Lucks VanJeet is THE LOCH NEST MONSTER

sabbath day for ultra orthodox canadians

2012-01-27T12:21:00.000-08:00

It's All-Star Weekend here in Ottawa. The holy grail is in town along with the rich athletes who chase it down year after year.

Despite my love of hockey-lore, I'm not planning to have much to do with All-Star Weekend. I've been to the hockey-hall-of-fame so I don't think the Fan Fair would provide me with $15 worth of value. The big-tickets were sold out ages ago (and too expensive anyway). The weather stinks for venturing outside...

However, one concession to my general lack of interest in this event was to paint up an ol' timey hockey player from an old Starr Skates ad. I'm going to carry it around in case I bump into any Penguins. I'm not really going out to look for them but if I happen to see them, I'll be ready! Pretty dorky eh?

Every now and then I strangely morph into an autograph-hound*... so I had this in my backpack when I went skating yesterday. True story.

To kick-off ASW, they skated all the NHL trophies down the canal yesterday. Since it was the first day the whole canal was open and the weather was nice, I went out to see. (Good thing I took advantage of that because the whole canal is closed again today due to bad weather.)

To make it extra-cute they had all the little Timbits players holding the trophies and skating around. Here's the Art Ross.

Hey! It's the dude who protects Lord Stanley!! He even has his little white gloves on!

In retrospect, I totally should have gotten HIS autograph!! I really dropped the ~~ball~~ ~~puck~~ ball on that one.

There it is! The trophy that's been fought over for more than 100 years. Apparently the last time it was on the canal was in 1905 - when it was unceremoniously punted off a bridge by a drunken hockey player.

Best outfit award. She really brightened the place up.

There is some art hanging under the Bank St. bridge. Old white dudes and Native Canadians (but only the ones that sided with the British**).

Lastly, me at the end of my 10k skate.

I geeked out with the Canadiana***: Hudson Bay coat, CBC pin, You've Changed pin (a Canadian record label), listening to The Sadies and The Tragically Hip the whole way... I did not however, eat a Beavertail - which would have been the perfect "communion" on this high-holy day of Canadianism... but I had no one to share it with.

* What is it with autographs? I don't really understand why sometimes I'm suddenly compelled to try to get one. Normally I'm not into that. Maybe, for me, it's a way to generate a story/memory around something that is too "outside of my realm" to otherwise feel a part of? Maybe I hope some greatness will rub off on me? I'm still formulating this thought...

** Just kidding. I didn't stop to read the signs.

*** Contrary to how it might appear, I'm not actually super-nationalistic. I just like the stuff of history wherever I happen to be... and mostly I'm in Canada.

loosey goosey

2012-01-25T06:58:00.000-08:00

Two more drawings/paintings in my little book.

I was trying to be fast and loose with both of these and tried to do things with the inks that I hadn't tried yet. They are just practice really but I'm keeping them as records of progress/learning*.

***

This one was originally based on a couple of pictures from the Sailor Jerry, American Tattoo Master book (pg. 53) but I after I messed up a bunch of lines I decided just to throw colours around, layer them, wash them off, etc. It felt liberating so I put it in the book. I like some stuff that happened in the top left quarter.

This one had very little initial drawing/planning and I painted with only brushes (normally I've been using a nib pen). Everything is copied out of the little Taschen book of tattoos. More specifically the tiger and lady-head are by Tattoo-Jack from Copenhagen (1951), most of the filler is either generic doodling or else copied from Ole Hansen, also of Copenhagen (1952)... oh... except that little dog which is Joseph Hartley, Great Britain (1930s).

Cheerio.

*I guess every piece you start should be considered "practice"... you never start a thing thinking it's going to stand as your ultimate, amazing masterpiece right? Or at least you probably shouldn't... too much pressure... I digress.

Couch Rehab

2012-01-24T07:21:00.000-08:00

Now for a slew of before and after shots of a couch I recovered last week.

The back story: this was the family couch when I was a young child. I believe that my family got it used so it probably dates to the late 60s or early 70s. There are no brand markings on it. My guess is that it's a Canadian-made take on the mid-century-Scando-style. I think several of my siblings (at least 2 for sure) have taken turns hosting it in their homes. So, with a little "reinforcement" (metal brackets added by my Dad), it has been sturdy enough to last through 35-40 years of abuse in big families with lots of kids jumping on it. Most recently it was in the basement of my sister's house where drunk teenagers played video games and crashed on it. As you'll be able to see in the pictures, at least 2 previous attempts at covering the lovely floral pattern have been attempted.

I'm happy with how it turned out. It's a bit of a hack job in that I don't really know what I'm doing and I didn't feel like dismantling it to do a totally "proper" job... so I had to fudge the fabric around some tricky corners.

I considered having it professionally reupholstered but given that the wood is in rough condition (mostly on the back thank goodness), that it's not a high-end/namebrand piece, how expensive reupholstering is, and that I have time on my hands, I opted to do it on the cheapside by myself.

Fabric, I learned, is VERY EXPENSIVE (some of the stuff I liked was $35/meter!!! And I needed about 7 meters!!) I managed to find this "suit" fabric on sale for $5/meter. I don't know how long it will last but it is good for a first attempt anyway.

(I put a lot of blankets around to protect things from the cat's claws and fur... plus, it feels cozy...)

So, without further adieu, the pictures (you can click on them to see them bigger):

the planning stage

reconditioned wood (top), bottom is the arm of the matching chair (which is the next project)

I'm not sure I like my fix on the left. It's paint over wood-filler but it looks too much like black tape. I can always change it later if I think of a better idea. I moved the visible metal brackets added by my Dad (right) to the inside of the couch, making them invisible during normal use.

I really love the lines of this couch. I'm happy I could bring it out of the basement and resurrect it

Cute as a button.

The matching chair. It will be the next project... although, the floral fabric is kind of growing on me and it's in better shape than the couch... so I'm in no hurry.

The payment for my work: it's true, spare change really does fall into the crack of the couch.

Thanks for looking at my couch rehabilitation project.

BTW, tumblr POD

2012-01-17T18:32:00.000-08:00

I'm doing a "Picture-Of-the-Day" Project (or "POD" for short) this year.

I did this before back in 2008 and it was a fun creative outlet... so I thought I'd revive the magic. Last time I posted them in Facebook but this year I'm posting them in Tumblr.

Here is the link:

Rosy Croix * (a.k.a. http://vanderlucks.tumblr.com/)

It will sometimes overlap with what I put here...
.
.
.
* I forget what I meant when I named it Rosy Croix - it related to some esoteric thing that I was momentarily fascinated with at the time I created the Tumblr... so don't ask me about that...

Dress-Like-Your-House... again!

2012-01-17T18:14:00.000-08:00

Happy Hudson-Bay-Day!

Yeah...I made that up... Just another excuse to do another "dress-like-your-house" photo because I acquired another Hudson Bay coat today ($15 at a local thrift store!!) and it happens to match another Hud-Bay blanket I have.

Admittedly, it's starting to look like The Bay circa 1964 up in here.
But it's winter and it's cozy and it's part of our (canadian) heritage so I'm going with it.

***

sans chats:

avec chats:

***

For context, here's the first time I did this with my other coat and another blanket (my friend gave me this coat because it was too big for her):

Here's the stylist-shot of the new/old coat:

(I got the thrift store lady to throw in the cool hanger!)

(For the record, until I took this picture I had totally been reading it as "Unicorn Record" - which is why I wanted it... but "Union Record" is also neat. (I am maybe slightly dyslexic?))

And lastly, some outtakes from the photo shoot starring Pinkerton-The-Ever-Present:

G'night!

Stay Inside, The Weather Sucks

2012-01-12T15:00:00.000-08:00

There's freezing rain and general grossness in the out-of-doors so I stayed cozy in my nest all day (which, honestly, isn't very different from most days, but today I had a good excuse).

I think I'm having some post-holidays/wintertime blues or something. All I really want to do is nap, eat cookies, and read books... and then nap again.

Here are a few shots of the in-of-doors that I took today while battling the blahs:

1. Cat facing off with the Bold-Ass-Starlings that have recently joined forces with the Party-Pigeons on my ledge,

2. The current state of the sideboard: deChristmasified but still winterized,

3. Oh. And another cat shot (they never cease to amuse me and this is my blog sooooo...)

This is a new spot for Pearl. I guess she wanted to curl up and sleep in the company of a lot of other black, circular things...

