Day 44: Sneltram Returns

An old friend. My art show in 2006 featured almost exclusively paintings of this guy. I can’t believe I got a month and a half into this project before he came to visit. I have a great love of Basil Wolverton’s pen & ink artwork (1950s-70s, weird artist for, among other things, Mad Magazine (when it was still a comic book) and “Plop!” magazine. He created Lena the Hyena (created for the Lil’ Abner cartoon strip.) He inspired folks like R. Crumb and much of the underground comics movement of the 1970s seemed to follow in his footsteps. So I’m about 35 years late on this one, and I don’t care.

Strangely, I started painting Sneltram for my art show (after “discovering” him during a 2005 artists' retreat with friends in the Virginia mountains), but later, I found an old sketchbook from 1991, when I was traveling in Amsterdam doing juggling shows on the street. There he was. I’d originally been inspired by the Dutch word for “Express Light Rail Train” (Sneltram) and decided that had to be a cartoon character’s name. It only took me 15 years to do something with the idea.

So when I say an old friend, he really has been in my life for a long time.

Day 43: Navigation

I don’t know how much I should say about this one (or any of them for that matter) as I want people to enjoy the works through their own filters. In fact, before reading on, you might want to think about what this means to you.

Once upon a time, I would draw or paint something and if people didn’t “get” exactly what I envisioned, I’d be hurt that they didn’t see what I wanted them to. I’ve been noticing since I started this project, I’ve found myself genuinely interested in what other people see. Sometimes it’s better than what I saw. Sometimes it’s evidence that I need to expand on my technical skill.

In any case, I’ve given you ample time to form your own vision on this painting. To me, it’s the guide: whether a parent, older sibling, teacher, or random saint (those sorts of wise folks you occasionally meet while traveling through life who may not even realize the effect they have). Someone whose life has basically shot them full of holes. We all have them. Sometimes literal, physical scars; emotional, energetic, … I think part of the healing process is to guide others through those injuries to the soul. Hence, “Navigation.”

Other people have seen different things in it. They're not wrong. What do you see?

Day 42: Bittersweet Reunion

OK, I admit I’m a vegetarian. But one with a sense of humor. For instance, about 5 or 6 years ago, my relentless brother was teasing me with a chunk of turkey on Thanksgiving, so I grabbed it off his fork and ate it. I was amused; he was shocked, and he never did that again. I think that's the last time I ate any turkey. I still call myself a vegetarian in the same way a yawning motorcyclist can be a vegetarian, despite the swallowed bugs. It is incidental, not a habit.

This painting amuses me greatly though, and would even if I did still eat pork. My long-held belief is that a person should not eat meat if they’re not willing to kill the animal themselves. For a long time, whenever I ate animal flesh, I would take a moment and imagine that animal alive. Later, I would imagine myself slitting that animal’s throat and feeling its warm blood trickle down my arm.

I was very proud of this and was espousing my high-and-mightiness to a colleague. I said something I’d said a number of times: “I wish I had the opportunity to kill an animal, just so I could put my money where my mouth is.”

“What do you want to kill?” he asked. I’d forgotten this guy’s a deer and goose hunter. He has a good relationship with his butcher. I stopped talking and thought about it. Pigs are about as smart as my dog. Cows aren’t too different from horses. (which the French eat, and so have I). I went down the list and haven’t eaten pig or cow since. I continued to occasionally eat fish and chicken, which I would still kill, if I had to. More recent information has caused me to rethink that, too.

A lot of bloviating on the subject, but all this was in my head when this idea percolated to the top.

This painting also reminds me of one of my favorite jokes. (Google "wooden leg pig" if you don't know it)

day 41:

The wife, a huge animal lover says as a child, she never pulled cats’ tails, pulled wings off flies, nor did she do that fake-throw fetch trick to the dog. Of course not. She wasn’t a boy. (still isn’t!) But the one thing she says she did, which could be construed as vile and evil and animal cruelty: when she found snails, she’d tap their antennae to watch them go, “plip!” back into their heads.

CALL THE ASPCA!

Boy, was I tired and moving slowly. I understood exactly what this guy was feeling. I may have failed here since not everyone sees what I see in my paintings. Fortunately, I have (mostly) gotten over being upset when people don't "get" it.

Once, Jack Kerouac snuck into a college lecture on his book "On the Road." The prof was bloviating and after a while, Kerouac raised his hand and said, "actually, I think what the author was trying to say was [xxx]." The professor said, "no, you're wrong. What he meant was ... [yyy]." Kerouac stood up and said, "Well, actually, I know on good authority I am not wrong. You see, I am Jack Kerouac." Then he walked out.

Was the professor entirely wrong? Who's to say? I'm not.

In any case, I was tired. Bone tired. It was 2am with a couple of beers in me and still hadn't painted. How to depict that? How about a narcoleptic snail? Go!

Day 40: Disembodied Clown Essence

Dr. Boots, with whom I work frequently at the hospital, distilled down to remove all corporeal form, yet still embody the spirit of a clown. I didn’t really mean to channel him, but when I pulled the idea of “traditional clown” out of the ether, that’s what came out.

