One More Kick at the Can....

...because I'm a stubborn cuss....another page from my art journal.

Allrighty...that took about 10 minutes which in my world is actually not that bad. Shall we tempt those ca-razy elves of fate and try another? Oh, let's! and that above is textured sand acrylic medium over black acrylic and then colored pencil on top....nice effect huh? Keep your fingers crossed.......

Well, we jumped on the happy happy joy joy birdie just a wee bit early there.......1/2 hr later and the 2nd one is not downloaded yet......great screaming eyeballs, it's enough ta make you weep.....
but, neverfear, the day is not a total smack down - we scored huge this morning when we helped out with picking up office furniture for the Art Society from an old parks building slated for demolition and had one of the guys find and take out various bits of electrical parts and old plumbing fixtures that I'm going to use for my next round of Robot Sculptures. And when I got home the upstairs roomie gifted me with an old radio frequency tuner that is just chockablock filled with dials and knobs and turny thingies and switches for the same....OOO! SA-weet!
And too, while I was waiting for the unsuccessful attempt for a pic #2, I sketched out a super idea for my next painting......
la la LA!

...ADDENDEM....

Ah...see what a good night's sleep and the fact that the phone lines aren't tied up at this early hour on a Sunday, can do? MUCH better downloading. Let's try another, shall we?
*  *  *  *   *  *  *  *  *  *  * (symbolizing passing of time and a snooze on the couch)
Well.....astoundingly, it has been 2 hrs to try to download another pic. And it still hasn't finished. It beggars belief. I have no idea why.
PC issues? Who knows but that is beyond even a lesson in patience. I could have painted the darn page on this screen in that time. You wouldn't be able to see it but my pc would've looked nice.
I think I'll go back to reading my book.

When You Come To The Fork in the Road, Take It.

Ok, kids, who said that?
Our friend, Yogi Berra who was a pretty wise guy for someone who smacked around balls.........indeed.
So moving right along, I've gotten into 'art journaling'. And that is the art craze very much like scrapbooking except instead of buying all the supplies, like pre made pages and paper ephemera, you, being the creative bunny you are, make your own. A sort of very arty diary/book you write in or draw in.....whatever takes your fancy. And how did my twisty little head arrive here? Well, I am currently enthralled with the TV series "Supernatural" (don't ask) and the opening menu page is these journal pages that are all collaged and written on and drawn on.....very awesome and the thing that completely hooked me. Anycutandpasteway, I've been happily gluing and cutting and painting and writing over the last few days as a way to deal with something going on - it's very therapeutic and keeps my mind from wandering.
So, here's a few examples:

and :

I started with a blank old notebook with a spiral binding - that's important to make it easier to make your pages. And then find a whole pile of old magazines and markers and paints and well, just about whatever your heart fancies. There are a whole pile of scrapbooking websites that give you down loadable pages and goodies to play with as well as providing inspiration. 

Anywearereallytiredway, I've been trying to download a couple more pages and so far I've spent 2 hrs doing that....honest to Pete I DETEST dial up......I am going to try again tomorrow.

Imagination is Intelligence Having Fun

Just to prove we haven't been entirely useless......the newest 'Robot' Sculpture "Motorcycle Man".
This was actually created for a friend from my long ago school days and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
Here's what it is made from:
An old mouse, kitchen faucet attachment, salad tongs..or maybe sugar cube tongs -they were kinda small- (arms), bike part bits, kid's scooter parts, old metal candle holder, old pedometer, old sewing machine foot attachments, plumbing parts,nuts and bolts and, decidedly most important, an old cat food tin bike stand. Thank you, Jammies.
I had to re-do it a couple of times because parts would break or it wouldn't 'fit together' and I admit at one point I was just plain fed up with fiddling around with any second longer but glad I persevered.
Didn't charge enough for all the work involved but that's pretty typical.....I never know what any of these sculptures is going to entail work wise.
..............zoom, zoom........

