What I've Learned from Google Analytics

1. "Precocious" is harder to spell than I thought
2. "Knowledge is a Weapon" is easier to spell, and gets the same results
3. I can plaster my name over EVERYTHING, and people will still Google "Paulson" >:-[
4. Furries like me! (I like you too!)
5. Non-furries are highly indifferent to me! (Don't fursecute my kids, you bigots!)
6. One bigger comic linking to me will triple my traffic. An ad blitz gets me plus 10%, maybe.
7. Having a day with a minimal ad push, however, causes traffic to plummet
8. Only one bigger comic has featured me, but links pages do bring in a newbie or so a day
9. Installing Analytics on low-traffic sites can crush the soul (Hello to the other 10 people who read this!)
10. No one clicks on my Twitter links. I CLICK ON (most of) YOURS, PEOPLE!
11. I totally fail at the StumbleUpon social game. Some get thousands of hits from it. I get one a day.
12. The only page that gets less hits than my artist bio is the page about my friends. Ouch for all of us.
13. I should totally be doing a gag-a-day comic about hot chicks playing video games in manga format with cell shading
14. One noscript plugin can render a reader invisible to Analytics, so I can safely assume thousands of people are doing that, right?

I was going to do a painting update, but I put it off until I'm further along with both paintings. I made it to the computer anyway to look up lyrics for the new Decemberists album, which is awesome. Midnight passed during this, so I just *had* to open Analytics...

Anyway, today's blogging will be far improved once the paintings make it on later.

Sketching? What's that?

Remember when I was churning through a new sketchbook every two to three weeks? Now, it feels like I go that time *between* sketches. Is this bad news? Heck no! It means I'm working on the product. I'm keeping most of my promises! (I'd say all, but that puts me at risk of someone doing the research I totally was too lazy to do.)

Once I had my main characters set years ago, I rarely deviated from developing them. Look, it's a process that can only be accomplished through repetition. I'm doing all I can to get through the awkward early years stage, so drawing random figures isn't the priority!

And this sketch reflects that mindset. This isn't in the comfort zone, and it's not taking me in any exciting direction, but it's a sketch on Saturday. Enjoy the random furry chicks? Success?

It's DC; it must be painting

I'm back in DC again, which means access to a nice sturdy easel and giant canvasses. Painting mode: activated!



Painting mode: modified! I have all these unfinished Maquette paintings, representing a series of wall-hitting and general apathy. They are bite-sized compared to what I've been working on, so what's the trouble? Let's see if I can knock 'em out!



Oh, goddammit, can I not paint anymore? I ruined Annelise's hair, and each attempt to fix only made it worse. The hands came out ok, so at least I have that. You know, so she can become real and punch me for giving her hair out of a playing card.



Sebastian is coming along alright. This was formerly a selfish-portrait thing, but the character of Sebastian kinda looks exactly. like. me. So I can make it sexier than I am, claim it's him plus artistic license and throw it in my Maquette series!

APAT-

"You know, all I have to do is paint enough so that the paintings LOOK finished. The Mill people will never notice!"

And so the downward spiral began.



There's a background on the painting now. FINISHED ENOUGH! "But, Chrispy, you never went back and finished the vase, doesn't that--" I SAID I'M FINISHED, DAMMIT!

One bonus of ceasing to give a fuck: I can paint on my own terms!



This gigantic canvas (48" x 30") is my Chrispmas gift to Dana. (Fuck that mirror, I WANT THE WALL SPACE!) This has actually been coming along nicely. Man, I hope this still fits the color scheme of the room. It may be too warm in tone. It also may be too large to fit in my Corolla for transport. It's the thought that counts?

This is what I'm *supposed* to do as an artist

Story time!

Yesterday I had a shocking experience. Having ordered lots of strip templates fairly recently, I was confident in my abundance. Then I counted the remaining number of templates and the amount of strips scripted and ready to draw. Oh snap! See, the theory is that I will work on my scripted strips, but I will *also* draw any random idea I get. My strip needs more one-off strips with quirky humor, and I figure it'll come naturally as long as I'm receptive. If I don't have enough supplies to cover more than a few random strips, Mr. Conservation steps and in makes life sad.

This problem needed to be fixed. TO THE INTERNET! I normally go to Dick Blick for resupplies, as the 14-sheet pads are cheapest there, but I felt thrifty and tried to search the web. This is an absolute pain, as my templates are one item in an ever-variable list of Canson products. Frustration grew as I reached a site and looked at an improbably price. "What kind of sale is this? The price is MORE than the list price and - wait, did that say 50?" IT COMES IN PADS OF 50? Why was I not told of this sooner? I now have 200 templates coming my way at the cost of about 25 cents per sheet, shipping price included. There was an even better deal with the 100 pack (*drool*) but it appears to be theoretical as all sites have it as sold out. It'll be a while before I run out now!