Whenever I paint a clown, I am always self-conscious to not make them look "pretty," "cute" or "happy." The ideas of a "happy clown" or a "sad clown," to me, are overly simplistic. Clowns, being a fun-house mirror image of the human soul, all have a full range of emotion. Anyone who always shows the same emotion is either not that deep or they're hiding something. A true Clown has looked into their soul and has made friends with their imperfections and foibles, warts and all. But I digress.

One of my favorite thoughts on the subject is from Bill Irwin, Macarthur Award-winning Clown and Tony award winner (and hero of mine) ... An interviewer said, 'it must be great to have a job where you make people happy." Mr. Irwin replied, "I don't make people happy. I make them laugh. The happiness is up to them."

Zen poetry befitting a clown.

Day 39: Smiley's Bad Day

I had drawn one of these years ago as a birthday gift for a friend. The wife wanted one, too. It only took 10 years. Where’s my Ritalin?

I love the smiley face. The story I heard is it was designed by Harvey Ball, a free-lance graphic designer for State Mutual Life Assurance Company in 1963, who received $45 for his work.

The symmetry and the simplicity are so elegant, yet it is extremely hard to execute well. Ball designed Smiley with hand tools -- computer graphic design was science fiction -- we hadn't even yet been on the moon! (and walking through the Apollo 11 module at NASM shows just how primitive our "computer systems" were back then).

Compasses, protractors and a French curve were all this guy had. I tried the same and it came out looking kinda lumpy. Of course, Ball used pen and ink; paint is a bit rougher.

Day 38: demon in the dark

Playing with light. Had this image in my head and wanted to see what it would look like. Maybe a Bogeyman. Who knows? I know I had a night light when I was young, but this guy never scared me. Well, at least not until the 7-year-old girl down the street informed me of him (and described him). Still, I was more freaked out by the dudes in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes," when they took off their faces. Yeccch!

I wanted to do this in all black-and-white except for the moon. It would have worked in pen & ink, but here, I felt compelled to use color. Glad I did.

Day 37: Clouds

From inside, looking outward? I imagined looking out from inside the hollow of a tree. Anything else is in the eye of the beholder.

I love trees. When I was in Thailand, enjoying the natural wonders they sometimes mix into their omelettes, I put my hand on the trunk of a palm tree, and ever since then, they have had a grounding effect. We all like looking at trees (at least, I hope) but there’s something really special about putting your hand on these creatures rooted in the same earth that feeds us and is the foundation of all our endeavors.

When working with environmental educators, it became clear that people focused on air and water, yet we take our soil for granted. The best soil to grow food on is also the best soil on which to build a shopping mall. Or a road.

So I like trees, and I can think of few things more peaceful than sitting inside the womb of a tree, safely looking outward. Well, in theory, as long as the bugs stay out of my pants.

Day 35&36: Rainbow Heaven and Hell

Experimenting with a masking technique. Also wanting to get ahead, in case I miss a day. This painting connects to the one for Day 36. I painted them together. They stand on their own as separate pieces, or can be hung together, side-by-side, or one on top of its inverted mate. I do plan on some triptychs (3 paintings on a theme, see Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthy Delights” or any number of Renaissance religious paintings in 3 parts, but displayed as a whole) …

I have long been fascinated by the stories we’ve told each other to explain why we’re here. Because Judaism and Christianity have been so pervasive in Western culture (especially the USA, where I've spent the majority of my life), I’ve been especially fascinated with them. Christianity in particular has adapted to the tastes of the populace wherever it goes.

My research has shown the early Christians were masters at marketing their product, borrowing and adapting multiple-gods ideas from pagan peoples and applying the idea of saints, to aid the conversion of the pantheists. The vilification of a horned god to personify the Hebrew concept of Satan (viewed by Judaism as our own "Evil Inclination (Yetzer Hara)" -- the urges within us which hinder our better selves) http://www.beingjewish.com/basics/satan.html . Borrowing from the Jews, Christian Missionaries of the Middle Ages took the idea of the evil that resides inside each of us (Satan) and embodied it with the image of a horned Pagan god to make the non-Christian religions seem wrong.

In any case, the horned, red-faced Satan and the image of a bearded Caucasian God (Zeus? Jupiter?) make fine iconic shorthand for our cartoons.

So ... Fire and ice. Good and evil. Heaven and Hell. Pan and Zeus. Odin and Loki. Yin and Yang. Take your pick. You'll be right.

Day 34: Booze helps me be artistic

OK, I was drunk, tired, and lazy.

But at least I was drunk, tired, and lazy with discipline!

Wow, this project has helped me see how often I’ve been drinking recently. And how much even a single beer diminishes my motivation. I recently met a woman at an indie comic book show (SPX) who says when she wants to paint, out comes the Tequila. I can’t work like that, and would not want to use alcohol that way.

