Nobody's Fool

Thanks, Starlight!

It's done with acrylics; I don't have a space with proper ventilation for working with oils, even though I love playing with them. I'd end up hotboxing myself with turpentine fumes ;)

"Wheat Kings" is 66 cm x 51 cm (26" x 20"). Erm, I'm not super sure how long it took me. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-70 hours, maybe, spread over a span of six weeks or so? Something like that. Most of that was fixing my mistakes! Sometimes I feel like art is just constantly fixing the ugliest bits, section by section, until you utterly despise the piece but also no longer want to barf when you look at it.
 
hahaha, i'm exactly the same way. Wow that's so fantastic in acrylics. I could never got a proper handle on mixing them. I much prefer oils. But I hear you about ventilation/space for it. :)

I really love how you did the clouds in particular.

Is this your first big exhibition?
 
Wow, that's not what I expected at all for your art! Very powerful. Will your next subject matter be a moose? :p
 
That painting is AWESOME! I cannot share my last one here, because it features a nude woman, it's a bit on the explicit side... There's nothing like making stuff though. Nothing. I dunno, I sometimes have bits of my work I grumble about, and I wonder, "can other people see that this bit isn't right? I mean, it's glaringly obvious to me..." And I feel like, you know if you repeat a word a ton of times it becomes gibberish nonsense right? So I look at a piece so much that eventually parts of it don't make sense and look wrong to me, but I'm not sure if they really are or I am just imagining it.

That's how I feel about it anyhow.

I normally don't like this sort of subject matter (I'm more into weird horror, sci-fi, and fantasy, as opposed to realistic things), but I really do like what you have done here, the colors are so warm and I can almost smell the wholesome earthy feeling of what I'm seeing. It's a wonderful painting!

I am thinking of doing another painting, if I can figure out the time...there is a convention we're planning to go to, Starfest, and they have an art show. I could possibly sell a piece, and that would be really neat, I have done commission work for people who made particular requests before, but never anything like a gallery or a show. We'll see if I can find the time...

Be sure to tell us all about the show and how it goes and everything!
 
Aww, thanks guys :eek:

Starlight, it's not my first exhibition; I've done small-time local art shows/sales/auctions for a few years, mostly in the fantasy/geek-chic sector. This past fall I had my first "actual and real" traditional contemporary exhibition, a solo that I kind of fell into. I've been selling through this gallery for a while, and one of their artists just kind of disappeared. Turns out he moved to Vancouver to be... artistic... for a while. Really left the gallery in a lurch, though, as they had only a few months to prep an alternative artist. The owner asked if I could do it, and I did. It was terrifying, but since I'm pretty new to the Stuffy McStufferson Art Scene it wasn't terribly busy. I still managed to sell quite a bit though- more or less I sold out. The pieces that didn't sell at the gallery sold very soon afterward.

This is my first "real" exhibit where my work will be hung next to artists' whose careers I've been following since I was in high school art class. Scary! The curator is a big sweetie, though, so I'm sure it will be fine, even if my reptilian hindbrain keeps short circuiting everything with panic.

Haha, Magdlyn! Nah, I already have two canvases on the go; a mother/calf rhino pair and a cougar preparing to leap over a stream, not to mention a certain backlog of commissions. I'm basically booked up for commissions until August! I DO like the idea of painting a moose in the winter though, maybe partially obscured by ice encrusted trees... :p

And, I totally agree with you Spork. Since I often do a lot of fine detail work I tend to paint from really close so it's easy to lose the forest for the trees. I try to make a habit of walking away from the work every so often and looking it it from across the room. Sometimes that helps "snap" the disparate parts back together into a cohesive whole like it appears in my head.

It's kind of funny- the art I paint is not the kind of art I have hanging in my house. I really love looking at brilliantly coloured abstract work, with lots of flow and contrast and texture. That's mostly what is on my walls, with a few small exceptions here or there. I also love macro scientific photography; I have a few false-colour images of things like abalone shell matrix, or the cell structure of an orchid petal. One of the profs at the lab where I work does scientific photography as a hobby and most of my prints have been purchased from him. His work is brilliant!