(here is where the story splits into different timelines. As is my nature, I am putting the relevant story second. )

1) ...assuming the pads get here. Today I check my email to see the chaos Project Wonderful has wrought (it's rather amusing to see cheapo bids fluxuate wildly) and I see a note from Art Supply Warehouse titled "Backorder." Ruh roh. I open to see the expected, "we're sorry and we'll get it to you soon" stuff. Then it lists the missing item that is holding my order back. The catalog. They won't ship my pads until they can dump a catalog on me. I wrote them back, saying (and this is as direct a quote as I can remember), "See, there's this thing called the internet. I can review your catalog and, um, place orders there." I have yet to get a reply.

2) ...of course, Mr. Thrifty had to come out for a fight first. The site kept asking if I had a coupon code, and that make me thing, "you know, I DESERVE to have a coupon code!" So I searched for one. All I found had expired, but the journey was not without its reward. The blog that cataloged coupons *also* lists various art promotions. The main one on the page was sponsored by Prismacolor.

For those not in the know, I consider myself a drawer more than anything. I have kicked some serious ass in the past with my Prismacolor pencils and pastels. This contest is right up my alley! The only problem is that the art has to have been completed in the past six months. What have I done in the past six months? DAMMIT!

What you see here is me trying to rekindle my former glory with the pencil. For this contest, I'll have to do something more realistic, but and excercise in an excercise! Enjoy.

Accepting the inevitable

I'm not sure why, but my sketching of late has been along the lines of, "now that I have these characters, how many ensemble standards can I cover?" If your project has enough characters, how can you NOT force a Last Supper image upon a fully-suspecting populace?

I believe next on the list is.... Drawing your furry characters as humans! This is not much of a creative challenge for me, as the four main cast members WERE humans when 10-year-old me first drew them and the current versions are fairly faithful adaptations. Really, the only reason I haven't gone down this road yet is that I still hold out hope of somehow finding my sketchbooks from that time period. Farthest back I've found to this point was 8th grade, which was when I abandoned my children in favor of cartoons mocking my classmates and teachers. It's also somewhat painful to draw my characters at their most primitive of incarnations. Oh well, if I don't get any REAL ideas in the immediate future, I'll try that.

Pulling back a bit, my conclusions is that my current art mood is reflecting my internet situation. I can't keep a connection for more than a few minutes at a time, which means I can do my daily updates... and nothing else. You can't browse news or read comics with constant interruptions! Hell, even though blogging in theory just requires me to get to the posting screen and hit the "post" button when the connection returns, sometimes (ALL OF YESTERDAY) the connection gets so screwy the only solution is restarting the computer... and losing the unsaved blog post. The post you see for yesterday is the 4th or 5th attempt. Earlier drafts included the themes of THIS post. (Guess which common character treatment I decided wasn't worth sharing!)

I'm hoping for some stability soon. I *should* be painting. I *should* be working on the NINE WEEKS of Precocious comics I have scripted. Instead, I am bouncing around without focus. When then happens, uninspired rips on The Last Supper happen. No one wins.

Like the Bush administration and natural resources

It took quite a while to make this sketch. Why? I kept shading to make Roddy's fur appropriately dark. See, the all-black Roddy was fun in pencil because I could make him gray and still have the freedom to give him the expressions he deserves. Everyone knew he was meant to be black, so everybody wins! Now, he's been anti-Jolsoned. Part of him is white! If I make his remaining black parts gray, it just looks like gray. He looks like a feline Max, which is inappropriate, creepy and somewhat unintentionally hilarious if you want to make a "difference between dogs and cats" joke.

So now I have blackify Roddy's blackness. And if I go too far in one place, that means I have to darken the rest to make it look right. As I kept going, the thoughts begin to nip at me... I'm wasting my pencil lead! If I run out, I have to buy more! Poor Roddy, of course he's the one I'm drawing when I contemplate if it's worth finishing the drawing just in case I'll face a minor inconvinience like procuring more easily-obtainable lead.

Now, pencil lead is one thing I happen to have a lot of at this point. Thanks to my comic push, I doing far more work than sketching, so those supplies are holding up well. It's every *other* art suply that is freaking me out. Who knew that being an active artist meant buring through supplies so fast? In the past few weeks, I've had to restock on comic templates, India ink, the "no-copy" blue pencil lead and the very precious mechanical pencil erases. There was a point where I thought what I had was an inexhaustable supply. I bought enough for FOUR MONTHS! Well, my intro story was two months of work, the comic has been up almost a month and I am a month ahead in strips. Lookee there!