Although I am way too distractible to develop a hard-core drinking habit, I realize I’ve been glugging a bit much recently. (Mostly, Belgian ales, German wheat beers, for the taste, with the pleasant after-effects which bar the path to productive work.) I do need to scale back the booze though. Love it as I do, it’s getting in my way. And I’m starting to realize this project is a physical activity. There are so many hours of the day.

Day 33: Robot with tentacles I

Had a couple of beers. Not feeling like painting. Put some colors to canvas to see what would happen. Once I saw the swirls, I got images of The Day the Earth Stood Still – or at least that era of sci-fi. Makes me want to get some huge canvases and paint huge and see what happens. Need bigger studio space for that though. I love these kinds of paintings because I get to watch my subconscious at play. Klaatu Barata Niktu, dudes.

Day 32: Interchange

Dancing my way home at 2AM with my ipod after a neighborhood party. Feeling good, beautiful evening, happily tipsy and groovin’ to Baba O’Reilly, a Who song that brings me back to the good stuff of teenage rebellion and British Invasion super-groups. When I got home, I knew exactly what I wanted to paint, the image fairly well formed from the music, and later thinking of Pete Townshend’s near total hearing loss as a result of playing that wonderful music. When I got home, I was charged to paint, but boozy and tired. I fell asleep on the couch, woke up at 6am and whipped this out in about 40 minutes, desperate to get back to sleep and finish up my slumber. That is Pete’s guitar pictured.

Day 31: Unconventional fishing

I asked a friend what I should paint one night. He gave me a great theme: unconventional methods of fishing. While driving home, I went through a couple of ideas before this one jumped into my head. It was another case of relative sensory deprivation: it was dark, few cars on the back road, radio off, and, as stated on “Mad Men,” (I paraphrase) – “Think about it hard, then relax.” My first few ideas were very clown/cartoon like, in the Rube Goldberg realm, but I realized, needing to pace myself, I needed a simpler, more elegant idea. To date, this is one of my favorites because of the extreme lateral thinking involved, and it came like a Shazam thunderbolt when I was looking the other way. Those are the times I know I have tapped into something beyond the subconscious and hit an artery of the Collective Unconscious.

Day 30: Baba Yaga 2

The wife complained that the painting from Day 27 (Baba Yaga) was too dark. Historically, Baba Yaga was not considered evil. Her role in older mythos was to help those that have already died to find their way to the Spirit Realm. So although she was associated with death, her role was benevolent. This is similar to the Greek character Charon, the boatman at the River Styx (to whom you needed whom you paid to ferry you to the underworld, as we all learned from Chris de Burgh). At some point, Christianity came in, with more patriarchal leanings, and it was most efficacious to slander the older beliefs, vilifying the older gods/spirits/myths.

In any case, to appease the wife, I painted a friendly, happy Baba Yaga, playing with the child she’d given a flying mortar-and-pestle ride to a couple days ago. All is well and everyone’s happy.

This painting brought up some of my issues about trying to make one work to have the same look and feel of another work. When I do a completely new thing each time, my difficulty in making one thing look like another thing isn't apparent.

Additionally, I like to come up with new ideas each time. It's a mark of pride to be able to pull random things out of mid-air, spin them, and create gold. (Silver? Bronze? Corroded tin?) That said, I do recognize there's nothing wrong with visiting "old friends." Watching a documentary of Jackie Gleason, he said when he was putting together the "Jackie Gleason Show" (the show which created "The Honeymooners"), he realized if they were to do a weekly hour, it would behoove him to have recurring characters. I'm not yet settled on that idea, but it's definitely something on my mind.

I do plan at some point to flip through the paintings from the beginning part of my project and see where else those ideas take me. I'll save that for a day when I feel particularly empty.

Day 29: Directions

A few weeks ago, a particular thread on facebook got a visit from the “Drama Lama.” The wife and I were at a nexus at that drama, so that night, I decided to paint the drama. Originally, I just wanted to make a background and paint something on top (not even sure if I had an idea at the time) but this came out. I did some refining, but it’s an abstraction that I kinda like. I don't know how the colors are on your monitor, but I tried to get this scan to match the real thing, but then I realized your computer display is probably darker than mine, so it's futile. You want realistic accuracy, you gotta come to my art shows next year.

Day 28: Haring Cthulhu

It was a late night. I was compelled to paint, even though I was exhausted. “Think iconic,” I thought to myself. Keith Haring’s art came to mind as a style I could wing out quickly. I love the play of contrasts in art, not just in light or color, but also concept. Keith Haring’s art is always bright, happy and positive. It wasn’t a long stretch to find the opposite of that: Cthulhu. Satan seems just too ... friendly by comparison.

day 27: Baba Yaga

I sat in as videographer on my wife's guest lecture at University of Maryland's Women's Studies dept. on women and spirituality. She touched on Baba Yaga, from her part of the world, as she was born in Eastern Europe.

Those versed in Eastern European folklore will recognize this wizened old hag, the Slavic version of the Bogeyman, who flies around in a mortar and pestle, abducting children to eat them.