Gawd, I hope the weather and my mood improve soon...

I guess I can sort of control one of those things eh?

Norm!!

2012-01-12T14:34:00.000-08:00

Remember in that show Cheers how everyone yelled Norm's name when he entered the bar? I always wanted to be like that - but without having to be a fat bar-fly...

Oh boy. I haven't even started and already I digress...

This coming Saturday (Jan. 14th) would be the 101st birthday of Norm Collins (a.k.a. Sailor Jerry) if he had lived so long. So today I painted a sailor-gal based on a tattoo of his... well... part of a tattoo of his.

I feel really out-of-practice since the holiday season (when I did nothing but visit relatives and eat). The FW Inks are giving me troubles. This feels way too messy... but at least today I completed something (I've had a bunch of false starts lately).

Anyway, I really liked the red-background-curly-cue-thing... how it rotates around the face.

Here she is before colour.

In a frame I have kicking around, waiting for the right image to compliment the anchor (which is cut out of the mat)... this is not the right image but I thought I'd check... just in case it was...

With the picture I took her from (in Sailor Jerry Collins - American Tattoo Master)

Below is one of my "false starts". Too many blobby lines to continue with it. Shouldn't have used that rusty, old nib! I'll try doing some pretty flowers again soon though as I haven't done too many flowers yet... and they are pretty...

Well, there she is, "in the can" so to speak... with apologies and birthday greetings to the late, great, (horribly right-wing but we'll let it pass) Sailor Jerry!

Thanks for looking!

The White Elephant Game

2012-01-05T18:50:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah. I have a blog...

Well.

Here is what Husbo and I created and contributed to my family's "White Elephant" Christmas game this year. I'm proud to say they were very sought and fought for.

We painted them at one of those paint-yer-own-ceramics places. We meant to do two owls but they only had one owl-mug left so Husbo (a.k.a. Robert Bateman) painted the owl and I had to freestyle on a plain mug - but I knew if we picked trendy animals at least the teenagers in the crowd would want them... so a fox and an owl were the natural choices.

Overall I'm really pleased with how these turned out and I think I might start making and giving more as gifts.

OH!

and...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Post-traumatic Portfilio Review (15 years later)

2011-12-19T07:11:00.000-08:00

Getting older, for me, seems to be largely an exercise in accepting my "average-ness" and trying to enjoy life anyway.

Recently my Dad played a new move on our on-going battle of "childhood-stuff-removal*" by bringing a portfolio of very old artwork to me at my house (instead of asking me to take it while I was at his house). I tried to ignore the thing for several days but I finally had to confront the beast.

Afterwards I was traumatized for several days, wondering how and why any adult ever encouraged the young me towards a career in visual art... or allowed me into art school (NOT my parents btw - they thought I should be an engineer or a lawyer).

Only now am I starting to feel more at peace with the fact that I was not the artistic genius I thought I was... nor, given my track record, am I likely to achieve true greatness. (But being a minor-middleweight ain't so bad...)

I now present a brief history of my late-teenage-art for your entertainment (I couldn't bear to post the truly horrible stuff, so what you see here is still a glossier, white-washed version of what really was...)

***

There it is, the portfolio-beast, mocking me from my kitchen counter. The scattered tape holding it together might as well spell "doom"...

Inside, I was pretty impressed by one sketch pad of drawings. It displayed fairly competent line work and confident shading. The choice of subject matter showed that its creator was clearly among the fore-runners of everything that became hipster-cool in the last 5 years.

But the drawings didn't feel very familiar to me...

Then I realized that they belonged to my older step-brother (who studied something architectural around the same time - I guess his stuff just got mixed in with my stuff)...

Oh, here we are. My stuff.
This was pretty 90s-cool... Also a complete and total rip-off of an older,cooler, actually artistic student at my school.

Somehow I convinced the powers-that-were at that school to let me do a mural in honour of the ongoing-history of art. (In the center there was supposed to a frame where they would hang student work.)

This thing was actually pretty huge, covering a whole wall of the cafeteria. I have NO pictures of the actual mural. This is the sketch.

I think I drew these skinheads for a history class... chunky feet and a big heads were de rigueur.

Now then! Here are three masterpieces from first year university drawing class.

The MO of that class was to tear down everything you thought you knew about drawing and develop your "unique" mark-making skills (which looked like everyone else's unique mark-making by the end).

I felt like I learned a lot in this class and became a genius. Everyone cried in this class at least once.

(There was also a crazy guy, a gun, and a restraining order associated with this class - which may be why it lives so clearly in my memory. In retrospect, the crazy guy was also the most gifted artist in the class...)

Unfortunately now, over a decade from graduating, I feel like I left university without ever gaining any classical training/techniques in painting or figure drawing and still struggle to learn this on my own (which is a good struggle... I guess...)**

Wow.
Pure genius.
(...and, may I remind you, this was "the good stuff"...
The bad stuff was too embarrassing... the good stuff is bad enough!)

Back to the present, my new art-hobby is painting traditional tattoo flash. It's a fun way to learn some new skills and it's relaxing to not worry about making challenging content. It's satisfying to make something that simply looks nice. There's nothing "to get"... I just like doing it. Simple.

Here is the latest. I feel good about it.

I try not to waste time regretting the path I've taken... but I do feel like I've "wasted" a lot of my life thinking I was pretty decent at making art (and then watching TV) when I really should have been working much harder at developing skills.

I've only ever been half-hearted about being in the art-world because I have never truly believed I could make a living there (even as I AM making one!) I've always been so sensitive to the nay-sayers in "real" world and kept one foot out of the "art" world to make everyone less nervous. I think it is time to either get in with both feet or get out completely...

The end.

* My dad wants it all my childhood stuff out of his large house. I don't necessarily want to throw it out but I don't really want it in my small apartment either... I am trying to leave a solitary box of stuffed animals in his house as I reminder that I once lived there...

** My personal theory is that it is way more fun to do weirdo/abstract/non-figurative artwork if, in the back of your mind, you know that you CAN to do realistic/figurative/classical things but choose not to.

breakfast spiral

2011-12-14T06:26:00.000-08:00

my grapefruit made for a nice picture this morning...

Merry Thriftmas! (to me!)

2011-12-13T19:52:00.000-08:00

Here's a secret: when I need more than a few grocery items and have to take the car instead of walking, I go to a farther-away grocery store that is right near a thrift store... then I can "get my thrift on" while ostensibly "running errands".

That is what I did today... here are the results.

*****

Picked up this jolly ol' fellow real cheap ($2). I think he's pretty cool.
(He is slightly less creepy than either of these pictures indicates.)

What a difference a lighting makes!

*****

I normally steer away from the novelty spoon section but today I succumbed to its siren-call and found this rad SKI-DOO spoon! Worth it!

I also found a Bonhomme de Carnaval spoon - which I bought because the creepy little dude looks like he's sporting a creepy little bonhomme de pantaloon... if ya know what I mean... Why did that make me buy it? I guess because I'm kind of creepy too.

*****

And lastly, some catholic trinkets. No, I'm not catholic - but they have some of the best trinkets...

*****

My groceries were much less interesting so I didn't take pictures of them.

Folky Flowers

2011-12-13T19:08:00.000-08:00

Whoa. WTF? Blogger is TOTALLY different alladasudden!! This will take some getting used to...

Anyway, just throwing up a little painting my brain threw up about a week ago - inspired by looking at a bunch of Pennsylvania Dutch "Fraktur" paintings. I seem to go back and drink from that well quite a bit...

I drew and inked the lines of this at a painting night with a friend. I did the colouring while in transit last week. To make it fit better in the little book I've been compiling, I cut it out and stuck it on another sheet.

It's been a looooong time since I let my pencil just wander around without a plan like I did here. It was a nice little journey.

Here's what it was like without colour - which I like. I wish I'd done a scan of it at this stage and could try different colours in the computer... ah well. It's in the can now (not the garbage can... just "finished").

And just for fun, here's an Amund Dietzel fish from my sketch book.

Thanks for checking it out!

.