I paint a lot of landscapes, wildlife, stuff like that. Mostly I enjoy doing slice-of-life, or portraiture. I try to incorporate the animal's habitat, or unique physiology or behaviour. I do like to play around with new techniques and media, though, so it's not unusual to find me splashing resin, squishing polymer clay, or tossing feathers or what have you around. Mostly those pieces end up in the garbage or in my Art Graveyard (aka, The Closet). It's still fun though!

And, sometimes, I create dragons and dinosaurs because they are fun and I love them :D

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(this one got smashed by a very bad kitten, so it was never finished. It was just a play-around piece, though, so it wasn't so heartbreaking!)
 
BAD KITTEH!

Yeah, my cat keeps getting up on my shelves, and there is this one McFarlane dragon figure up there that he keeps knocking off, again and again. And he's already broken it as much as it's likely to be broken, and it's not one of my favorites anyways, so I let that be his own personal "cat mischief object" so he can feel appropriately naughty with limited actual harm done.

All part of our ongoing mind games...

So I love dragons because in addition to being just cool to look at and fierce and everything, they are so open to interpretation. There's a lot of room to play on that playground. So when I have commissioned work from my artist friends in the past, it's usually been dragons. What hangs on my walls...lots and lots of stuff related to that band I used to follow, GWAR...and a lot of those posters and photography are pretty artistic and interesting, not to mention some of it is valuable as collectible memorabilia. But I also have originals and prints of work done by my creative friends. I don't really have my own work displayed, seems anytime I'm actually doing art, it's for someone else...either a gift, or to sell.

I have further thoughts spinning off, but I'm going to head over to my own space to explore them.

Those dinosaurs are fantastic though! I love the rich colors in your paintings. Acrylics are so fun that way. I paint in acrylics too, but I like to seal them with a high gloss coat and I love how when I do, the colors go all SUPER VIBRANT. Bright and deep and liquid and sexy. Mm hm.

I've worked with oils before, but the long dry time gets on my nerves, the stinky chemicals get on my nerves, I just feel like it's a bigger investment in The Process than I wish to make. Besides which, acrylic paint is nice and cheap. I've got a huge box of all sorts of different fun colors...yeah, I can mix my own and all, with just some basics, but having loads of colors is inspirational to me like having a great big box of crayons might be, to a kid.
 
I don't use that many colours; I have maybe 7-10 favourites that I use to mix 90% of what I use. Payne' grey, man, and burnt umber. I could paint the world in Payne's grey and burnt umber. I do own in the neighbourhood of 200-300 brushes though. I can't stop buying brushes!

So the opening went really well. It was a crush. "Wheat Kings" sold in the first hour lol I got to speak to the buyer: an older gentleman who was very kind. I'm always glad when my pieces go to people I like! Of course, I am very much prone to liking people who say nice things about my art :p

It's my 30th birthday on Monday, and I'm throwing a giant muder mystery party tomorrow for 40 friends and family. It's going to be crazy! I've been spinning all week between the exhibition and the party. My parents have a big house so I'm borrowing it to throw the party, since my apartment is way too small.

Actually, I had a strange conversation with my mom tonight. I'm staying over, since there is so much to do and I'm hosting, not my parents so they shouldn't have to lift a finger, and we watched that Meryl Streep movie "Florence Foster Jenkins". In the movie, a man is married to the main character but has a long term relationship with another woman. While there are definitely issues with the relationships, it was clear that he cared a great deal about both his ladies. I expected my mom to go on about how immoral he was (she is a bible thumper for sure) and she did a bit at first... but by the end she said (paraphrase): "you know, I think he really loved both his women. He tried really hard. I mean, he made some bad choices but we all do. Imagine having that much love in your life" and her voice was wistful, almost.

I know her and my dad have been having some marital issues lately, so maybe she has been thinking a lot about the nature of love, I'm not sure. It just surprised me. I was brave enough to even say something along the lines of that I thought it was nice, how he tried to take care of his wife and his girlfriend, even if he was bad at it in a "Hugh Grant" kind of way, and that I had no real problem with there being more love in the world. She just nodded and looked thoughtful.

Huh.
 