Unlike some people (such as the guy upstairs who got kicked out of a bar last night because he was too wasted and caused a disturbance - and spent today on the phone happily declaring that everyone he offended should just get over it) I hate spending more money that I'm taking in. This is a problem when one is without a (paying) job. I worked my butt off enough previously to build up some "winter fat" savings I could live off while I was doing my artist thing... but I've been doing that longer than anticipated. I still have plenty of savings to make the purchases I need - which is good, since I continue to make those purchases - but nowadays each purchase comes with feelings of guilt.

Let's not forget the majority of my art supplies were taken from my dead dad's stash. I've had to restock, of course, but the supplies I inherited *did* help me choose my direction as an artist. I have no desire to work with high-end art supplies. For me, the investment does not justify the result unless I know I'll be selling the work. I make due cobbling the together the few supplies I have. If I know my supplies are dwindling, I tend to hold back too much - which means I'm handicapping myself. If left to my own devices, I will do something like switch my last remaining eraser between each pencil I'm using until some merciful soul takes me out to buy more. (Thanks, Andrew!) When I do finally restock, I buy in bulk. Not only does it often bring a discount, but it allows me to toss aside my worry.

The current comic successes are partially due to me feeling free enough to experiment again. There were times when I impulsively grabbed a template and just started drawing. Shockingly enough, those experiments all ended up becoming actual strips, so I get double pride from that! Still, if they had failed, it was OK to put them aside and move on. Feeling secure in resources means such things are learning experiences, as opposed to costly mistakes. It would likely benefit me if I put more of an effort into consuming supplies with reckless abandon (hence the Bush administration joke in the title) because I will learn and grow (here's where the Bush analogy breaks down, as they never learn) - but I'm still cognizant of a future when supplies will dwindle once more, so I guess I'm still a bit too *cough* conservative here.

My Spadey Sense is Tingling!

Spades: No fun at parties.

After finally getting through Mr. Tedious Boss in the latest Castlevania for the DS, I've been spending a lot of my time as the game is FUN now! Seriously, guys, what's the deal with the crab? "Hey, let's make a boss that sits below the hero - when only one weapon that can hit something below is available!" "That's a great idea! I love it so much, let's make the battle happen in FOUR STAGES!" "Great job, everyone! Drinks are on me!"

Anyway, I've been plowing my way through in my usual bloated-level way with these games. (I suck at video games, I need the extra cushion.) Like all good Castlevania games, this one has a bunch of side quests and optional fun to pursue. Oh man... how can a spade resist? It's time to consult the GAMEFAGS! Er, GameFAQs.

For those who don't know, "spade" is a term taken from an analysis of those massive multiplayer online role playing games. (Technically, the analysis was for a primitive version, but whatever.) Some guy broke the types of players down into four classes. You can read the article here if you want.

Diamonds: These are the achievers, focusing on playing the game itself. They like to beat the game, then beat it again even harder. They don't do sidequests, chosing instead to focus on speed and skill.

Hearts: These are the socializers, focusing on interacting with the other players. They form the in-game communities and like to chat and give gifts. For them, the game is just another way of connecting them to people.

Clubs: These are the fighters, focused on besting other peolpe at the game. These are the player killers, PVP warriors and online racers. They measure success by their ranking against other people.

Spades: These are the explorers, focusing on examining game mechanics to figure out the world. They combine efforts with other players to figure out all the little things that can be done with a game.

I am a ridiculous spade. I love doing every sidequest and finding every non-standard approach to the game possible. I think it's FUN to bike back and forth in pokemon hatching eggs, slowly leveling up the hatchlings, checking their stats to see if they're good and (99% of the time) resetting and starting the process over. What do I get from it? A very minimal boost in overall performance that really is no where near worth the effort put in. But, when I pull something off, it's exhilierating. (I have bred the world's best non-hacked Rotom and Milotic!) It's the thrill of the conquest! Many times, once I've done all the sidequests and pulled of every exploit possible, I put the game aside without ever bothering to beat the game. Final Fantasy Tactics A2 is one my favorite games ever, but I never beat it. Once I managed the unthinkable and managed to create ninja tabi for my entire team, there was no other challenge the game could offer me. On to the next obsession!

Castlevania is addictive because it has something for everyone. Diamonds can play through the game, then do hard mode, then do hard level one mode, then do the boss rush, then play as another character, then try to beat the times in all of those! Clubs can go online and race with each other. Hearts can open stores online and chat on message boards. Spades have tons of side quests and minor tasks to occupy them. They figure out how to arrange enchantments and equipment just so to find exploits, such as easy boss kills and easy money. They test attributes to see what effects what, which is needed because some of the item translations make no sense. They locate every hidden area and item. Rock on!