Though her house is not made of gingerbread (but rather, is built upon chicken feet) some believe she was the inspiration for the witch in "Hansel and Gretel."

The wife did not like this portrayal. The idea of this benevolent figure abducting children was introduced by Christian missionaries to make way for their "new, improved!" belief system.

Day 26: Octopus

Had some extra paint one night and basically just scribbled on a board. A few nights later, it was an octopus. I like this guy, and never before have I been able to draw a real-looking octopus.

I enjoy this process of creation because it allows more expressiveness and accesses corners of my subconscious that I normally wouldn't go. I'd tried drawing octopi in the past and they never looked real. It took some random brush strokes to prompt this one out of my head.

Day 25 - Dance the Night Away

Saw a production of "Crazy for You," kind of a Gershwinesque (apparently Gershwin music, but the story/dialog written more recently) musical with 400 costumes and bunches of songs and lasted about 16 hours.

The last number basically felt like this: Boy gets the girl (strangely, despite their initial differences). They both magically end up in ballroom clothes, and the small mining town transforms into a glitz-fest.

Still playing with the idea of looking through something to see something else. Which is of course the function of the theatrical proscenium.

Day 24: Pleasant Dreams

Although yes, I loved Superman (and still do) as a child, there were no Bogeymen in our household. Our father, of German descent, and who served in WWII (on the Allied side) would threaten to bring the "Gestapo," who would put us in the "Hoosegow." Largely in jest, we were never really fearful of such entities.

Regardless, we all have our childhood Bogeymen, who live either in the closet or under the bed. Interestingly, it was the little girl down the street who informed me about the Bogeyman. Also, since I grew up in a secular house, I had to learn about God that way, too: from the same little girl.

Day 23: Small Clown, Big Hat

Clowns compel me. Not in that obnoxious "clowns are scary, clowns are creepy, kill the clowns" sort of way, nor in the treacly saccharin sunshine-and rainbows way either.

Like any art form, there is good and bad in the Clown realm, but some of the funniest stuff I've seen in my life has been in the clown arena. And also, some of the best people I know are such artists.

This is nobody in particular, though it could be considered a composite of aspects of clowns I know. I guess if pressed, I'd say he's part W.C. Fields, part Pickle Family Circus' Mr. Sniff, and part pimp.

Day 22: She Loves Ice Cream

From a photo. This random woman just looked so pained to be eating the deliciously sweet dairy goodness that I had to capture her in plasticine pigments.

Day 21: Piano Man

Another one from the long early morning car trip to Rehoboth Beach, DE. Since I'm not a morning person, I spent much of the drive sleeping groggily (but wisely with my sketchbook in my lap), and occasionally I'd wake up, sketch something, say something incoherent to the wife, and then go back to sleep.

I can't say exactly where this image came from, but just that it came fully formed, in my head. That, and I looooove Alpha waves.

Day 20: Deep Thought

I was looking for something to paint. I had no idea. So I painted having no idea.

As has been expected, there would be days that I just have no idea what I’m going to paint, despite the 20 years of sketchbooks, being surrounded by people, animals and nature day in and day out … it’s almost like the universe is a cacophony of inspiration, and the function of a creative type is to be able to filter out all the noise to pick one idea.

A successful creative is the one who can filter down further from the ideas s/he picks out to only executing the good ideas.

In any case, this is from a day where I had to paint, didn’t want to go to the sketchbooks (my ego keeps telling me that would be cheating, though It’s not a rule). So there I sat at the easel, with no idea. Then it dawned on me: that is what I will paint.

I actually considered long and hard what word/picture would go inside the word balloon and then I finally decided it was better empty. That said, I’m not above selling the painting and customizing the balloon for the buyer.

Personally however, I am quite happy with it being empty. He can be thinking anything: the possibilities are endless. A word in there, in my opinion, would cheapen the work. But like I said, I’ll cheapen my work if I can make a buck. I have no problem being a sell-out. To paraphrase my hero David Cross: “The mortgage company won’t accept my artistic integrity as payment.”

Day 19: Three Little Birds

I notice I'm starting to run low on black paint. This is kinda cool, since that represents a lot of painting, including the art show I did a couple years ago.

This is one of my favorites, not necessarily because of the subject or execution, but the story behind it. First off, this is one of the two paintings from this project that no longer belongs to me. Our friends K and B were over, K being only slightly more pregnant than a ground-dragging heifer. They were looking for a song to sing to their new child when she finally came into the world. Kind of a childhood song sort of thing, I guess. I don't really remember that from my infancy, but it makes sense.

My wife suggested "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley. You know the song:

"Don't worry
About a thing,
'Cos every little thing's
Gonna be all right"

Well, K and B were dawdling at our house late (not that we mind; always welcome) but I knew I had to get my painting for the evening started. I set up my easel on the kitchen table (one reason I do my painting after the wife has gone to bed) and started work.

I quite enjoyed walking into brunch the next morning at the New Deal Café, handing this painting to the proud parents-to-be. I have been told it will be hanging in their nursery. I think they liked it. (Baby S was born in early September, 2009)

Day 18: Self Portrait

Interestingly, the photo reference is from a photo I took myself, at arm's length. So really, this is a self-portrait of a self-portrait.