Thrive Road Trip and Miscellany

2011-12-12T19:20:00.000-08:00

Generally I try to find an awesome tattooer that I get along with in my own town and give them all my business for as long as I live there... but last weekend I traveled specifically for a tattoo for the first time.

I guess I'm getting to be a bit of a "collector" as there are several far-flung people on my list now that I would love to get tattooed by someday...

Actually, I always meant to go to this place when I lived closer but never quite made it...

So, the place is Thrive Studio in Cambridge, ON. I got tattooed by Chris Anthon whilst my lovely niece got tattooed by Bryan Simms. Except for all the pain and cursing under my breath, it was a totally great time. Andy Gibson, their apprentice, was there too and they pretty much did an improv-comedy show while tattooing. How our tattoos aren't a big mess from all the laughing, I'm not sure.

Here's a peek - but I'm bruised and scabby right now so no point in showing off the whole thing yet. You can already tell how awesome it is from this shot though...

My niece got the Stoney St. Clair mermaid (that I re-painted and wrote about earlier here) but I don't have a picture of it.

Originally we were both going to get the mermaid but two things happened: 1) I saw this seahorse flash that Chris painted on his FB and I immediately fell in love with it and knew I had to have it, and 2) I got to thinking about mermaids and how what a mermaid does is be extremely pretty, sing beautifully (I can't sing and am only borderline feminine), and lure poor sailors to their deaths*... and that's just not what I aspire to in life.

So, despite the fantastic tits, I opted out of the mermaid. I was mostly into the tail and scales anyway - and the seahorse has both.

(Also, I was born in the year of the horse - which doesn't really mean anything to me at all except that it makes me have a certain fondness for horses that I wouldn't have otherwise because I wasn't raised around "horse-people".)

(And I like to swim.)

***

This is a random picture of a fence near Thrive. I liked the acorns.

This is my little collection of old letterpress letters. I don't have a letterpress but I just use these like stamps sometimes. Why did I post this picture?

Because I used these stamps on the tab of this thank-you-card I made for Chris Anthon.

The creature (demon? monster?) is based, but not copied exactly, from Amund Dietzel.

And if you pull his tongue...

He says, "U R RAD!"

... which I thought was pretty awesome...

Unfortunately I get so nervous and awkward about giving people stuff like this that I have no memory of whether it appeared that the recipient liked my offering...

..but I enjoyed making it and I think it must be obvious that it was heart-felt... and that's good enough for me.

***

OK. Time for bed.

***

* My niece is young and good-looking in a way I never was and has a killer voice to boot - so the mermaid goes better on her. I'm not saying she aspires to kill sailors or anything - the mermaid just works on her in the same way I think the seahorse works on me.

deck the walls

2011-12-06T08:33:00.000-08:00

My "hall" (hallway) is pretty dark and and narrow so I decked my walls instead... mostly over the Sideboard/Hutch (which I haven't changed up in quite awhile - so it was overdue for a new look).

This is my favourite, vintage ornament.

I use to have some others but they are so fragile...

Not going to be around these parts for most of the holidays - so I decorated my Aloe plant instead of killing a tree...

Stockings hung with care. Someone made Husbo's when he was little. I made mine about 7 years ago to sort of match his...

The big "B" + Santa = "be santa"...

The framed calligraphy I just picked up about a week ago from a thrift store. It took a LONG time of me staring dumbly to figure out what it said... but once I did I thought it was the perfect thing to put up for the festive season. Also, it is hand-lettered by some patient soul and that's the kind of thing I find hard to pass up at thrift stores... Can you read it?

The little ceramic Santa is an old one from Husbo's Granny...

I love my oblong, vintage, glass ornaments but having no tree I had to display them differently...

Festival flags purchased in San Antonio, plus little nativity scenes (one in a gourd) that I got in Peru (though you can find them all over the place...)

That's pretty much it for the decking of this place.. there are few other little things but I kept it pretty low-key this year.

overcoming blog neglect with double craft post

2011-12-06T07:21:00.000-08:00

what did i do yesterday while the rest of the world was hard at work?

well... after recovering the homestead from the weekend's festivities, doing laundry, baking some bread, and various other acts of domestic goddess-ish-ness, i treated myself to some pure, ol' fashioned craft time!

i made a pillow from a cross-stitched basset hound picture (from thrift store). i just added the border then sewed it on to an already existing pillowcase.

(this is for a friend who has basset hounds and was recently admiring a cross-stitched pillow in my house (below, on left, found at a garage sale in San Antonio)... i wonder if she'll see this post before i give the pillow to her?)

... and then i finished up this embroidery of some Daniel Higgs flash that i saw here and fell in love with. (Coincidentally, it was tattooed by Zach Nelligan - whom I blogged about before.)

i'm probably going to overcompensate for my lack of posting by posting a WHOLE BUNCH of stuff today... thanks for looking... whoever you are out there that looks at this stuff!

.

more swazis

2011-11-23T13:01:00.000-08:00

Shane Swift posted these gems on his tumblr today (his tumblr is nice and mostly full of actual paintings he's done - so check it out).

...which reminded me I hadn't yet posted this recent embroidery I did...

This is part of a "sampler" quilt-like-thing that I've been working on VERY SLOWLY for about a year (mostly stalled for many moons but I'm getting back to it...). Anyway, now and then I try out a new technique on this old bed sheet I had around.

I'm not very into doing embroidery because it's really slow and hurts my wrist a bit... but I do like how it looks and it will be neat to work away on this thing for years (or a lifetime) and have a "diary" of images I was interested in at various times...

Below are the previous "entries" in the diary (obviously I've a looooong way to go):

And lastly, these are various swastikas that I found around San Antonio while I was there last month:

(The blurry white jade on black background is actually Chinese jade from the 16 or 1700s. It was in an area of the SA Art Museum that you weren't supposed to take pictures of.)

* Related note, this looks like an interesting book - first published in 1896! Haven't read it yet but thanks to Chris Hold for pointing me in its direction.

* And lastly, here is a post about Pre-WWII roadsigns in Arizona:

http://arizona100.blogspot.com/2010/09/arizona-once-revered-swastika-eighty.html

nesting

2011-11-23T08:41:00.000-08:00

I hope the little bird that made this nest doesn't come back next year to find it GONE. We (Husbo & me) accidentally knocked it over with a van while working at his research site... so I decided to take it home...

I'm not sure what exactly to do with it but I want to make some kind of art...

Sketched it this morning...

Then I put in under a bell jar...

What to do?

What.

to.

do....

hearts and rope

2011-11-22T08:14:00.000-08:00

Here's a cute little flashy flash painting. I opted to not add colour just because I thought it looked cooler on my shelf that way.

And here's a gratuitous cat picture because those little toes sticking out while the cat watched the sunset was irresistible to my camera.

Ice-fishing Huts

2011-11-22T08:03:00.000-08:00

This is a new "in-betweener" painting I did yesterday. It's a bit different than the ones that have come before it in that it is actually a little scene - not just shapes.

I've never been ice-fishing but the little huts seem so cozy despite being situated on and surrounded by ice. How we survive the Canadian winter...

I like the starkness of my painting but I may go back into it and add some shadows/melted water/definition to the ice area.

I stole the image from the dust jacket (below) of a book about "The Canadian Look". I wanted to throw the dust jacket away (because I usually take them off my books) but I liked the picture so much that I had to translate it into a painting first.

Thanks for looking.

flash dump

2011-11-21T08:10:00.000-08:00

Truth be told, I'd grown tired of blogging. Tired isn't even the right word... it's more like I started to feel like it was totally pointless and therefore I wasn't doing it.

However, a friend encouraged me to keep her up to date with my drawing/painting progress and so, with that small prodding, I'm back. I thank her for that because it is nice to know that people care.

So... here are some things...

This lady head is done after Amund Deitzel flash but I'm not going to finish it because I'm unhappy with the shape of her face. (Actually, I have already redrawn and inked her again and I'm not finishing that one either because I just can't get her to have the aloof/angelic look I want... I will eventually come back to her and try again because I like the image but I needed to move on and try something else.)

This bird is from the Ben Corday Tattoo Travel Book and it is the first bird I've attempted. I didn't have any brown ink so I had to use some water colours. I'm not loving my current paper selection or the water colour paint. Anyway, a learning experience.

This one was really fun.