So what have I been doing? Right now I have a rubber band holding down my up button as I absorb enemy attacks to boost my elemental stats. Every hour my power goes up like 1%! Woo! Tonight I will probably leave the game on with a familiar killing things in a room where enemies constantly respawn so it can level up, gain me experience, help the item based on my kill count and bulk up the time played to help items tied to that. Earlier I hunted down every enemy in the game to make sure I got every item drop possible from them. (I'm one short, but not skilled enough to access that enemy easily.) Later, I am boosting my treasure chest luck and hunting down rare random items I don't need. As I said, spades are no fun at parties. We are profoundly boring people.

Pulling out that rubber band did give me some ideas, though. My main characters fit nicely into the four groups. Bud is a diamond, Autumn is a club, Tiffany is a heart and Jacob is the spade. (Poor guy.) Not only can this inspire some fun bonus art down the road, but I could even turn the idea into merchandise! Gamer-appealing t-shirts? Ooh. Actual decks of cards? That is the dream, people! I would seriously love a Precocious-themed deck of cards. Maybe one day, if I ever get a loyal readership, I can justify the work and fiscal investment needed to make that dream come true...

Cranial Concrete

What a way to start November, huh? My mind has been so blank these past few days I couldn't even put up FILLER in good conscience. This has been highly frustrating.

Me and productivity rarely coincide as is, thanks to my brain being wired in an amazingly specific way to negate all my best qualities. Oh, and I'm also hardwired to struggle mightily with any alternate (er, normal, that is) life paths. Basically, I'm wired to fail. Pure force of will alone is how I made it as far as I have. (Have I made it anywhere?) Problem is, I have to actively fight to keep myself even mildly useful - which leaves me vulnerable when life gets fuckly bad. Recent events have worn me down to nothing, which is quite frustrating.

My house is a construction site, which is detrimental in several ways. The constant banging has brutalized my sleep pattern, which is never good for anyone. The lack of a kitchen means I am living out of a microwave now, which sucks. Having the only working appliances as well as the utility stuff nearby means constant invasion of my personal space. (Let's face it, I'm borderline agoraphobic, so this stuff is a big deal.) I cannot get peace here and the constant invasion of people and sounds is starting to severely affect me.

This blog is very useful because the post-a-day goal forces me to have visual proof that I did something positive. Recently, I've been focusing on my writing. I want to create a thorough outline of Maquette so that, if I die unexpectedly, there will be enough there for someone else to take my story and complete it for me. (Note: I am not planning on dying anytime in the next millennium, but I need *something* to force me to put stories that exist entirely in my brain down in real form.) By working on painting in addition to the writing, I had something to show off!

Well, the environment and creative block finally set in with painting. Without something to show, I am just this delusional wistful artist wasting his life on a project no one will ever care about. To make matters worse: My crappy painting skills extend to drawing. For years I would sketch for hours a day. As of late, sitting down to draw feels absolutely foreign. I'm going to chalk it up to the environment finally getting to me, because if my brain was imploding for good that would be far too depressing.

Anyway, the goal of this post was to apologize. I'm not apologizing for my lack of posting her as much as I am apologizing for being a crappy person in this past month. While I've struggled to create, I've increasingly isolated myself. To all my friends I've ignored in that time, I'm really sorry. I've been a wretch and you are so awesome that I'd hate to bring you down with me. Here's to hoping this whiny dirge has been enough blather to get the frustrations out of my brain.

Sending more women to their doom

This has not been the best day on the painting front. Maybe it has to do with HEAVY CONSTRUCTION GOING ON ABOVE MY HEAD! Anyway, I probably did more harm than good to my Dania and Millie paintings, so no sharing until I right those wrongs.

I did, however, start the other two paintings I've been planning. These have an increased difficulty level, meaning I am setting myself up for big time failure.



This is Moreh Serev. An argument can be mounted that she is *the* most important character of the first half of Maquette, so it's best that I don't fuck this up.

Obviously, Moreh is no spring chicken. She's 56, and that means she's been a power player for a good long time. And I do mean that literally: Powerful people are her playthings. Because of that, I wanted her to have a sly, "I own your ass," expression.

Making her rest her head in her hand is important for two reasons: If done right, it helps convey her casual amusement at her manipulations, and her hands are somewhat symbolically important in the story. If I had painted a pose showing off her palms I'd explain more, but making Moreh do the jazzhands thing would be ridiculous. As of now the pose looks ridiculous anyway, but I'm hoping that's more about how her pose and torso haven't been developed yet than about me sucking at this.