Stone and I have a date set up for Thursday- I think we are going out for lunch for by birthday, maybe a movie or something.

Also, it was my birthday on Monday! I am officially 30 years ooooold. The party went well, even though a bunch of people ended up cancelling last minute due to a nasty flu that's going around. People at Work #1 are dropping like flies, too.

However, the real reason I am posting is becuase the craziest thing happened to my sister and I needed to share.

My older sister.. lets call her "Carebear" because she is one in human form... is a six foot tall Amazonian of love. Like, she is probably the kindest woman you have ever met. She is a child psychologist and works mostly with underprivileged kids. She is a pretty awesome person. However The weirdest crap happens to her when she goes on vacation. One time she got her luggage mixed up and when she arrived home "her" bag contained a bunch of semi-automatic weapons. Turns out they were being legally shipped across the country, but still! Things like that happen to her all the time.

So, Carebear and her husband and two spawn went on vacation to Mexico. The day before they were supposed to leave for home, they are taking a walk down the beach and my sister peeks into a tidepool.

"Huh" Carebear thinks, "that piece of trash looks exactly like a brick of cocaine." She picks it up to show her husband how much that trash looks like cocaine, as you do. Well, it's really super heavy. Her husband and kids are way up the beach now, and she decides she wants to see what is inside the brick that is making it so heavy.

Turns out, the brick that looks like cocaine is... actually cocaine. Legit coke. It also turns out there is another brick sunk in the same tidepool. So. My sister sits down, two kilos of coke in one hand and another two at her feet, and thinks for a bit. Eventually, she takes a selfie (!!!) with the cocaine brick she opened, walks up to the resort security guard who is standing maybe 50 meters away, and says "Uhh, I think I maybe found some cocaine?"

The guard laughs at her. She offers to show him a picture (she left the bricks at the tidepool, because apparently opening one is fine but walking around with one is going too far) and he says sure. She shows him.

He asks "WHERE?" And she points down the beach and says, "There" He promptly yells at his partner, who comes running, and much excitement in Spanish occurs involving walkie talkies and hand waving.

My brother in law saunters up and asks what Carebear had to talk to the security guards about. She says she doesn't want to tell him because he will get really upset (he didn't want to go to Mexico, because he was sure something would happen to Carebear, given past experiences). They end up fighting. As they fight, the beach is steadily filling with police and security guards. Eventually, her husband looks over his shoulders at the flashing lights, turns to my sister real slow like, and asks "Does the thing you don't want to tell be about have anything to do with all those cops?"

And, of course, my sister has to say yes. Aaaand her husband bursts out in helpless laughter. So, the kids are hungry but a security guard wants to talk to my sister, so the husband takes the kids to find food while my sister answers some questions.

Then, the cops get involved with the questions and within a few minutes my sister is escorted to a cop car and taken to the local cop shop for more questions. She wasn't even allowed to talk to her husband to let him know where she was going, and she was only wearing a bathing suit and a pair of goggles. They keep her for a few hours, then return her to the hotel... where the staff have been informed to move my sister and family to a different building entirely, under assumed names. Apparently in the bust they found over 30lbs of cocaine hidden in the beach tidepools. Probably someone wont be to happy about that! Thankfully, they were flown out with a nice cop to escort them to their flight the next day.

I'm not breaking confidence, or anything- if you are wondering. My sister posted the story on Facebook lol

Anyways. It's just like my sister to end a nice Mexican vacation with a drug bust lol
 
Happy Birthday week, Featherfool!! I hope it's an awesome week :)

Your sister's vacation story was awesome (though probably not so awesome when you're sitting in a police station in Mexico in a wet bathing suit!)
 
Oh my gosh what an experience! She is a crime drama magnet! Wow!
 
:eek:

Yeah, I'd be lying if I said it was "reasons like that" which make my preferred vacation a domestic road trip...in actuality it's the horror that I won't understand people talking to me, or may be expected to eat weird food full of veggies...but holy crap dude!

And you know, I'd think that anyone who has any experience at all with the ocean and how it does, would not be so incredibly stupid as to try and hide anything buried in a tide pool. Or basically anywhere that active moving water (the ocean) might get at it. Those criminals chose poorly, I gotta say.