I’ve had thoughts of scotch-taping this one to Day 16: “You’ve Said a Mouthful” and making it a Halloween mask. They look really funny together. Maybe I’ll try that as a painting sometime. I haven’t yet really revisited any ideas because I keep getting new ones. It’s a double-edged sword: do I go for the shiny, pretty new idea, or do I develop an already explored one? I might make a week or a month of revisits, because there are a few that I want to try again and improve on.

This painting came out of a conversation with a vicarious artistic friend who keeps saying if I don't learn anything and stretch my artistic comfort zone, then I will have wasted the opportunity this project presents. So I went home and did this. I can see where I can learn more and improve, but I'm quite happy with the results. Doing this exercise gave me the confidence to undertake my painting from Day 19. (tomorrow) This also builds on my Day 3 painting, "Nerd Starter Kit," when I painted those glasses.

Day 17: Dado

One of my favorite sketching activities is to start my hand moving around the page, making ink swoops and swirls and then see what happens. Most of them become characters. This one kind of evolved really quickly with a minimum of the stray lines that normally accompany a sketch.

In 2007, I traveled to a Clown festival in Shanghai, China. One of the performers who follows one of the more modern traditions of Clown/Buffoon has a very simple, hunchbacked no-makeup look. He squawks like a surly semi-verbal 4-year-old and hits people with a duck. He makes me laugh.

Day 16: You’ve Said a Mouthful

The eyes are the window of the soul, but the mouth is the window to the gullet.

The fun thing for me is even I'm not sure if this is an extreme closeup of some entity or if the canvas itself is the creature and it's all mouth.

This was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. I didn’t know what to paint, but I know one compositional trick is to peer through an opening to see something else, which creates depth of field. The mouth is an opening; a tongue is something else. I’ve always thought the eyes and the mouth are the most expressive parts of the face. Nothing more profound than that. I found this one goes well with the one from Day 18: Self-Portrait, though that was entirely unintentional.

Day 15: I've Got My Eye on You

In 9^th grade (age 14), a friend brought a book to school of Basil Wolverton’s art. I’d seen some of his stuff before in vintage pre-magazine Mad Comics, but didn’t know the guy’s name,. I loved the depth of field with a simple pen and brush. Black lines and black dots made these impossible characters pop out of the page and appear real.

One such drawing was a guy with one huge eye and one withered eye. The caption had something to do with Visene (or the 1950s equivalent) I’ve revisited this fascination a number of times in my work, since 9^th grade, but never before had I considered just how or why the guy’s eye would have gotten that way.

Now we know.

Day 14: 2AM

This one always makes me smile. I like to believe we all have an inner freak we bring out when the shades are drawn, be it dancing to the rhythm of the washing machine or singing karaoke into a toothbrush.

I had drawn this guy in my sketchbook on the way to the beach 2 days before … my lovely wife had taken pity on me having to roll out of bed so early so she drove the whole way. I drifted in and out of sleep with my sketchbook on my lap and let my mind wander.

I see sketchbooks like bibs: they are there to catch the things that leak out of you.

For a long time, I just kept them and would enjoy thumbing through them till they got full, then they would end up in a pile or on a bookshelf or in a box in the attic.

In the last couple years I’ve taken an interest in these old sketchbooks. They’re mostly full of crap, but there are moments of genius going back to my teen years. It’s particularly delicious to see my younger self trying just a bit too hard to be eloquent, witty, profound, and artistic. It’s kind of like self-reflective Schadenfreude: boy, was I an idiot! Ha ha! OK, with occasional flashes of genius, but still, MORON!.

I have long understood that 90% of anyone’s ideas are crap. It’s the ability to recognize the other 10% and run with it that makes one great. I probably run with 30-40% of my ideas, but I like to think I choose some of the genius and for the rest, I have a well-honed talent for turd-polishing.

This painting comes from deep within I think. We all have a pathetic weakness for our inner fantasies. Or at least we should. When I was little, I used to wish upon a star that I could fly like Superman. Then I would test it by running 2 or 3 steps, launching myself on the lawn, and then landing on the lawn, outstretched, belly flop. I bet mouse ears and cheese hurts much less.

Day 13: Coagulation

Sometimes, when I have a little extra paint at the end of an evening, I grab a blank canvas from the box and swaggle it around. I look at the shapes and see what I see. The shapes in orange suggested dribbling blood to me. A couple of days later, this is what evolved from it. It's kind of a zen exercise to look at essentially nothing and while actively trying to find "Inspiration." The active part is actively forcing myself to not be active. In other words, I give my brain a nudge and then relax and let my subconscious do its thing.

Yes, this one kinda creeps me out too, but I think it’s kinda cool.

I wish you could see them up close. The colors are much better in person.

