some days …

I am over come with melencholy. I drive down a random highway and see a generic house sitting in a generic neighborhood. I look in the window from a half a mile away and see a light on and imagine the life in side is blissful and perfect. Everything is different than where I am now but the same some how. I feel like these other people are living a perfect life where everything is in order and the mom and dad have always been married and full of love. On weekends they grill out and do leasure activities together. everyone laughs. no one cries and pain is not everyday life.

I believe this all stems from my expectation of perfection at all times. things will never be perfect what ever that is …

most drug addicts and alcoholics have this same expectation of perfection. they have something in life that is not perfect and they escape from that with drug abuse …

all are welcome …

Saw “A funny thing happened on the way to the forum” last night with my son at Purcell Marian. The play was sort of loosely done with no orchestra, so some songs were preformed a cappella (which is really brave BTW), but it was funny and everyone smiled the whole time. very good to see people happy and having a good time. Everyone was accepted.

the day before I heard of a kid who tragically tried to end his life because he was not being accepted …

A kid texted his friends at Mariemont High School saying he was going to kill himself because he was outted on facebook. He then did. from what I know he hung himself and was found still alive, so he went to the hospital. Where he is getting help. But this should not happen.

At Purcell the kids were all different shapes and sizes and one of the main characters was either gay or played a gay type character, but everyone was respectful. and happy. and entertained.

we need to support the good places and neglect the bad.

The thinking of elitism in cultures means some people don’t make the cut. What about them? are they supposed to just lay down and die? Sorry america I wasn’t born 6 feet tall, and have a bald head, I am not your ideal, but you can fuck off! I am not going anywhere. The truth is I know people who “made the cut” who are horrible useless people. They walk around thinking they are better than everyone without producing one use full thing. I may not be completely use full but I don’t cut down other people so I can be the tallest tree.

When I was growing up, people used to smoke pot and chill out. Now everyone seems to work out and beat people up. People used to tell people to mellow out and take a chill pill. now people are pumped up on steroids injecting poison into their foreheads and cutting off parts of their body. even the “new bohemians” are gauging out their ears, permanently marking up their skin and sticking metal through their skin. how the hell did we get here? where are we going? how long til  we get there?

anyway, venting completed, time to make the donuts …

we all have to work but we all like to play …

here is the art for my christmas card this year … I always make a christmas card … it gives me a chance to create something without worrying about it, or making it for other people to enjoy … so I get to do something I like for once in the year … see what I can do if I don’t have to get paid … I have some friends that do better work than me, for work I do a lot of just garbage to make a paycheck … now garbage is a subjective term, one mans trash is another mans treasure, so the things I don’t appreciate are worth a lot to other people … thank god or I would starve! we all have to work but we all like to play, this is what I think is fun. I created this without any reference, models, photo shoots, email, google search, clip art, markers, paint brushes. Just a pencil and paper, and computer. I used transparent layers in illustrator to create the water color looking color. and layered it on a page from an old book I scanned into the computer. I like old books

Old books were better written, more real, people took that shit seriously. new books are dummed down, pathetic attempts to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I feel like if I “get” a book it must not be very good cause I am not that smart … on the other hand I get mad when something is written using complex vocabulary, but when deciphered it doesn’t make any sense. They contain no logic. A lot of high school teachers are excellent at this, if they don’t know something they have 30 smart ass teens siting there to give them shit about it. So it is easier to bluff. Sight some journal from a unwritten organization. say things like “we will cover this later”. give the kids soo much homework they can’t pay attention any more. all of these tactics are being used by the corporate world, they sepreate you from information with out ever saying you can’t have it. Its a giant shell game …

all this came to mind when ….

ok so, I got divorced in aug, my heath insurance (A) said, you can’t take her off until she is covered by another carrier, the other carrier (B) wouldn’t cover her until I got a letter saying she was dropped from insurance A… sooo I decided to take another shot at taking her off my coverage, and they said you can only make a change in your plan during the enrollment period or 30 days after the life change event … which nobody told me until 5 minutes ago … the enrollment period was in nov? To find this out I had to wade through the “unreasonable obstruction” phone system to find this out, and my phone provided CIncinnati Bell wouldn’t work on my side of the building so I had to call them in the lobby ….
so Happy Birthday Kathy you are covered until the next enrollment period …

There needs to be a law called “Unreasonable Obstruction” – this would be a fine placed on any company who employes tactics to make services un-useable. like poor phone systems with voice recognition software that doesn’t work, multiple entering of ID numbers & Passwords just to get basic information, providing operators with appropriate mastery of languages,all of this has become standard operating procedure and I am fed up with it. REPOST this if you agree…

pop star!

katy Perry is cute and writes some good songs, so she gets a pass from me as far as artists go. rock on dear lady, rock … on

 

 

debbie reynolds is adorable

creating artwork is something you never get used to. i really admire pictures of debbie reynolds, and like to see her in movies. I have seen her in movies and didn’t know who she was … then all of a sudden you hear about her somewhere and your like “yeah, I really liked her in that … oh and then she was in that as well …”  then I imagine I am in one of those movies walking around with Debbie at an old fair, winning vintage stuffed animals and eating cotton candy all while staying thin, and handsome … and in perfect lighting. the thing that always seperates movies from reality is the lighting, of course there is hundred other things, people don’t talk over each other in movies, they always leave space between words in movies so the person watching can follow along. in real life people talk over top of each other and say what like 20 times until people are sick of trying to hear them. Something else they never do in movies is misunderstand what the other person says. like one person says “pour me another drink jack … ” and the other person thinks he heard “pour me another drink shlack … ” and madness insues .. bla bla bla …

blogs are stupid as well, that is my real point. they are an exercise in narcissism. thinking anyone give two sh1ts about what I write on here is retarded … maybe if I wrote something better … or thought about it better … oh forget it …

