recent acquisitions & renditions

First the rendition:

A friend from highschool, who now lives way over in London, recently crossed the pond with her English man to spend some time in NYC and Ottawa. While in New York she and her beau eloped! Their pictures were so old-timey and romantic and sweet.

So when I got a chance to catch up with them in Ottawa for dinner I first painted up some old-timey/romantic/sweet flash to give them as a marriage-gift.

I want to give credit where it's due so let it be known that I painted this from an image on Zack Nelligan's website. I'm a great admirer of his and you should be too if you like traditional tattoos.

Please visit his website and know that I'm not trying to rip this guy off. He labeled the image as "Vintage Flash" so I felt not-scummy about re-painting it. This image is not going into a portfolio or for sale anywhere. It's just going on a wall (or in a box under a bed) in a friend's house.

Anyway, I really wanted to get tattooed by this fella while I was in Texas recently but sadly, I didn't have the time to make a side trip to Austin. Maybe next time though - hopefully. A yellow-rose-of-texas perhaps...


And here are the recent acquisitions:

A pelvis from some potato field near Alliston and a vertebra from Wasaga Beach.


Rusty horseshoe and wrench, also from some potato field (these are things that get dug up along with the potatoes).

And lastly, check this out!! Someone moving out of my building left a nice cast-iron Le Creuset dutch oven in the laundry room!! It was really dirty but it cleaned up really well. AND! It's the same colour as a lot of my other kitchen stuff! A match made in the culinary aisle of heaven!

That's all for now!

Again, go look at Zach Nelligan's tattoo work! It's so nice!

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Fall Selfies

Happy Dress-Like-Your-Furniture Day!

(Ok. I just made that up to justify this picture... in my new/old Hud Bay coat.)

I've been quiet on the blog-front because I've been away, in Texas!

But I'm back.

And since I've gone down the self-portrait-track, here are a few more I took in Tejas:

-My shadow with a Sperm Whale Vertebra in the Buckhorn Museum


-My reflection in the Majestic Theater's Ticket Booth

... and this is just something I liked on the wall of the San Antonio Museum of Art

falling for you Ontario

I forgot to take my camera out of my luggage all weekend so I missed a lot of great pictures of the farm, my family, my solar panels, my sister's piece of heaven on the beach (a.k.a. her cottage), the big thanky-thanky meal, etc. etc. etc.

...but I did take a couple shots out the car windows in Algonquin Park on the way home:

And these two are from my window on Tuesday morning, through my sunglasses:

Autumn is such a pretty gal ain't she?

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Perk Up

Since I have an illustration due tomorrow morning that isn't yet finished, this seemed like a good time to fart around doing other (unnecessary) drawings and projects around the house... and then to blog about it.

So here is some flash*: some copied from Bert Grimm, some inspired by, and some just my own.

I'll let you sort out what's what. It's all about loving coffee...

(It is, in fact, coloured with coffee too!)

Here it is with my favourite mug and the coffee I was drinking and painting with:

* Not sure if this is done yet... might need to add something to the bottom to balance the squishiness of the top. Also, the lettering is a big mess - but I'm trying to not be super-anal about these things. The pressure of perfection can cause me to stop doing anything at all so I'm attempting to work faster (and letting myself be looser and messier than my ego wants me to be).

Thanks fer perusing!

tour de freebie

If you read this blog you already know about my building's basement-give-away-spot.

If not, it is as it sounds. I live in a big building and there is an on-going, anonymous, informal trading system going on with all my neighbours via a special location in the basement.

I give to the spot and I receive from the spot...

Today I picked up someone's DIY-poster-stuck-on-a-hunk-of-pressboard-situation. This is actually the second time it's been to the basement! Someone else brought it upstairs and lived with it for a few months and brought it back again. So it goes.

I rather liked the picture but had passed on it for several days because the whole thing was a bit of a mess... but today, in a fit of procrastination, I realized I might be able to work some magic.

It's from the Tour de France in 1924 and the caption says the front rider is Ottavio Bottecchia ascending the Galibier. I like the people in the crowd.

I managed to get it unstuck from the ugly board, trimmed it down, and hung it up in my studio with some cool old clips.

Viola! Sweet score!

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accidental household graffiti

The Town Musicians of Bremen

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3 very short non-fiction stories

A girl went to a clothing swap where she knew almost no one. She has been wearing a local stranger's former shirt ever since.

Two black cats have taken a comfortable beige chair hostage in Central Ottawa. They should be considered clawed and potentially dangerous.


After a long and fulfilling career in a government laboratory, some scientific equipment retired to a nearby neighbourhood apartment and took up bamboo as a hobby.