Day 12: Smiley Slacker

Went to the beach with the wife and friends J&G. I had been up late the night before (painting) and had to get up early (6 or 8:30 or something. I’m not conscious at that point until noon most days) When we arrived, the wife and J’s wife stormed down to the beach; J and I collapsed in the hotel room with our dogs.

One thing I brought on the trip was some fruit juice that had fermented in our kitchen. Usually when this happens, it smells like sulphur and I can’t wait to pour it down the sink. Once in a while, some really fancy, high-falutin’ mix of yeast and bacteria settle in and make it happy juice. By taste test I’d say it’s 2-2.5% alcohol and a Mexican friend told me that this is a common drink in her native Mexico: they put cloth over (usually pineapple) juice overnight and the next day, it’s bubbly and tangy.

Well, by the time J and I woke up, the sun was heading down, the girls phoned and were on their way back from the beach, so I had a big cup of my happy juice and went out to walk the dog. I knew I didn’t want to spend the night painting because we were on holiday, and I was kinda tipsy. So I collected some dirt and and sand and lawn clippings to help my painting take shape.

So whereas the beach gave me less time to paint, there is a little bit of beach in this work.

Day 11: Skull and Crossbunny

This one will be on a T-shirt soon (drop me a line at AwfulCute.com if you’re interested, with your T-shirt size) I may have to clean it up for T-shirt use, but I have to figure out the best way to do this: probably heat press.

Other ideas I cast off from the same session, were a clown skull with cross-chickens and a hooker skull with cross (bones)

Day 10: I Will Finish What I …

I imagine those with an artistic mind, overachievers, people with ADD/ADHD, and parents should know this feeling/anxiety. How this came about: I was flipping through sketchbooks looking for inspiration for today’s painting and I found this rough idea scrawled in a margin. I finished filling that sketchbook in 1996. I thought it was funny then, and I think it’s funny now. What’s funnier is the idea remained in a sketchbook for over 13 years!

It was particularly fun to use paint to create a chalkboard. I worked a lot with the wet paint and studied a number of reference photos to get that mostly-erased look on the background, which came out way more trompe l’oeil than I expected. I’ve been learning a bit with masks in Photoshop of late and I’m seeing that masking tape is the primitive form of that technique. It’s pretty awesome in both the analog and digital worlds. Photoshop enables much more complex masking, but even just a straight strip of tape can create delightful results.

Day 9: Punk'd

Larger idea = larger canvas. This is a 12”x9”

I’ve always loved Spiderman. I think of all the superheroes, he’s the most likely to be embarrassed in this way. The reason Spiderman has been so popular -- apart from having cool powers, a cool uniform, and he shoots freakin’ webs out of his hands – is that he is human. Not a caricature of a human, but real problems. Bullied at school, misunderstood, can’t pay his rent, his boss is a jerk, and nobody really knows how awesome he is because he hides it. He’s a hero with low self-esteem and a fantasy life that isn’t a fantasy.

But he’s still prone to being pantsed by green goblins.

An artist friend critiqued some of my work yesterday, for which I’m thankful because I’ve seen her work and know she has a good eye … she pointed at this one and indicated some minor compositional issues. I have a good sense for focal points, but if I’m not going to break an edge with an object, I should steer clear of that edge. Spiderman (and his shadow) are a bit low by about 1/4 to 1/2 inch. Not awful, but a good tip to hear about early in my project and something I'll definitely keep in mind.

It makes me happy to be at a point in my development where I can admit I don’t know it all. I spent many years not wanting advice because it might show I was – I don’t know, incompetent? – and now I realize if you say, “I don’t know,” many people are happy to teach. Some even know what they're talking about, but I find the BS artists can also be a source of inspiration.

I can’t say I’m completely without ego about my art – I really do like my stuff -- but it’s liberating to know I can always improve myself and others are willing to help me do so.

Day 8: Uncensored

OK, I love women. I really love women. I would say I like women naked, but that wouldn’t be art. I like them nude. That’s art. Since this is art, it’s OK if the kiddies see it. This is a cultural experience.

This painting represents, well, my love of cartooning, the female form, and my hatred of the Puritanical censorship that masquerades as “protecting the children.” Whereas I think children should be remain safe from life-altering trauma, I don’t think seeing a titty is among them. Especially since science is pointing more and more toward breast feeding as an almost magical experience, nutritionally, immunologically, physiologically and psychologically.

It may be an unpopular view among those who think the world is only 527 years old, but WE ARE MONKEYS! Monkeys play with their naughty bits and fling poo. We’re not that different, we just pretend we are. Take away our electricity and our internal combustion engine, give it two weeks and we’ll be doing the same thing. Only we’ll have guns. I’d much rather have poo flung at me than get shot.

But I digress. Janet Jackson’s titty at the 2004 Super Bowl? I think it’s obscene that it became news. It’s obscene that children saw their parents over-react and dump heaps of shame over the human body, the one that our Creator has given to us. Fig leaves? Shame? That’s sooo 496 years ago! Let it go, and (I dare say) evolve!

day 7: I Drive a Babe Magnet

My beloved 1994 Toyota Corolla wagon. Leaks oil, transmission slips. Dinged, dented, what's left of the rear struts rattles around like Harvey Fierstein with bronchitis ... but it still gets 30-34 mpg loaded up with junk.