As for the exact scene I am depicting, I'm playing it safe with a fairly universal Moreh pose for now. If I get more hand-painting ambition, I might show her other hand holding a teacup, which would place the painting during her introductory scene - where she's getting under the skin of the two people you just don't fuck with in Maquette. Reach for the stars, Moreh!



This is Marilee Ruth Bishop. She usually goes by various nicknames, but I'm writing her full name here as I don't think I've done it anywhere else. (It may all be in my head, but it's not always in my notes.) She was the original subject of the painting that became Millie, but my grand idea forced me to a new canvas.

Marilee has a strange quirk about her: She kinda glows in the dark. There's a *really* awesome explanation that that, but I'll leave you guessing for now. For her introduction, she's standing at the back of a dark room and slowly lights up. Spooky! I want to see if I can make it work! That's why I'm including a negative of the first sketch, since it sorta resembles the goal of the painting.

Unfortunately, I sorta screwed up the pose. Initially, I wanted to show more of her body since her introduction has her standing farther back from "the camera." Then I decided my strength is in the face and hair, so I pulled it in a big tighter. The result: She's far enough away to lose detail in her face, but too close for me to work a dynamic pose. Awesome!

Back to the grind...

I'm home! Just in time to finish off another sketchbook. Even with the lack of art production in DC, this thing was completed far too fast. The more I work in a sketchbook, the less I work on things that need to be done. Ahh, such a bright future I see!



Here is the standard collection of sketches that didn't fit on other posts. First is one of the few non-profile Buds that were even half-decent. It's the same ol' consequence: Once I get a decent handle on a character, I move my focus to others. Then, when I go *back* to the character I DRAW THE MOST, suddenly I have to remember where the friggin' ears go!

The Max is a sketch I referenced in the Boys Wanna Fight post. It was too good to fit the crappy sketches, so it was replaced. Such is the story of my life. *sob*

Autumn is why my Bud drawings are sucking now! I lost confidence in drawing her, so she filled up my sketchbook! Bud went into the corner with Chinatown and Ruby Tuesdays. This sketch is my favorite (complete) one that didn't get posted yet. (I think...)



As everyone knows, my action drawing is rather sub-par. This was my attempt to better myself. As everyone can see, it is rather sub-par.



As mentioned in my Et kids post, Frida was too tiny for all her features. (Or I'm just incompetent.) To play around, I decided to do a Frida as Tiffany-sized, or Tiffany in a Frida costume. Whatever.



This was the final non-crap sketch of the sketchbook, so let's go out on that. Woohoo!

The Boys Wanna Fight

But those girls? They appear ti be happy to dance all night.

While they average out to a combative group (Bud, Roddy, Quincy, Xander = Fight. Jacob = Toss Up. Vincent = Space Cadet. Max = Filthy Pacifist.) the title is just me reaching for a song with "boys" in it to match the girls post below. Since I have been on a Garbage binge today, it was all too easy. Note to world: Version 2.0 is one of the best albums EVER!

The boys of the Poppinstock Academy 4th and 5th grade class, clockwise from top left: Bud Oven, Roddy Finnegan, Xander Upton, Jacob Linkletter, Vincent Iddenstein, Quincy Wozwax, Max Zeit.

Unlike the girls post, this was not an inspirational page where everything went right. Instead, my sketching has been rather icky the past few days, so I had to cherry pick. Xander and Vincent are OK (both sketches done the same night as the girls post, of course) and Bud and Jacob are within the standard deviation; but I'm unhappy with the other three. For one, Roddy is rarely that pleasant. I went through a day where I drew all my characters chubby for some damn reason, and this Roddy was the only one thin enough to scan. Quincy is *almost* there, but his nose should be shifted more to the right. He's a German shepherd but the nose placement makes him look somewhat feline. For Max, star of the current strips in production, I had tons of better sketches for him due to relevance. This one is rather weak, but the others were too good to fit in with the rest of this wonky crowd.

One thing I tried to do with this crew is line up the kids according to height. This mandated the separation of doggies from kitties due to ear discrepency. (It also meant using photoshop to shorten some sketches.) Bud's Scottish fold ears means he'll be the shortest no matter what, even though body-wise he's taller than both Jacob and Vincent. Roddy and Xander are average height for cartoon kitties, whatever that may be. On the doggie side, Max should be the clear tall one. Quincy is a bit too tall, but I was too lazy to fix it. Jacob and Vincent are both tiny (they're 9, while the rest are 10) with Vincent coming in as the shortest in body. Luckily for Vincent, he is a fluffy dude and his ears give him a boost.