Although the whole being questioned at the station in a bathing suit experience probably sucked, I'm glad that the hotel and the police took some steps to protect them and I'm VERY glad your sister made it home safely!
 
So, I found out yesterday that my piece ``Wheat Kings`` won second place in the judging! There were some fifty pieces in the exhibition, and I`m so damn proud of myself I could just about burst. I even have a ribbon! I don`t think I`ve ever had a ribbon before.

ALSO I found out this week that I was selected by my city to do a big public art project along a new rapid transit route. I applied almost a year ago, but hadn`t heard anything so assumed someone else got the contract. It`s a huge multimedia collaboration between myself and a good friend of mine: a 35 foot wave wall with a mural (my part) with metal animal sculptures worked into the wall, kind of emerging from it (her part). The work is spanning Canadian ecosystems from prairies to mountains through to Arctic Ocean. Its pretty short notice; work is due to start in three weeks, and has a nine month contract.

I spoke to my boss at the laboratory, since I can`t really work two full time jobs simultaneously. I`m going to take the first few weeks as vacation since I have a bunch of days saved up, and the rest as a sabbatical.

I`m so excited! I`ve never ever worked on a project this big before. How is this even happening!! :D
 
WOW!!!

That is super cool! Big congrats on all the awesome things!
 
Wow, that's great, congratulations. I'm so happy for you!
 
Whew, I'm back! For this, anyways. I don't have much time to catch up- hopefully later this week. I've been nutso busy with the new project, which is waaaaay bigger than anything I've ever done, and I've been pretty sick on and off.

About that, and also re: my previous posts a while back about this super extreme diet thing I was put on by my doctor, it turns out... none of that was the problem. Turns out I've had Lyme Disease this entire time. Probably for years! Who knew? Anyways, I'm on some super-speshul antibiotics but there is apparently a good chance that whatever it's done to my body, it's permanent. Apparently long-term Lyme infection is not good for you. Well, it's not like I haven't been living this way for a long time, so at least it won't be anything new. I think if it hadn't been Lyme my doctors were finally going to throw up their hands and declare non-typical fibromyalgia. So I guess it's... better?... it's Lyme? You got some pretty shitty choices if an arachnid-vectored spirochete related to Syphilis is your better option :p

Anywho. Other things... Right. I think Stone and I are sputtering out. We are both so busy that it's hard to get together. We used to go a lot of silly hawt sext action (each person trying to out do the last text, in the grand tradition of old school trashy romance novel sex scenes), but now it's mostly "how are you" ... "so busy! how are you" back and forth. Actually, that's all it's been the last few weeks. I haven't even seen him since the last week of March. We tried a few times, but schedules didn't mesh and it didn't feel like either of us was trying very hard to remedy the situation. It's gotten easier and easier not to talk to him every day or nearly every day. I don't think I even thought about him once this past weekend. It's not just me, I don't think- he's often really late responding to texts, waiting days, or doesn't call back either. It feels drifty. Which is kind of a shame, because the sex was good, but even still I don't feel any kind of driving need to screw him into next Tuesday. Well, at least not anymore.

I'll talk to him about it at some point, I'm sure. At this point we are more Facebook friends than anything else. I would like to clarify that this is mutual, though, before "officially" pulling the plug. All in all, this feels a lot like many of my previous relationships, pre-Tails-and-Jaeger, but it's more vaguely dissatisfying.

So, that's pretty much that for now. I'll likely post more details a bit later.
 
My sister-in-law has Lyme Disease. I feel really bad for you. You have to take extra care of yourself, Missy! I'm sure you have probably already been told that, but she does get quite symptomatic when it acts up.
 
My .... on the verge of being a meta? was diagnosed with Lyme Disease a few years ago and hers got so bad that she was basically in a wheelchair (3 years ago) but now is back to working out and doing martial arts and seems to be living a pretty normal life. I'm not sure how long she actually had symptoms before it was diagnosed and how that impacts long term damage, but just wanted to let you know that there's hope and that I hope you don't actually have long term impacts!
 
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