 

 

nicki minaj

here is another in this series … famous people portraits .. what and can I say about minaj? she is an up and coming start more famous than most less famous than others … interesting and creative … a stand out in a world of cookie cutter pop stars …

Ginger Snapps

Through a friend of a friend I ran across facebook photos of local burlesque dancer Ginger Snapps. I always liked Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters . but it is hard to find models who are comfortable with thier bodies enough to be a good subject. People tend to get worked up by drawings like this. I am not sure why. I guess that is why I am an artist vs an accountant or politician. There are only so many bowls of fruit and robots a person can draw before it becomes boring. People that draw will continue to draw weather you want them to or not. So at least let us draw something we like … any how…. I hope to keep creating things like this … they would look good in a home …

 

 

 

before computers … everything was done by hand

this is a drawing of a hawk or eagle smiling… it was done with an ink pen on a piece of paper. Line weights were hard to control but most people just used a rapidiograph of varying widths to achieve the differences. there was no %800 percent zoom, so you couldn’t draw anything vanishingly small. In illustrator you can zoom in 3200% or some other ridicules number. This flys in the face of logic. The human eye is unable to see anything that small. it blends shapes together. I imagine someone could create an image that was meant to blend together but that would be a novelty and not the norm. As you can see the points on the corners aren’t laser sharp. things aren’t tweeked to minute perfection. Lines are put approximately where they should be. The computer allows one to move lines after they are put down and move them some more and again and again. creating a cycle of infinite changes. This allows the designer to second guess himself. and second guessing your art means death. None of it makes perfect sense. Hopefully someone will look at it. but other than that it captures a place in time when someone thought this looked cool.

I am always interested and amazed to see what people come up with. From the simplest scribble by a child to a labored over illustration, it tells alot about who made it. A peek into their subconscious mind. I guess that is why people are afraid to create art, they don’t want people to see the real person behind the mask. and that is the ultimate shame.

visual person

I can’t take much more of this …

here is a drawing I made, exploring a “cute” comic character I could exploit and become a millionaire. The process put forth by Disney and others is very formulaic at this point. Most of the characters have small bodies (like a baby) big eyes (like a baby) and are soft and round (like a baby) so I tried to create some characters with that in mind. When you look at how much of this style sells it is hard to ignore and pretend that something else will become the rage and create a marketing landslide. Think about hello kitty, by simply applying this simple graphic to a multitude of products it turns them from mundane to “cute” and worthy of purchase. the only difference between a t-shirt and a hello kitty t-shirt is a few cents of ink arranged in a specific way on the surface and yet that is all it takes. it is the ultimate form of efficiency. A scientist could work a lifetime creating improvements to a t-shirt, using fine cotton, and special blends of materials, create sewing machines with special stitching processes. All to make his t-shirt favored by the masses. But none of these things would do any good. When the proper graphics are applied. the t-shirt becomes a status symbol, or a protest, or a statement. It says something about the person wearing it. If it says abercrombie, or affliction, the ink creates an image in your mind on who this person is. Being hyper aware of this makes it hard for me to wear a t-shirt with something printed on it. If I wear an affliction t-shirt to Buffalo wild wings I might be seen as cool but if I wear it to skips motorcycle junk yard they might look at me as a “fancy boy” and therefor deserving of ridicule. so I try to wear clothes that say nothing at all. which can draw some flack in some circles. but allows me to pass between different social groups without detection.

 

I know I am way over thinking this. but this is how my brain works when left alone…

 

itch my back

I have a couple of binders full of drawings that I have been digitizing. I am less than half way through the first one and I have over a hundred pages scanned. Some of the pages have multiple drawings. I feel like I have draw so many things I should be able to make a digital file of this stuff so I can just pull it up later and I won’t have to draw it again… then I can just go fishing or what ever normal non drawing people do with their free time. maybe watch football. I have never been able to sit through a full football game. I could play one, but sitting on a couch in the air conditioning watching two teams push a ball on a field seems as far from living as I can think of. I do put the game on when I need to sleep. I am sure if people read this blog this might not surprise some and annoy others but it is the truth … I cannot lie.

I forgot about this drawing, I did probably over ten years ago now. My soon to be ex wife would come over to me in bed lift up her shirt and say “itch my back” I would happily oblige . I always liked her back, so tender. I would spend hours just itching and massaging it. it would take my mind off of everything else to focus on other peoples needs. Now I am older and trying to maintain myself. I find it harder and harder to do that. I joined a gym to work on my physical self. I am trying to work on my spiritual self as well. My parents have past away so I am next in line now. it will be a while of course but not infinity. When you are at the DMV you can not pay attention to where you are in line. sure you know but you can’t dwell on it. Once you get to be the next person up, you start to really pay attention, do I have my affairs in order? all my paper work in? do I have enough money to cover the fees? you really have to be prepared because when your number is called. you don’t want to get up there to realize you are missing something and you don’t have time to go back and get it. So that is what it is like to be 42. The essence of the mid life crisis. Did you do it all? are you ok with what you didn’t do? act now! time is running out!