Having gone through art school and done a lot of "life drawing", I've drawn many a penile region in my day... but, as I was never an adolescent boy, I don't think I've ever drawn a random, gratuitous "cock"...

Now I have...

This whole image is so delightfully ridiculous that I enjoyed every minute of drawing it.

It is from the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia Volume 1. The caption says it is a "humorous youth tattoo known by convicts as 'Duet with sleighbells'". Here you can see my drawing beside the original.

Here's a scan of the inked drawing.

Here it is hanging on my fridge because I thought it was an "A+"... and also funny to use the "This is ART" magnet (picked up at the San Antonio Art Museum) to hang it.

And lastly, one I did yesterday.

Everything on this sheet is Ben Corday flash and I tried to keep the inking style as close to his as possible (so, more brush-strokey in some places than smooth, gradated washes).

Here's the central lady with her original counterpart in the book. I really need to go get some brown ink and maybe some (caucasian) skin tone - because mixing the inks doesn't seem to work very well and I had a hard time getting the colours of the original (which I was trying to do here... for practice...)

Anyway. that's it for now. Thanks for looking!!

questioning death and dishonour

2011-11-10T07:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was waiting for a friend to swing by and got to sketching these Sailor Jerry skulls. I was also listening to some CBC coverage about the Shafia murder trial - parents and a brother accused of killing 3 daughters and a first wife... they claim it was an "honour killing".

Oh... and I had also just read about a cold-blooded murder that took place, most ironically, in a Lululemon store... Peace, love, and what?

So anyway, I know the "Death before Dishonour" tattoo imagery has certain historical* meanings (and I know it applies to one's own death) but I have always found it troublesome... I guess it's too far outside my worldview or I am so comfortable with dishonour that I can't imagine embodying this statement personally...

Anyway, thinking about a parent killing his own children for the supposed embarrassment/dishonour they brought upon their family (they became too Western after he brought them into Western society)... well, it's just too much. It doesn't make sense. It makes me so angry/frustrated that I don't even know how to talk about it. There aren't words for how gross that logic is.

So when it came time to put words in the banner of the last skull, it had to be "dishonour before murder" instead of "death before dishonour"**...

* I don't know the exact historical meaning because I've never been interested enough in this imagery or sentiment to look it up - I would guess it was originally of military origin, possibly influenced by Samurai culture, and likely also used by gangs... ???

** Too bad Shafia didn't just kill himself to deal with his supposed dishonour instead of his first wife and his 3 beautiful young daughters... then "death before dishonour" would work in this case... although I would still think it would be a dumb reason to die.

More Stoney Stones

2011-11-02T10:54:00.000-07:00

I drew and painted these characters from a little picture in the "Stoney Knows How" book you can see here. They were really fun and quick. I gave them all names that end in "y" but my writing leaves something to be desired so I just messed around with it.

These two are my favourites.

Thanks!

recent acquisitions & renditions

2011-10-30T18:52:00.000-07:00

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!

Fall Selfies

2011-10-28T07:49:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-12T20:11:00.000-07:00

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?

Perk Up

2011-10-05T13:49:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-05T13:20:00.000-07:00

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!

accidental household graffiti

2011-10-04T15:37:00.000-07:00

The Town Musicians of Bremen

3 very short non-fiction stories

2011-10-03T18:02:00.000-07:00

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.

book reports: coming clean about my dirty reading

2011-09-30T14:29:00.000-07:00

I normally practice book-monogamy (one book at a time) but ever since finishing Moby Dick I've been a real reading-slut; jumping in and out of tomes, one book to another - often in the same reading session!

See, MD took over my literary-life for like 4 or 5 months (because I'm a painfully slow reader)... so now I'm over-compensating for the variety I missed while I was stuck in that one book for so long.

I'm also on a mission to read more of what's on my personal bookshelves before buying or borrowing any more books. I'm sure I'm not the only person guilty of picking up lots of second-hand books before finishing the last batch. And, I'll admit, I sometimes buy old books just because they're pretty...

So I'm trying to go through some of those.

From my stack of "pretty-looking" books, I read the slim volume,"The 39 Steps" by John Buchan (a former Governor General of Canada dontcha know?). Alfred Hitchcock made a movie of it too. It was a great farce and a quick read. I really like books from the 19-teens. I like how they used language then. Efficient but still poetic. Oh, and I finally read The Great Gatsby also.

I just read "Just Kids" by Patti Smith and now I'm reading a biography about her. She's cool. I didn't know much about her before - I just knew that I should think she's cool. Now I can confirm that I do believe her to be very cool.

I'm trying to read "The Secret Daughter" because my mother-in-law said it was good but the infertility issue raised in the first few pages has kept me from getting into it any further. Still too sensitive for that I guess... but it stares at me from the table while I avert my gaze.

Well, enough preamble, I'm really here today to come clean with my recent, dirty, little reading secret: I've been reading self-help books.

I got them all a couple months ago at a thrift store on the same day. I guess someone was finished with all of them- for better or for worse. The ones I got are among the "classics" of self-help so I was interested to look inside and see what has made them household names.

Here's my stash:

I bought them with an ironic shirk but I'm reading them in earnest. I want to do better in life than I feel like I'm doing (mostly when it comes to social anxiety)... and I'm sure there are many people in the world who can give me advice on that - so why not read some of these and try to learn something? Or at least get better ammunition to bash them with...

Anyway, I put the proud-looking ostrich on top there as a reminder to get my head out of the sand, as I'm wont to do, and keep it out!

I haven't gotten through them all yet but I will admit that so far they have offered more than simple common sense.

This is where I'm at:

* I've read most of "Feel The Fear". Key learning, if it doesn't actually kill you (and most things don't), then you will be able to handle it... you WILL be afraid... but you can handle it.

* I'm about half way through "7 Habits". I'm really liking its emphasis on character and principles versus personality and trends.

* I'm also part way through "Early Retirement Extreme" -which is actually NOT from the thrift store. The Husbo got that one. We aren't planning to retire very early but do really like his ideas about saving money, being self-sufficient, wasting less, needing less, how much and what you "really need", etc. I think more people should read this one.

Another In-Betweener

2011-09-29T18:25:00.000-07:00

Here's another "in-between-other-projects-painting".

This one has been hanging around for quite a long time now and has at least two potentially complete paintings under this version. I just couldn't commit to them.

In a rare twist (for me), I added a 3D element to this one. It's a woodblock #8.

8s, looking like infinity signs, go well with the ever-expanding-star-bursts... Then I sat Pinko-Homer in front of the whole thing to add an extra pinch of "epicness".

My ugly radio is sufficiently disguised now I think!

I'm often more impressed with the mess left after art-making than the art I make.

I like the colour-combo of the paint water below...

... and the shadows cast by the measuring lines on the glasses in this one...

Thanks for looking/reading!

damn Nature, you fancy!

2011-09-29T18:02:00.000-07:00

In the workshop this afternoon - the room had a nice glow - took some pictures.

painting and thrifting

2011-09-27T20:01:00.000-07:00

Watched the Ontario election debates and (re)painted this (from Bert Grimm flash). Will do some other stuff around it later. They always tell artists (writers usually) to do "what they know"... and I know I love coffee...

The debate put me in a bad, cynical mood but finding cool, old stuff at thrift stores puts me in a good mood. It's my version of retail therapy. I wish I wasn't so addicted to it actually - I may need to take a break from it.

But in the meantime... some cool finds:

Old hiking bag - $2

(I hung it on the door that goes out the apartment to hold all my grocery-shopping bags)

A genuine Walnut humidor with engraved initials and plaque - $3,

(Paraphrase: To T.W.B for good work in the Ontario Electrical Utilities from his "Manufacturing Friends", 1955)

A suede and fine needlepoint clutch - $1.

Thought: I think maybe part of the reason I like collecting old stuff might have to do with the seeming lack of heritage/family heirlooms in the house that I grew up in. Even as a child I always craved heirlooms...

Johnson Circles

2011-09-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

I just learned of this and I think it's neat and pretty: Johnson Circles

International Plowing Match

2011-09-26T14:26:00.000-07:00

I went to the International Plowing Match this weekend. Here are some pictures in no particular order:

intention: leave a positive mark

2011-09-23T10:15:00.000-07:00

It's a thing you learn in highschool, that the swastika is an ancient symbol with positive meaning... (or maybe i didn't learn it IN school but looked it up in my highschool-era after discovering there is a town in my province called, "Swastika"...)