Yes, this post is filler done only to keep the streak going. That is, unless you really wanted to know about cartoon animal height. If so, I guess it was fascinating.

Another one bites the dust

Tonight I put another sketchbook to rest. It took slightly under two months to finish it. In theory, this is a good thing. I had burned through the my last few sketchbooks in under a month, meaning I had done no *actual* work. In theory, moving at half that speed should mean I've been doing actual work!

OR, it means my tooth exploded a month ago. :'-(

Eh, I got *some* work done during this sketchbook's reign of power, which is an infinite amount more than with the previous ones.



Woo, kids! I like this collection because it shows how much taller Max is compared to the others. Aside from that, it's just the "best of" from my Rome watching marathon.




I found a sketch I'd made of Autumn with her hair unrestrained. I liked it, but it was just a head - so I played Dr. Frankenstein and threw it on a body of Autumn with her, uh, autumn gear on. (Autumn of autumn's head was fine, but not as interesting, so off it went!) This Dionne is inferior to the one in the first image, but it was scanned before I found the better one, so enjoy it anyway! (For the record, Dionne tends to point in sketches so I can practice drawing the spots on her arms.)



Finally, here's some more of Bud's mother, Sydney. This batch of sketches shows off her ponytail a bit more. Since she appears so infrequently, I have the freedom to change her hair length as I please. I should note that the most interesting sketches - which had her hair down and gave her more fashionable dresses - were all poorly placed on the page. Oh well, these two full-body shots are fair enough.

Overall, a very depressing and sad month was reflected in a very depressing and sad sketchbook. My characters, as always, stood around with benign smiles or slight confusion - so the subject matter didn't change. The execution is what depresses me. I should be taking more risks and creating more dynamic poses with my characters, but it's all I can do to keep the static blah-ness together.

To fully commit to the role as a reflection of my mood, there is a point in my sketchbook where I suffered such a jolt that I somehow go switched around and began drawing from a different end of the book. Two thirds of the way through in my current direction, I ran into my drawings from a few weeks ago. They are much cleaner and more controlled. All my recent stuff is loose and unfocused. Gee, I wonder why.

Another inspirational pep talk from me to me!

The Graveyard of Light

Above is my favorite comic strip of all time. Charles Schulz' Peanuts is easily the biggest inspiration for Precocious and with all my recent health issues I've had the time to reacquaint myself with my archives. I've also been reading Schulz' biography - although it's much harder to read that than four-panel strips when doped up - so you can say the man's taken over my life.

The reason I share today is to curse the darkness like my favorite character of all time, Lucy Van Pelt.

Following up on the reemerging inspiration of yesterday, I decided to try and get some cartooning done. Then I remembered that I LIVE IN DARKNESS! Now, my natural habitat is one not unlike that of a vampire's - but the key is that I *could* obtain light when needed before. It's one of the benefits of electricity. Those times are over. I thought electricity was my friend! Then, just like it was one of my friends, it had to become unreliable for me; helping me only when it chose to, before finally leaving me helpless and alone.

First the stands of Christmas lights I'd hung around began to die. In what was surely a healthy set-up, the Christmas lights provided enough ambient light for me to function during the day and sleep at night - a perfect situation for the pale and lazy! In an electrician's nightmare, I had them strung all around the room in one big loop. As one could expect from cheap lights purchased at dollar stores after holiday seasons, these lights were not meant to last. First the lights at the corner went. Well, the only reason I'm over there is to use to the light table, so that's no biggie. Then went the ones above the doors. Fine, I still have enough light. Then went the strands over my bed. Welcome to darkness town! Half my room was now officially dark.

As an artist, one of course needs more light than holiday novelties can provide; so I would bring in unused lamps from around the house. Man, they did *not* last long. One had one of those non-standard light bulbs, so fuck that extra hassle once it exploded. The next was so old, the bulb and lamp had fused together. Once it died, there was nothing I could do to save that ancient bastard.

So then it was on to the unreliable flood lighting. I've long known the wiring of this place was screwy, but that's why I had brought in all those extra lights! Now I was at the mercy of the cheap jerk who build this house.

Despite using energy-efficient, long-lasting bulbs, my ceiling would consume them with alarming frequency. For the most part, I tried to move the lights around so the non-burnt out would light useful areas, but this compromise was not to be. One light would die. I'd replace it. It would die a day later. I'd plug in more Christmas lights. It was the natural order of the room, y'know?

As the wiring got more and more messed up, I'd notice the lights would burn out in order. My guess was the power was being distributed unevenly between the live and the dead, overloading the temporarily-living. (Electricity probably does not work this way, but I don't *really* care to know one way or the other.) The solution seemed clear: replace EVERYTHING! It seemed to work!