The Only Thing We Have To Fear....

I've been contemplating phobias, and this is why you ask? Well, after stepping out of my bath last night, I happened to notice the shrivelled remains of a largish spider floating around. Which means, so obviously, that the creature had been in the tub before I drew my bath and only because I was off in that land of the roller coaster I call my mind, that I missed it. I'm not a fan of spiders - one of the most common of phobias by the way - I think it's the basic wiggilyness of the darn little suckers that gets me - but it did creep me out to realize there was one sharing my bath with me. Mind you it was dead, clean and dead, but still.
Anytwilightzoneway, it sent me off into thinking about painting a series based on phobias and so, off I goes to that great resource of today : GOOGLE.
....holy messed up psyche Batman, are we ever strange! There is a phobia for just about everything we do/feel/say/see....it's mind boggling.
But, oh boy! What a rich resource for inspiration for a new series!
I'll let you know how it works out.

The picture is a part of a larger piece by Roy Lichenstien and I'll try to track down the whole name etc. Roy was pretty hot in the 60's/70's with his 'comic' paintings which basically took comic images and blew them up to about 300X the original size...or should that be 3000? What I wonder is: how did he get away with 'copying' the comic book artists work?

Been down so long.....

It's been a rough couple of weeks and the crowning glory to it all is that I got the flu and have been laid up in a nest of blankets with all the attendant paraphernalia that accompanies being sick - flat fizzy drinks (ginger ale) and toast. Oh, and Jams as the constant companion but I think mainly because she lusts after buttered toast.
Anyblowyournoseway, it had me thinking about being artistic and being 'struck low' so to speak and so I did a time honored Google search to find out what I could on just that topic. Aside from the best known 'sickies', Frida Kahlo and Van Gogh, it seems the vast majority of us suffer from a mental illness of one sort or another.
Isn't that telling.
Now why is this gift of creativity also a bit of a curse when it comes to mental stability? Certainly we all are generally labelled as being 'different' because of our penchant for the slightly outre or even  downright odd but why would this fecund imagination seemingly have us teetering on the edge of sanity? Is it that we struggle so long and hard for recognition and have what we create from our deep soul laid bare before the many who cannot understand, that it finally leads us to just bloody give up and retreat into that comfort zone of not even trying to be present in the world and zone out......
Well, perhaps this is all rhetorical and who can really say - we know so very little about how our brain works. 
Never mind creativity.
The painting: "Valentine Gode-Darel in illness" by Ferdinand Hodler. This was the artist's lover who contracted uterine cancer after giving birth to their child.  He created a series of paintings that documented the wasting away of Valentine and her eventual death - an extremely powerful series, hard to look at and, I would expect, even harder to paint.
Talk about a soul laid bare.

Don'wanna grow up......

I am in an odd place right now......and it has a lot of stress attached to it because I've taken on a position of great responsibility and I am dealing with a very difficult situation involving the Arts Society I am president of.
And, truthfully - I wish I could just go back to a big shirt and poster paints.
But there you go - this is the thing of being adult you didn't realize was part of the package when you were so young and naive to think being 'grown up' was co-o-o-ol.
It has consumed much of my time over the last weeks and has a lot to do with why I have been away from posting.
But you know, the only way out is through so I shall just deal with the situation as best I can because the ultimate goal is a clear and positive path forward for all the artists in my part of the world.
I am thankful to have some good people around me.
The odd thing - or not depending on your viewpoint - is that I feel a huge creative force building up in me even while dealing 'adultly' with this event, that is aching to get at a canvas and I often feel 'split' so to speak - and frustrated for sure - to just chuck it all and just be an artist painting away in my studio.
Anysuckitupbuttercupway, as much as we would like to have a lovely tra-la-la painting only all the time life, you are sometimes called to make sacrifices for the betterment of all. Call it the reckoning for the talent you have been blessed with.
All together now.

The painting: "I Don't Want To Grow Up" by Kim Robertini.
That says it all.