But unfortunately, the overwhelming association we (the "western we") have remains with the Nazis - and it always seems like that topic is a sleeping dog we really just want to let lie...

But not today! Time to refresh our collective memory...

The swastika was used by cultures all over the world (including North America right up to the war) before the Nazis adopted it and caused some extreme rebranding for the symbol.

I say they "caused" it not "they changed the meaning" because I think they probably used the symbol for one of its actual/original intentions: good luck. It is horrible that they had such success with their plans. The swastika, by association, became a potent symbol of evil and wrong.

Really, it's not evil. It is potent though - which, I think, is why the association stuck so well. It is a great-looking symbol and the German war-machine exploited it very effectively.

Reading more about the almost universal use of the swastika made me realize just how well it's original forms and uses have been masked/obliterated/hidden/obscured from the eyes of the western world since WWII. (Example: The Navajo, Papago, Apache and Hopi people signed the "whirling log proclamation" in 1940 deciding not to use the symbol in their textiles because of the Nazis' co-opting!)

Until I was somewhere in my 20s (and the internet came along) I would guess that over 95% of the swastikas I had ever seen in my life were the Nazi version - usually in a movie or a textbook. When I happened to spot one, maybe on some local architecture or a book about India, I would literally get a rush of adrenaline because I didn't understand why I was seeing this "evil symbol" in a different context. I thought maybe there was something suspicious going on there that I needed to be wary of. It was very confusing actually.

The swastika was so universally prevalent before WWII that I imagine it must have actually seemed quite strange to some people when the association with Nazism became stronger, Hitler's intentions became clearer, and the symbol's meaning shifted.

Anyway, with the combination of time-passing, the internet/information-age, the interesting and widespread cultural history of the symbol, and it's satisfying aesthetics I don't think the exclusive, Nazi-association (in the western world - have to keep qualifying that) will hold much longer.

Rumblings have already made it to me, a fairly mainstream gal, from the far reaches of the internet that the shift back has begun. There is reclaiming and education going on and I don't see why I wouldn't want to be a part of it.

So this is the beginning of my particular spin on the matter. I like and identify with the word "hobo" - so I started sketching up a little, personal symbol combining the radiating arms of the swastika with the word "hobo". Just in the sketchbook phase at the moment.

* I was really inspired to start doing something personal with the symbol by this post from Virginia Elwood, a tattooer that I admire: Positive Swastika

** Here are a few interesting resources if you want to know more:

Reclaim The Swastika

Lucky Mojo

Little Swastika

The History of an Ancient Human Symbol

And lastly, in honour of the fresh NHL ice, here's some CANCON:

(from The Birthplace of Hockey website - which has some great information despite the fact that I don't agree with Windsor being the birthplace of hockey...)

Oh what the heck. Here's some more eye-candy:

autumnal equinox

2011-09-22T11:24:00.000-07:00

A photo ode to the autumnal equinox...

It happens at 9:04am Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on September 23rd. Then we're across the line and officially falling into le froid d'hiver.

It's time to change our stripes. I'm not complaining because I love this time of year.

Sleeves appear where once there were none.

Goodbye beach blankets. Hello wool blankets.

Swapping swimsuits for snowsuits.

Toes go into hiding. Modesty returns.

Fashionable neckwear becomes relevant/necessary again.

Aloha Endless Summer. Aloha New Seasons!

I'm a Homersexual

2011-09-20T13:23:00.000-07:00

"Girls, what talented singer wanders between you, the sweetest of them all, that makes you more gay?"

- Omero

Are you turned on by the epic poetry of ancient Greece? If so, you might be Homersexual* too.

OK. That silly interlude was just a catchy hook to introduce this little bit of craftiness I did yesterday while my building's hydro was out ALL DAY**.

My bust of blind, old Homer, with all his sexy hair, was pretty beat up - so I refreshed it with some funky spray paint. See before and after below.

Homer is the guardian of my radio mainly because there are super-annoying lights that flash behind where he is positioned and I can't tolerate them (or turn them off).

I found this stereo in the basement (free) and it serves its function (plays CBC) well but it's rather ugly. I'm thinking of deconstructing it and putting the remains into a smaller wooden casing with only an On/Off button and volume control. Nice and minimal.

But that's a project for another day... for now super-pink-homer will continue to stand guard because he cuts a fine figure and represents greatness.

Homie also fits well into this bell-jar I just got. Maybe if I ever do the stereo project, I'll move Homer in here permanently with a funny speech bubble or something.... we'll see...

* Just in case any family is reading this... I'm NOT referring to my brother-in-law who is also also named "Homer".

late edit: I just goggled "homersexual" and was surprised to find many other definitions for it via Urban Dictionary. hahaha!

** The power outage was a planned maintenance outage but it went 2 hours longer than anticipated. Oh boy was I getting antsy by the time the power came back on! When I could start using beautiful, yummy electricity again I realized I'm also hydrosexual. I like electricity A LOT!! It's really very awesome.

thrifts

2011-09-18T15:54:00.000-07:00

Friday afternoon. Trip to bank and grocery store becomes a convenient excuse to drop in at nearby Village of Value.

Three gems were acquired though more were desired. (Trying to practice some restraint y'know.)

Got this denim apron for wear in my "workshop":

A ceramic hand that used to be maybe a pin cushion or something? (It has glue residue on it so I assume there was something covering the hole.)

A horse head whose mane is a coat/hat brush! (I'll use it for eraser scrubbings on my drawing table.)

seen through kaleidoscope eye

2011-09-18T15:45:00.000-07:00

ordinary stuff becomes magical stuff...

(household objects seen through cheap kaleidoscope toy)

thanks-giving and blood-letting

2011-09-16T07:33:00.000-07:00

Today I present two very different "thank you cards" drawn over the past two days.

On Wednesday night, in preparation for a tattoo appointment, I made this one (framed with some neat, black masking tape I found at the art store recently):

It is taken from this flash in Vintage Tattoos. The caption just says, "from Lyle Tuttle's collection"... so I don't know exactly who painted the original... maybe Lyle?

I adapted it a bit so there is a bee in the design because the tattoo involves a bee.

Then I did this one last night. To thank a co-worker of my Husbo who had us over for dinner.

(When did I start using "Husbo" to indicate my husband? I don't know the answer but I guess it's better than "domestic partner" or "man-servant"...)

Anyway, I had to take a few stabs at it. I coulda/shoulda taken a few more to get the loose/whimsical thing just perfect... but I had to draw the line and go to bed. (Pardon the pun.)

On a different and much grosser note, I am experiencing "second skin" as a tattoo bandage for the first time. This is some of my blood and plasma. Packaged Meat!

And here's some of my blood and plasma which squirted out right on the blood drops of the sketch of that first card - while I was sketching the second card... Weird eh?

Portrait Study #1 - You have to start somewhere...

2011-09-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

I'm interested in being able to do a semi-realistic portrait... I say "semi" because, in general, I don't normally have a strong desire (or the patience) to draw realistically but there is something magical about being able to capture a face in a drawing*.

(*Not that a drawing needs to be "realistic" to capture a face - but realism is just tickling my fancy at the moment...)

Unfortunately, despite going to art school, I know next to nothing about how to do this*.

(*This is because, they really don't teach any kind of classical technique at art school... at least not a decade ago and/or not where I went to school.)

So I post the little drawing below as a "baseline". This is where I'm at without having done any research into the matter of making a (kind of) realistic portrait.

I don't even want to say who it is because I'll get laughed off the block... or the blog...

It's not that I think it's a horrible drawing... it just looks nothing LIKE WHO IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE!

It's from a photo I got off the internet. I probably shouldn't have started with such a grainy photo with such weird lighting.

I know that some people, when working from photos, use a grid technique. I'm not sure if I want to do that kind of thing or not...

a) I don't think I have the patience for it and,

b) even though it would feed my ego to do a very precise thing that easily attracts praise, I don't think I would get much learning-value from it in the long run.

Then again, it wouldn't hurt to try it.