It's on its last legs and I intend to drive it into the ground, but I just received word from my mechanic that the struts are completely gone and will cost $650 to replace, and probably will need an alignment. So I know I'm going to have to shop for a new car.

I'm hard on my cars on the inside but I try to maintain the motor. But the missing hubcaps (and recently I covered it with band-aid shaped bumper stickers) say I don't really care to be struttin' around in a Beemer.

So $650 to put it on hospice is overkill. I know it'll die soon so I'm going to slowly find a good used Toyota/Honda with under 100,000 miles. (wish SUVs didn't replace wagons in this country). Unfortunately, the other day, I ran over a nail. I patched the tire, but it inflated weird (it started to look like Jabba the Hut with a goiter) so I had to buy a new tire. The cheapest I could find was 60 bucks, gol ding it! I paid, since donuts aren't supposed to last more than 100 miles, then it's borrowed time, and the wife expressed concern that I was planning on borrowing that time. My mechanic corroborated, stating that the donut is made of a different type of rubber and is designed for getting you from the side of the road to the auto shop.

In any case, I painted this one up before all this came down. Just a tribute to an old friend and an acknowledgment that I know I'm not going to impress the ladies in this beloved pile of junk.

I want to revisit painting another car at some point ... I know I can do better, but it isn't a strength. I have been working on perspective, but that's one of those things you get in art school which I chose to run away from. Plus, I prefer organic shapes with fewer straight lines. Curse you Greek mathematicians with your straight lines and Platonic ideals!

Day 6: Nerd Starter Kit

Well, I'm not normally a realism guy, but I thought I'd give it a whirl. Normally, I like to make some sort of statement or story with my work, even if it's a study of some sort.

This day was different. I wanted to find something to paint and looked down at a couple of objects I'd left on the table after work: a Uniball pen and my fake glasses.

About halfway through, I realized there was still a bit of a statement behind this: kind of a self-portrait through my tools of the trade: nerd glasses and a good sketching pen. I had fun trying to work out the shadows. I probably did them wrong, but Adolf "Harpo" Marx died thinking he needed harp lessons and Van Gogh died practicing, essentially, Art 101, thinking he'd failed. I hope not to kick myself and just enjoy the learning process.

Day 5 - Man's Best Friend

I love beer.

I mean I really love beer. Not in an alcoholic "This Bud's for you" sort of way, but as someone who's lived in Germany AND Belgium, I've come to appreciate beer as a vinophile might snoot about wine.

This was the night of the party. Sister-In-Law had requested I help her select the good beers (she's a wine lover but respects my beer choices, or at least she humors me convincingly.) I love Hoegaarden, though I've found in the USA, it doesn't taste quite right out of the bottles. I believe it doesn't travel well from its native Brussels. Leffe on the other hand, mwah! We also got some of the Unibroue brewery's champagne-bottled beers (with the cork) (Le Fin du Monde and Maudite are faves). My wife made me stop filling the shopping cart. It's a good thing we didn't go to the GOOD beer store across town. I would've put up more of a fight.

In any case, well, I got drunk and passed out, woke up at about 3:30am and had to paint. Part of the process is to figure out what to paint. Fortunately I had inspiration all around me.

The "Beer Yum Yum" was a bit of a copout, but I was drunk, it works, and it kind of captures the moment.

Day 4: Yellowbeard

Still not having a system for deciding on what I will paint and when, I kind of fly by the seat of my pants. Also, I was still at the Sister-In-Law's house, still without a routine built in. I had to pull myself away from watching cable TV with the nephew and his college chum (a rare treat since we never got a digital converter box for our squirrel-powered TV at home).

I play an online game (variations of the game of Risk, played over days, weeks, or months with other Internet dorks at warfish.net.) Some other user's avatar kept jumping out at me: a cropped movie still from Yellowbeard. It's a compelling photo because of the intense crazy in Graham Chapman's eyes. I don't think I captured his particular crazy, but I'm still happy with the results, even if he looks a little like Aquaman from his angry years.

It's interesting to me since I don't really write a journal or keep a diary or anything, but whenever I look at old sketchbooks, I remember what I was feeling when I drew things, and often the surrounding circumstances of that day. I'm not sure I would remember quite as much from this trip to New Jersey if I hadn't painted these things while there.

Side note: since I painted this, I haven't been haunted by the avatar.

Day 3: Ketchup Tigra

This was a big test to the project: I was supposed to go to a gathering of internet dorks in Toronto, but logistics (and expenses) were unjustifiable. My income's been low this year due to the economic downturn and frivolously spending $600-$800 for a weekend seemed irresponsible.

Instead, I drove 4 hours to New Jersey to help my wife and Sister-In-Law plan SIL's most recent 39th birthday party. The test? Can I paint while away from my home studio? Amid the craziness of party planning and then during an actual party?