Things were going well until everyone died.

Entering the room, I'd flick the light switch and head a sickening electrical buzzing sound. The lights would flicker and go dark. Flicking the switch off and on again would fix that. For a while. Like pancreatic cancer in my ceiling, the time between diagnosis and death was short and painful. The switch no longer works. My lamps are dead. My eternal Christmas has gone the way of the belief in Santa.

This makes it exceedingly hard to, oh, work on art. My lone lighting hold out was this fluorescent desk lamp thing I had rigged above my bed for reading. You can guess what happened to that. It didn't *die* like the rest - it's just dying in the way fluorescent bulbs die... with that sickly strobe effect.

So now I am either living in darkness or the WORST TECHNO CLUB EVER. I eat by the light of my old piano lamp. I work by the strobe of the relocated lamp. (In theory, as I have yet to do any work thanks to this situation.) I read by a tiny light that I had used to light the fold-out shelves in a kitchen cabinet. It provides the strength of four candles, but *also* has the added annoyance of being above my head, looking like an alien invasion. (Or that much-mocked Star Trek: TNG episode. "THERE! ARE! FOUR! LIGHTS!")

You know, maybe those karma-obsessed, chakra-loving moonbeam huggers are right after all. This room's health is uncannily related to my own physical and mental state. Look, universe, I'm all for controlling my environment, but I want that control to be in the form of TOTAL DOMINATION! If it gets broken when I do, we're going to have problems. It's one thing to be the universe's scratching post - you get to blame it for all of your problems! BUT, if my environmental breakdown is entirely tied to my actions, that is JUST NOT COOL!

YOU STUPID DARKNESS!

Concern

It's been a disastrous July/August for me, resulting in total physical breakdown these past few weeks. These are indeed times for concern.

But I'm starting to pull out of the funk - physically, at least. What remains are the mental scars that must be overcome. Those don't go away nearly as fast, but all I can do is hope I break out soon. The urge to create is starting to buzz inside me again... can productivity be far behind?

Considering my track record with optimism, I'm not making any promises until I have real results.

It's like an unfinished symphony...

...but instead of brilliance I have infused my work with halfassitute.



"Scandal" is diamond in this rough. I consider it one of the best paintings I've done. The colors are great, the composition is almost there (like everything in this post, it's only finished enough to pass the Mill admissions test) and the face is exactly what I wanted. Yay me!



Hey, remember the Queen of Clubs? (Scroll down a couple posts if you don't.) Well, fuck her. I tried and I tried to make her work, but instead of playing card wardrobe I ended up with pure Chrispy doodling. You know what? The doodling was *way* better than that awkward face. Out goes the temptress and in come the mecha-swirls! (Bad name for a band: The Mecha Swirls.) You know, if you didn't know the failure that preceded it, this would be a decently snazzy abstract work. But I reminded you. And told you scroll down and see the initial abomination. You know its shameful past. Fuck.

The tile is now "All Roads Lead to Rome" - chosen in hopes it could ascribe some meaning to a viewer. Deep, I know.



Expecting "Risk Key" - my 70's temptress? SO WAS I! What happened was a pitfall all artists know too well: The sketch was too good. I got just what I wanted in my blue boozer, so adding anything just make it look worse. With no idea where to go, I bailed after marring it only slightly. It's no where near refined enough to ever pass for finished, but it will take a major effort to work it out and keep the vibe. Fear of failure level at maximum!

So now I was down two temptresses. It was time to make more! At midnight! With the application due the next day! After starting on a Generic Medieval Babe, I was not thrilled; it seemed far too bland and felt like a unicorn - surrounded by fairies - was going to gallop into frame any minute. In other words, it resembled my target idea so much that any satire I wanted became sincerity. Onto the junk heap it went.

Its replacement... has the same problem. This piece - "Who Knows You Best?" - is also meant to capture a romanticized image. This time it's the poor servant girl. She's always there to tend to your needs. She doesn't have expensive clothing or accessories, so she makes due with what she has. Her face is round and sweet. Her eyes are sincere. She doesn't have the ruby lips of a starlet, but does it even matter? She stands by obediently, waiting to attend to your wishes. (Any wish? Hmmm...)

But is it too sincere? The static post was meant to evoke the stiff stance of servant waiting for action, but it makes for a non-dynamic composition. The flat expression is meant to show dutiful kindness without love. The view of her entering from the curtains is meant to evoke both a breech of privacy and an intimate knowledge of the charge's needs. It's a reverse Stockholm Syndrome: Her job is to be the perfect woman for you; how can one not entertain the thought? It's a nice sentiment, but is it art?