(Ack! Internal-artschool-snob-struggle-angst!)

weekend photo dump

2011-09-12T20:18:00.000-07:00

(you can click on them for a more detailed view)

*9/11 Firefighter's memorial on Parliament Hill

*Reverse view of same

*Hintonburg's Hintonburger's Hintonburger

*Flying Friend

*Waving baby. Not my waving baby.

*Nature Drama: Two herons fly off together after the dude heron fought another dude heron for the love of the lady heron... I'm pretty sure it switched into Nature Porn shortly after this scene.

russian cat in a hat - visual telephone game

2011-09-12T19:45:00.000-07:00

Today I drew this cat from the front cover of Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia II.

I don't own the books but I'd like to - they are mesmerizing.

I'll get them someday when I'm feeling rich...

A word about the progression: I printed out a small thumbnail from the internet, then drew from that into my sketchbook, then drew the larger version on brown paper from the sketch book drawing, then painted over that loosely with a small brush without referring to the previous drawings.

It was really interesting after I had done all those stages to look back at the original source picture and see how much it had morphed!! Like a visual version of the "telephone game" but with only one player. See for yourself...

I really liked the "grittiness/toughness" of the original so I went back into mine with a Sharpie to toughen it up a bit (I also messed with the contrast in photoshop on this one).

It would be interesting to keep going with this telephone game, trying all sorts of media and always working from the most recent drawing... but as with all things, my attention span is limited...

Right now it's time for bed... maybe tomorrow I'll draw it in crayons or something... we'll see.

remains of a painting

2011-09-12T12:34:00.000-07:00

I just scraped cleaned my painting bowl/palette and this is the remains of the whale painting. "Painting Ambergris" if you will.

I always enjoy the look of my leftover paint blobs. So chaotic and colourful...

but lately I've been wondering about the impacts of painting on the waste water system. Obviously I don't put stuff like this down the drain but I do rinse my brushes in the sink. It doesn't feel right but I don't know what I should be doing... Something to look into... I'm open to suggestions.

I added a touch more white around the whale this morning and took a couple more pictures in the daylight.

(click for bigness if you like)

Amber Gris

2011-09-11T17:01:00.000-07:00

"Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet so it is."

-Moby Dick by Herman Melville

This is another "in-between-painting". My "in-between-paintings" are things I putter with in between doing other stuff. There is no consistent rhyme or reason to their subject matter.

This one is bigger than most (shall we say "whale sized"?) and it actually has a subject (instead of the usual colourful shapes). And it took more time than others - it might not even be done but I don't want to work on it anymore... at least for awhile.

I was reading Moby Dick when I started it but this is not Moby Dick for that whale was old and white and gnarly. This is just a generic Sperm Whale modeled after an old print I liked (see end of post).

I call it "Ambergris" after the highly valued whale-vomit of the Sperm Whale. It took on that theme by accident when I realized that the pinkish blobs around the whale corresponded to the pink it its mouth. In actuality ripe ambergris is grey in colour.

I first learned about ambergris when I read 'Perfume' (by Patrick Suskind) and always found it fascinating and wonderful that somehow people figured out how to make something as lovely and light as perfume from big, grey blobs of whale puke that smell like shit, literally, when first regurgitated.

...I even talked about this in my art-school interview and I believe it's what got me in! hahaha! (Oh 18-year-old me. You were awesome.) Anyway, here I am well-past 30, and still talking about the same old fecal matter...

Hmmm... perhaps that is some kind of personal life motto: "Making cool stuff out of shit!"

(click to enlarge.)

I took these pictures in the evening so the lighting wasn't good... but I wanted to get closure on this image. Will try to get something better another day... maybe...

This is where she hangs, for the time-being at least.

The whale went through quite a few colour changes on it's way to boring old grey.

Originally it was going to be white like Moby.

This is the old print that inspired the thing. I tried to work my whale up from a grid of this print but that got quite boring and I abandoned the tactic early on.

another great glebe garage sale?

2011-09-10T12:42:00.000-07:00

I didn't see it advertised anywhere but coming home from yoga today I noticed that the south-end of The Glebe (my oddly-named neighbourhood) was garage-saleing in full force.

I kind of peed my pants about this pair of curvaceous yellow lamps (50s? 60s? 70s? Not sure the decade) as I drove by. By the time I made it back there on my bike they were, sadly, gone. Which is probably a blessing because I really didn't need them.

Anyway, I also have my eye out for an ottoman/pouf. Something like this:

But maybe in a solid colour. Preferably yellow. But I don't want to spend $100+ on a pouf so I'm waiting patiently until I find one at a thrift store or garage sale.

So I had no luck with that mission but I did get a bunch of fun stuff for less than $3.

Today's lesson, if you cruise garage sales in rich neighbourhoods at about 1:30pm you'll pretty much get everything for free.

Some bling:

A wooden truck for a friend's kid (though if she rejects it I don't mind keeping it):

A bunch of free books, including Atwood's "Surfacing". Kind of shocking that I've never read this actually...

(Hey Ms. Sadie, if your reading this, remember when we saw the long pen? Next time I'll bring this...)

Then I hit up the library, where they have a surprisingly delightful selection of design books... but nothing about oil painting... which I found a little odd. Don't all the old richies want to learn how to oil paint in their retirement*?!

(*Sorry. I like my neighbourhood but it's a bit weird to live here because it's a bit "richy-rich"... so I have to mock it sometimes to, y'know, keep up my firmly-middle-class-non-street-cred.)

the lobster that floundered

2011-09-10T12:37:00.000-07:00

Lobster-flavoured potato chips are a super awesome idea for a potato-chip-company from the Maritimes... except for the TASTE!

... and yet somehow, despite the taste, I still managed to finish the whole bag... but that's OK because it had no trans fat... that means it's good for you right?

collection day - coins

2011-09-06T20:06:00.000-07:00

Carrying on from where the last post left off...

What's in this kissy-face box you ask?

Why coins of course!

I'm a natural-born collector. I don't really plan to start collections and I'm not too particular. I don't collect for "investment" or to get money out of an object. I just enjoy gathering pretty things around me. Husbo says I'm a "hunter-gather"... (Hmmm... is that a subtle way of saying I'm less evolved?)

Coins are good because they are small but also beautiful. Easy to have around.

This is a coin collection that I didn't even realize I had until yesterday because I'd never gathered them all in one place.

Some are actually tokens from cities I've visited: subways and skeeball and squished pennies. One of these is a German pfenning (sp?) that I squished on the streetcar tracks back when I was a little bad-ass in Heidelberg.

A Canadian Victory Nickle. Weird to see a different monarch on the money.

Canadian Olympic hockey quarters (they all got gold!!!)

Pennies from my Dad's and my own birth years.

...and my favourite of the whole bunch. A one Rupee coin from India. I've never been there - my sister-in-law gave me this.

I had no idea they were so into The Fonz there... (kidding! Aaaaaaayyyyy!)

current sideboard

2011-09-06T19:43:00.000-07:00

The sideboard in my house is meant as a show n' tell spot where I display things temporarily. I mean to take pictures of all the seasons of the sideboard but actually I miss a lot of them.

Husbo says it's like "shifting sands", always changing (I'm not sure if that bothers him but he doesn't complain so I guess he's OK with it...)

Anyway, this is the current state.

The "Ask" has moved over here to make room on the other wall for other art. I also found some wood in the basement and cut a "B" out to make it "Bask" - a fine sentiment for a living room I think.

My Dad (and his awesome collection of tools) is back in my employ after a 15 year hiatus from having to deal with my creative schemes. It's nice living in the same town as him again (and it saves me a lot on power tools).

Peek-a-boo-Peru.

(I got this nice woven rug in Peru but can't really use it on the floor due to the destructo-cats.)

I have been to Florida but this is someone else's souvenir that I got at a thrift store. The bigger vertebrate are from a loon I think.

I rarely have need to stop a door but I couldn't resist this door-stopper. I like its shape. It looks like a mole or an ant-eater or something.

The contents of the blue, Lion bowl that my sister gave me many years ago. The acorn is from a beautiful day in Bala last summer.

The Folk-Art-Kissing-Couple made it back out of the storage drawer. I missed them.

The mini Navajo Rug is a thrifted item that is covering up a stupid, unfortunate water stain.

The Kissers contain a little coin collection.

the vessel shapes the vesseled

2011-09-02T06:46:00.000-07:00

I cleaned up the balcony garden yesterday and thought it was pretty cool how the roots and soil of the Basil formed so precisely to its container.

