-dog-dare situation. More as things develop.

FrogThing

2009-04-19T21:57:00.000-07:00

I'm not really sure what I want to call this frogthing-on-blue painting, but naming them has never been my biggest concern. I have 3 new paintings in the pipeline right now, each in various stages of finished. So, on the upside, I'm still basically holding to my one-per-week goal ... but let's be clear that by 'basically' I mean to say 'not at all'. I am starting new paintings each week but I'm not finishing one before I start the next. Being fussy about my results and technique obstacles are my latest excuses, I suppose, and actually that's kind of a new aspect to my usual procrastinating methods. Still, having a bunch of partly done paintings on the table all at the same time keeps my studio colorful. Cluttered but colorful. The new ones have howling monkeys, tiki's, very odd rabbits, and puffer fish.

Lately work has me dragging (...as opposed to the effect work has on every other person I know) and even though I consider myself lucky to have art as an outlet, I'm really cramping up with cabin fever. I'm craving mountains, forests, the call of the highway, and a hundred other adventures but I have no idea where I'll be finding any vacation hours.

On another note this May looks like it's going to be geek heaven for me at the movies with X-Men, Star Trek, Terminator and Up all promising piles of distraction. I'm easy to please with this sort of stuff but even I have my doubts about the Terminator franchise. On the other hand, maybe it will be the best one ever. As a Californian I really I can't think of any thing that wouldn't be improved by NOT having Arnold Schwarzenegger in it.

last note - Molly, thanks for the encouragement, I'll try to post more often.

Busy Few Months

2009-03-16T21:27:00.000-07:00

Wow! It's been a busy few weeks for me. I've been off the blog because I've been doing a lot of painting.

A month or so ago a friend of mine gave me the opportunity to illustrate a story of his. One of his pieces is being published over at Smokelong.com this month and he asked me to create a piece of artwork to be submitted alongside his short story. I was immensely flattered and jumped at the chance to come up with a piece for him. and of course I'm grateful to everyone at Smokelong Quarterly for accepting my work for publication.

Somewhere this month you will see a wonderful piece by Charles Lennox called Dirtclouds, you will also see a painting by me. Go there now, read many stories, enjoy many visual treats. Sincerely , while you're there, take some time to check out all the other amazing work.

Anyway, since I did the piece for Charles, I've thrown myself back into painting. I've got dozens of sketchbooks with hundreds of painting designs and illustrations all screaming for attention, canvas and color. So, over the last several weeks I've been committed to finishing a painting at the rate of about one per week. It might seem slow to the real painters, prolific talents like Tim Biskup or Shag, but I am finally finding a way to start carving out the time to do more.

Having said that much, I admit that the complexities of reproduction, color correction and protecting my work are delaying my ability to comfortably post them. Today I'm going to drop in a tiny little painting. The nearly noir beasty up there doesn't have a title really. The other drawing called "Name this drink after me!" is hopefully going to end up as a successful painting as well. As the weeks roll by I'll drop in some of the other finished paintings. I'm working out the details of custom framing and giclee printing so I can have quality prints, and accurate color in the web published versions.

More to follow. perhaps even something more interesting to read. Ooh, can't wait.

No fan of no fan

2009-01-13T20:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, today is hot outside, 87 degrees in January. Freaking climate change.
The reason I complain is that there is suddenly no fan in my Toyota Rav 4 and this effectively means no AC. ...Do you have any idea what this will do to me? Do you? It's a curse really, I'll transform into a sweaty, uncomfortable, grumpy car monster and the world will have to deal with my hot, steaming, daylight, overcooked savagery. The thin veneer of my humanity will drip off me like candle wax and I'll be forced into the deep cool night. Nocturnal and perpetually bleary, drained by discomfort and lack of sleep, we might be talking about serious monstely behavior.

Maybe I should call the Toyota dealership.

Later...

Well, the dealership says I should check all the fuses and if it's not one of those then it's either the 'resistor' or the blower. Naturally, these would be parts they'd have to order and they'll need a couple days advance warning to get them. Only about $75 for the parts he said... that's joyful.
I'm tempted to think that since the thing is not blowing then it's a faulty blower. I like the symmetry of that problem and the directness with which it gets fixed. Replace the blower. Ah yes, smoothly done.

Then, of course there's the possibility that I have a bad resistor. Whatever the hell that is. I don't like it. Resisting or even not resisting doesn't seem to have anything to do with the lack of blowing going on here. That's just the kind of car thing that feels like a scam, like being told you have a bad whoozurmajangy. Probably costs a lot, comes in a small box and takes 4 mechanics of dubious residential status 3 hours to put wherever the hell it goes.

You know, even when they get it done and you've paid the bill and it works again you'd never say 'Ah, now it's resisting like it's supposed to, feel that? Yessiree, that thing is resisting showroom-style. That's some new-car-resisting you're feeling there. Honey, go get the neighbors, just wait till they feel this resisty thing going'.

No, you would not say that. What you'd say is, 'Thank jebus! They've fixed the blower!'

Best if they never even mentioned the resistor.

I guess I'll go home and look at my fuses... as soon as it cools off.

Check out Otherbeasts

2009-01-08T21:42:00.000-08:00

...by the way I encourage anyone that enjoys authentically terrific writing (as opposed the chatty nature of a blog) to pop over to http://otherbeasts.blogspot.com/. Charles Lennox is a deeply talented writer and links his published work on his blog. (He'll also draw your attention to some other great writers in his network). ... not to mention that he's graciously been dropping some of my work on his blog.

Skulltoons 1st crack at it

2009-01-08T19:31:00.000-08:00

1st crack at blogging.
Let's see how this goes. I expect this to mostly consist of me taking the opportunity to jam a few pieces of my artwork into the ether.
...well, that and indulge my delusions about posting my perspective about all sorts of things. Kind of like the half baked rummy at the corner of the bar that can't help popping off every time he has some little epiphany.

Still, I'll try to enjoy myself.