Granted, the work is obviously unfinished. There simply wasn't time to add depth to the colors and tweak the face to my liking. It reached a point where, instead of adding more paint to the palette, I just added water and smeared color around until it (mostly) filled the lines.

It should also be noted that this work, like the rest of my temptresses,was brought about by a great film. This time it was Far From Heaven, a movie that mimics the classic Douglas Sirk films in style. If you haven't seen a Sirk film - and I haven't - the style is of a wholesome 50's environment with several complex underlying issues. Visually, all colors in the film are oversaturated and bright. Suddenly the painting makes a lot more sense, eh?



Out of time and with "Risk Key" out of the picture, I was one painting shy and had to do something quick. With The Fountain - my go-to movie for painterly inspiration - I attacked Generic Medieval Babe and drowned her in broad strokes of green. The inspiration for this painting came from the "Suburban Sprawl" sketch a few posts down. Once it became clear that I can't work a paintbrush enough to do detail work, the initial drawing was toss out and pure Chrispy doodling took over. Once again, The Fountain turned my work into something about nature and plants. (It's that whole Tree of Life thing.) What is nature's version of suburban sprawl? I went with the old growth forest tapering off to fresher, greener thickets. And so "Old Growth" was the last-minute addition to my parade of failure. Yes, it is also noticeably unfinished. Whee!



Notice how I kept saying I needed one more painting? Actually, I needed two - but I quickly realized that was just not going to happen, so I went with my one remaining hot chick painting not on display anywhere. Oh, Cheerleader 3, your love of Swedish football pads my roster.

Second verse; not as good as the first

While waiting for the gesso on Dana's box to dry, I still had the itch to do some painting. Some interesting stuff happened, but the lack of Cate Blanchett soon took its toll.

It's become clear now that the theme of the latest "On Beauty" additions is temptation. The first painting (in the preceding post) is meant to evoke the starlet scandal of early Hollywood. She's the woman that *almost* makes it worth screwing up your life. Disaster surrounds her, but that only manages to make her more seductive.



This next painting is given away by it's (working) title: Risk Key. This time, the temptation comes in the form of the storied key parties of the 70's. You have to ask yourself: Can I be a swinger?

Since each of the paintings so far have been created while watching a film, it would make sense that this was painted while viewing "The Ice Storm." Yeah, I was watching "The Last King of Scotland." It didn't hold my interest, clearly, so the painting just went where it wanted to go. I had very little control over it.

While the result is interesting both visually and conceptually, it was frustrating to get this framework down. I always start my paintings with a brown or maroon "sketch" - NEVER blue. I chose blue with the idea of painting an Ugandan beauty - eh, it made sense at the time - but this annoying Scotsman kept getting in the way. Blue is a bad sketch color because alone it's too bold and when watered down it doesn't thin as nicely as I'd like. I had to squirt in some precious white paint (I consume white paint as if it were candy) to get proper tonal changes.



This next painting is where things really went off the rails. The movie this time was "The Darjeeling Limited." Wes Anderson has so much style in his films that it almost overpowers mine! It's only fitting that the woman created here is subjected to an ornamental and cumbersome outfit.

The face was a disaster from the start. After getting the first painting sketch to a stopping point, I still had paint. Well, heck, why not start another. During "The Last King of Scotland." A movie that only inspired by losing my attention and causing my mind to wander. Brilliant. (It's not a bad film, honestly. It just had the unfortunate timing of being seen between films that were either wonderfully done or stylistically intriguing.) The painting didn't start to find its form until "Darjeeling" was started.

The goal was actually to work with another stylish film: Juliet of the Spirits. Problem is, I can't paint a woman with the round, sweet face of Juliet. If the face looks out of place, that's because I gave up and went with what I know. The rest of the painting will have to be nudged along until it all fits together.

What is the temptation here? I suppose the ornate settings of Wes Anderson lore made me think of the ornate trappings that constrained women of the, uh. Fuck, what crazy British era *is* that? ANYWAY, once I settled on that I mythologized further and turned the woman into a playing card. I'm thinking by the end, she'll be the "Queen of Clubs" - a name that certainly implies some dangerous temptation, no?

The poorly rendered praying hands were meant to give the idea of the unobtainable temptation. Not only does one have to go through several layers of clothing to get at her, but she's also the good girl who would never let herself indulge in bodice-ripping fantasies. The seemingly unobtainable always has a way of seducing.

I'm not sure what direction my queen will follow as I try to improve/fix that beginning, but it should be interesting.

The question now is... what's next in my slide show of harlots through the ages?