Stoney Certainly Did Know How

2011-09-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

I finished painting this mermaid today. She is repainted from Leonard (Stoney) St. Clair flash.

I'm currently reading "Stoney Knows How" by Alan Govenar and finding it very inspiring. Stoney had rheumatoid arthritis (which is also what Maud Lewis had - another art hero of mine) and I'm amazed at the technical caliber of his work despite the physical hardships he faced. He also seems to have had a wonderful sense of humour and a good philosophy towards his work.

A sign he had hanging in his shop read: "I, Leonard Stoney St. Clair, am in the business of rendering a service to this community for the small group of people who choose to have their bodies decorated in some way or another... I choose to pursue my profession with intelligence and skill, wishing not to offend anyone, but instead with my love of mankind, do what good I can do before I die."

I love that... it embodies how I want to be.

So anyway, I repainted one of his mermaids. I think I might also get a tattoo of this gal eventually. I've long thought of a mermaid tattoo but had never really found the "right one".

I'm pleased with her. I feel like my painting and spit-shading skills are improving.

Here's the original from the book.

Here's one of the sketches I made to get to know her better before bedding her down in the ink.

There is also an awesome video of Stoney you can watch here.

happening now

2011-08-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

Inside (from where I sit drawing):

Outside (from where I sit drawing):

gobsmacked by leaf

2011-08-24T08:50:00.000-07:00

Fall slapped me in the face today. Like, literally. On my morning walk this very leaf fell from a tree and coincided with my face on its way to earth.

I think it was trying to show off. It's a pretty fancy-looking leaf.

You can feel autumn's red-orange creeping in from the edges while you slowly relinquish your internal summer greens.

I love this time of year for its wistfulness. Content with already-sun-fading memories but remorseful for the shortening of days. What hasn't been done will remain undone, trips untaken and songs unsung.

Relieved from too much heat and bracing for the long bundle-up.

water related

2011-08-23T09:33:00.000-07:00

I just felt compelled to post one of my favourite pictures I've taken. This is my husband on his aunt's dock in BC last November. The sun was starting to set and it was in a perfect line with the dock.

This one I took out my window on the weekend. It was the first time I'd seen sailboats on the little lake across the road. I think they were Sea Cadets just learning to sail. One of them (on the left) was good at sinking and had to get towed.

No Quilt is Complete Without a Beer-Drinking Tiger

2011-08-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

What follows are pictures of the patchwork quilt I finished yesterday in the delirium of head cold.

I actually made the top of this quilt and put it all together about 2 years ago - I've even used it from time to time - but I never finished top-stitching it. This is because I planned to do it by hand (before I knew how time-consuming that would be... it is King-Sized!)

Well, that wasn't happening and since I have this super-fast, industrial Juki sewing machine now, I decided yesterday it was time to blast this project off the To-Do List.

ALL the patchwork is old material I already had: old shirts (mostly the husband's) and pajamas, old bed sheets and some vintage material I had collected over the years. The bottom and inside are flannel sheets from Value Village.

So here it is:

It's intended as a summer quilt - quite thin, no stuffing.

But it is BIG!!

It is thin but vast...

This is the back.

Here you can see a few of the hand-stitched lines done before I went crazy with the machine.

The "Aloha" was from one of my nephew's shirts which he wore to my wedding.

The Superheros are from old bed sheets that first belonged to my brother and then to me. They are from 1978 (a good year!) and have been put to several different uses over the years - but I'm getting to the very last remnants of them now.

I like you!

No quilt is complete without a beer-drinking tiger.

I was thinking about the ocean when I made this section of blue.

Thank you for looking!

Ottawa Swans

2011-08-22T06:33:00.000-07:00

Late Edit: I just discovered there is an Aussie-rules football team in Ottawa called the "Ottawa Swans" and while I am enamoured with their jersey, this post is NOT about them. Look elsewhere if you want to find out more about the footballing variety of swans.

I've got a bit of a thing for swans. These artifacts were collected a few years ago in Halifax but there is other stuff around the house...

I guess it all started with visiting those crotchety old (gay?) swans in the Public Gardens in Halifax. They had a lot of personality. Nelson died while we still lived there and I just read that Horatio died shortly after we left. Are there no swans in the garden anymore?

Anyway, upon arriving in Ottawa and driving over the Rideau River on Bank Street I kept seeing big white blobs in the water out of the corner of my eye.

Sure enough, I looked it up on the interwebs and it turns out Ottawa has a rich, swan history going back to 1967 when Big Liz gave us 6 pairs of Royal (Mute) Swans for our 100th birthday!

I love spotting them whenever I'm crossing the Rideau.

You can read all about the Ottawa Swans HERE.

This pair that came over in hopes of a snack when I ate dinner down by the river one evening.

Then this fella did a little dance for me... and so I gave him some lettuce.

This guy, a solo Australian Black Swan, did a swim-by as well. He had cool curly feathers on his bum.

Grimm Reaper

2011-08-21T18:54:00.000-07:00

I'm struggling today with some kind of cold virus so it was OK to not do "real work". Instead I played around with this flash sheet (mostly re-drawn from Bert Grimm flash). Slowly but surely I'm getting better but I still have much to figure out about working with the ink - especially in the large black areas.

I also finished a quilt today that was mostly completed two years ago but never top-stitched. I had been planning to top-stitch it all by hand but it was obviously not happening and I really wanted to start using the thing - so today I sewed all over it with the Juki and it's finished. I'll try to post pictures tomorrow.

Not bad progress for a "sick day".

U.S.N. gal based on Bert Grimm

2011-08-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

Here's a piece of paper I'm painting on these days.

The "v" from a couple days ago, the U.S.N. lady from this morning.

(I didn't stain the paper this time - it's just the bad lighting in the picture that makes it look aged.)

This girl is based on the flash of Bert Grimm (which you can see in the photo below - from the Book Vintage Tattoos).

I wasn't trying to make her look exactly the same - if so, I would have traced her (and I would have painted her in blue). I was curious to see what happened if I drew the same elements without trying to duplicate them precisely. I allowed myself to draw the way I normally draw.

I like the look of the original more. Mine looks a bit "Disney-fied". The eyes too large. The hair overly cartoony. The lines so "flowy". The original is rougher around the edges. It's just... well... it's "cooler".

But I think it's better for me to do it the way that comes naturally and not try too hard to push it to look like something else.

If you do something enough, it will start to look more like what's in your mind eventually... but it will get to that stage gradually, through effort and trial and error. Meaning you will end up with a look that is influenced and molded by the things you like (i.e. what you look at and aspire towards) yet it will be your own thing because it has had time to percolate or be channeled through you.

It is interesting to see how different the two ladies look actually, considering they contain the same "ingredients". Something I draw will probably never look especially rough, crude, or "cool"... because that's not how my brain/eyes/hands work... or who I am as a person.

Anyway, I think it is more important for me to develop a body of work and to see progress over time than to get hung up on one or two images - as "precious" as they may be at the beginning - when they are so few in number...

Ummm... don't know how or why I got off on that tangent. Ah well...

Lesson learned today:

The only answer to dissatisfaction with your artwork is making more artwork.

victory flash

2011-08-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

I repainted this Bert Grimm flash this morning.

I wish I hadn't painted the leaves green. I don't like the leaves at all actually. I made them the shape of the original but I wish I drew them in a way that felt a little more natural to me... I'm learning though... getting more used to the spit-shading.

The original is really loosely drawn, messy in fact. I tried to be messy and loose but my brain wouldn't really allow it to happen... maybe I should've thrown a bottle of ink all over it like what happened last time I painted...

stuffy

2011-08-12T12:23:00.000-07:00

I found this cool/tacky thing depicting the Musicians of Bremen - an old folktale. (Click here to learn more about it.) I'm not sure if I'm going to leave it as is or maybe spray paint it a fun colour - like florescent pink or orange or something...

The purple Basil has gone to seed. Quite pretty.

A Cicada on the porch screen.

Found this game downstairs in the laundry room. Brought it up to show Husbo because he's into the stock market.

Maybe it should have been called "Nose Picker" (see the guy at left).

This is what the board looked like... snore. It was too boring to play - even for Husbo and he is passionate about charts and graphs!