When I arrived, they weren't there, but my college-aged nephew let me in and I looked around for the cats, whom I like to torment (in a friendly, loving way). The new one I found under the bed. I asked the Nephew what the cat's name was and he said, "Ketchup." Later, when SIL got home from a Broadway show with my wife, I mentioned "Ketchup" and she looked perturbed. "His name is Tigra!"

Apparently I'd been a pawn in a small point of contention between a mom and her wily Sophomoric son, who giggled. "Tigra," by the way, is Russian for "Tiger" (he's striped, obviously). I married into a family of ex-Soviets. In any case, I had taken a photo of this cat, painted him after everyone went to bed (my favorite time for work). I knew I needed sleep, so I picked a subject, style and composition I could whip out quickly. (an artist friend referred to that as "desperation pieces" ... I disagree. We'll see what I consider a "desperation piece" as time goes on)

At SIL's birthday party, as a special gift, I sold her this painting :0).

Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of it before I framed it. The framing was a good exercise though: it's a 7"x5" piece, which fit into the frame of 7 1/4"x5 1/4" ... which meant the frame swallowed part of the cat. A twig and a Swiss army knife came to the rescue and there's a small piece of her yard debris inside the frame. From this I learned to keep a bit of a gutter around the edges for frames to eat up.

Side note: Day 3 refers to the day of the painting. I'm posting with a time lag, I hope to catch up soon.

Day 2: Daddy Issues

My first post didn't really talk much about the actual painting (entitled, "Thing," which I'll do here.

The first painting, yesterday, was pulled out of my sketchbook. I used to looooove the Addams Family and have made it a mission to learn to draw hands. Hands are often thought by artists as difficult to render. I agree. For a long time, I squiggled my way through hands with the excuse "I'm a cartoonist; I don't need to draw them right." until I was traveling in Germany in 1992 and really noticed Uderzo's Asterix: beautifully rendered throughout, but the hands were anatomically accurate. Five fingered hands -- none of this Disneyized four-fingered crap.

(for more on that subject, there's an awesome graphic novel by Rich Koslowski named Three Fingers)

This current painting was another browse-through-sketchbooks (I have 20 years' worth of random scrawls) ... Anyone who grew up with a dad or a mom (or who is a dad or a mom) probably knows this situation. It's not specifically autobiographical (though my dad had a set of lungs and a temper to fuel it) but actually more inspired by a loudmouthed friend of mine who recently has become a father.

Since it's the second painting in the series, I'm still finding my hand, it's still a fresh project, and since I hadn't painted really in 2 years, kind of shaky still. But I'm happy with the results. One particular thing that really enthralled me was the colors through the glass to give that translucent effect. I'd never done that before. I think I did it well.

Day 1: My paintings. First Post! Blogging virgin no more!

This blog will document the 365 paintings I will be doing before July 6, 2010. I'm starting this blog on August 18, 2009 and hope to catch up, but the purpose is to discuss the pictures which will take additional (unplanned) time.

First off, if you're just here for the pretty pictures, I give you permission to skip around. I'm writing text in long-form for those who want to know more about my process. The highest compliment I seek is "You have inspired me to create art."

I didn't invent the 365 idea, but I'm taking credit for my hard work.

I first heard about "Thing-A-Day" projects from a guy I met at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland in 2006. He had written a comic book with 365 panels and I thought the idea was brilliant. I said, "I want to do something like that."

Along the way, I'd seen Jonathan Coulton, an excellent Nerd-Era songwriter had done a 52 songs in 52 weeks, and I saw a couple of exhibitors at Artomatic (guerilla art show in Washington DC) who had done "thing-a-day" projects. There was also a guy on ebay a couple years ago selling his thing-a-day paintings. (a well-rendered fork here; a well-rendered salt-shaker there)

I missed most of Artomatic this year, only making it for the last 2 1/2 hours of closing day ... as I was running around, trying to absorb as much as possible, there were people taking their artwork down from the walls. One guy was about to tear down a sign, just as I panted by and I said, "wait! I need 20 seconds to look at your exhibit!" I'm not sure if he was smiling from amusement or annoyance, (social cues? not my forté) but the sign in his hand read, "These are some paintings from my thing-a-day project." As always I said, "some day I want to do that."

Fast forward to two days later. The wife's out of town for her sister's birthday week, I'm sitting on the sofa, bonding with the dog (who thinks the wife smells better), and I say, "I am going to paint 365 paintings now." Did I mention I have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder? Projects like this are difficult for folks like me.

What I hope to get out of this project is:

• better self-discipline
• A structure to my day around which I can build better habits
  
• learning about art (dropped out of art school in 1986)
  
• self-expression
• finishing old ideas
• I make my living with my body, which is aging, and I'll want to make a living with lower-impact endeavors
• a better portfolio
• fun!
• sell my artwork (but not all of it!)
  
• make friends, contacts, and business connections

Thank you for visiting! I welcome you to visit again and again as I forge ahead with the project.

(view my commentary on this painting in Day 2's post. I didn't want to inundate you)