These dice were awesome though. I kept them and put the game back in the laundry room. I felt a bit bad about that but I figure there probably isn't anyone in our building who will actually want to play this game... but maybe someone else would want to take the box up to their apartment for laughs like I did.

Silver Down! Gold Up!

RRR Matey

2011-08-12T06:22:00.000-07:00

vaRious Rs fRom aRound the woRld:

trial and mostly error

2011-08-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

I started a little painting of my own tattoos quite awhile ago and promptly failed to finish it until yesterday when I had some spare time.

All was going well, i was enjoying the results of my labour, until tragedy struck in the form of a loose-lidded ink bottle.

I soldiered through to completion anyway - though hurriedly - and doing so allowed me to get beyond the preciousness and restraint I'd been applying to the piece. (It was already ruined anyway so I couldn't hurt it any worse right? If I failed horribly now, all I had to do was throw it in the garbage.)

In the end, (I'm not saying I'm terribly happy with the finished product) I'm glad I tried to make something of it because I learned some things... maybe I should intentionally throw a bottle of ink on all my drawings when I'm halfway through... just to stir things up.

I rather like this rope.

I liked how it was looking right before "the incident". I had been planning to leave things more plain and open (without all the yellow and filler stuff) but once the red got everywhere I just started playing around. I suppose I could have played even more, gone much crazier... but I wanted to move on to something else.

Main lesson learned: ALWAYS screw down the lids of ink and paint bottles!!

Here's my arm, where the images all came from.

In less frustrating news, I have this completely "volunteer" tomato plant growing in my garden. I guess there were seeds in the compost from last year.

I've done nothing to help this tomato plant along except give it water....

...but it's actually bearing fruit... and lots of it... soon I'll have some ripe cherry tomatoes!

Knife Sharpener

2011-08-09T12:09:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to figure out how to find the knife-grinding truck that I saw in my neighbourhood one day when I first moved here (about 3 months ago).

I found an article from 2006 that must be about the same guy - it says his name is Carlos.

The truck looks A LOT like the one below but this picture was taken in Toronto and I found it on this blog.

Do any Ottawa-people know anything about this truck?

I wonder if he can sharpen skates too? Probably not...

heavenward

2011-08-09T06:56:00.000-07:00

A couple of pointing hand pictures taken in the last few weeks.

fun and games and corn

2011-08-09T06:28:00.000-07:00

First the corn.

Sweet corn season is upon us. This display in Toronto sure was pretty - the most organized corn I've ever seen.

And this is my new "Fun and Games Cart".

The fun is on top and the games below. The cart was in the trash at Husbo's place of work. It was covered in rust but I had a feeling it might clean up nice - and it did.

I added the red wheels.

hold the fleas please

2011-08-08T18:39:00.000-07:00

"Flea market" has got to be the worst name for a second-hand-sale... no one wants fleas.

Hopefully my new NON-Hudson-Bay-Blanket doesn't have any...

It's got the classic colour scheme but was made for Eatons - so it only cost 15 bucks at an antique store (in an upscale, Toronto neighbourhood to boot!!)

That's pretty darn cheap for a queen-sized 100% wool blanket without a single hole or stain!

I got a neat old medicine cabinet to hang above my sewing machine. It was still in the original box.

And here's what the sideboard looks like these days. I missed taking pictures of several in-between variations but the biggest change is that I got rid of the lamp. It was a useless place for a lamp (no chairs nearby that needed reading light). We never turned it on - so it has gone to another good home.

I brought the paint-by-number-horses out of the stable.

The fun, new additions to the sideboard are this old tray with sparrows, an old toy horse and a beautiful Amethyst crystal (my birthstone) - all obtained for only $8!

enjoy yourself

2011-07-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

these old things hang in the doorway of of my office:

i bought this "birthday shot" for a friend at a local pub last night. i let the bar tender decide what to make and she made this with outright-devilish-glee. she called it a "bleeding brain" (though i can think of a few other gross names for it).

i think it could be the answer to both of the statements on the wooden panels above.

...i've already looked up the ingredients and plan to buy them for my home-bar so i can inflict this monstrosity on all who visit.

one more frame

2011-07-26T05:51:00.000-07:00

I framed one other thing...

Husband had this very ugly door-to-nowhere in his new office (actually, it goes into the next office but is permanently closed and has insulation shoved behind it). He was able to ignore but I could not abide with it when I visited so I extended my compulsion to decorate beyond the borders of my own apartment and spilled over into the government's territory.

This project is literally 100% remixed from trash and stuff around the house. It's not perfect but considering it cost zero dollars it's pretty good I think...

The map is from an old (but not antique) Reader's Digest Atlas I had (which was already falling apart). Since The Husband researches issues surrounding livestock waste, it is also thematic!

The large frame came from the secret give-away/trash spot in the basement of my building. The only problem is that it doesn't have glass so I'm worried about how well the framed contents will hold up... but for the price of free it'll cover the ugly pink insulation well enough - at least for a little while.

framing frenzy

2011-07-25T14:35:00.000-07:00

I mashed up some random frames, old posters and new mats to get some new stuff to hang on the walls.

Started with this frame:

(which housed this print of "Peasant Wedding Procession" by Peiter Brueghel The Younger, a.k.a "Hell Brueghel")

And this frame (the sultry lady came with the used frame.)

I put a print from Hatch Show Prints in the wooden frame. I've had this for about 8 years, a misprinted souvenir from my visit there.

Oh. I also redid my previous take on this letter-pressed poem. The last version was too.... "something-ish"... Now it's more... "something-else-ish"

Breughels' Peasant wedding was cropped and edited.

I now call it, "A boy, a dog, and his codpiece walking in Holland".

(It's worth knowing more about codpieces by the way. Click here.)

I felt slightly weird about editing the old master's work but I didn't like the glumness of the sulking bridegroom being forced to his wedding. Not a fun sentiment for in the house... and it's only a print anyways... and Brueghel is a long-time dead.

Sorry, the pictures aren't the greatest but you get the idea.

photo drop

2011-07-24T11:01:00.000-07:00

Here's a bunch of recent photos taken with my point-n-click (a.k.a. the only camera I own).

* * * * *

This really happened at my house. My cohabitant (a.k.a. my husband) got two bulls-eyes AND a "bulls-eyelid" in ONE turn!

Shortly after this I became very bored of losing to him and gave that shitty old dart board away...

A moth that was probably dying - wouldn't get off my sleeve. Pretty though.

The grave of two children (little lambs) at an old cemetery where former slaves are buried near Alliston, ON.

A "BMW dealership" in Peterborough, ON.

In the laboratory I've been cleaning up.

From the car somewhere on Highway 7.

The rest are from a trading post, also on Highway 7. Had to stop in to check out the deerskin bikinis. Didn't buy.

man can he piss!

2011-07-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favourite pieces of statuary in the world (I don't have a list of favourite statuary but if anyone were to ask, this would probably be my answer...)

It's "Manneken Pis" (translation: Little Man Pee) and he lives in Brussels. I've never actually seen him in person but I've known of him since I was a small thing due to one of my older sister's charm bracelets. Seeing a little boy peeing off my sister's wrist was a wee wonder to me.

Anyway, this cheeky little man has been pissing all over the place for over 500 years.

And also, I just learned from Wikipedia, that people dress him up in all sorts of costumes! What Euro-fun!

"I vant to drain my vein..."

So, you won't be surprised to learn that when I saw a Manneken Pis Drink Dispenser at a thrift store one day, it immediately went into my basket!!

Here he is on my bar, along with an ash tray from Expo '58 featuring his same self.

(One might assume from this picture that I'm a big drinker and a smoker. I'm neither but I think it's nice to have a bar in the house. Very civilized-like.

Sadly, he was a little "blocked" when I rescued him from obscurity on the thrift-store-shelf. Couldn't perform his proper function if you know what I mean...

I dutifully checked his prostate and found the source of his problem. The issue was solved by ordering a new toy-sized motor from a surplus store in Nebraska.

...of course I only went online after visiting my local hobby shop dealing in model planes, trains, and automobiles. I think I made a big impression on the guys there - not only because they rarely have a woman grace their mantel but because I'm 100% sure they've never had a young, tattooed woman there looking for a small motor for a naked child that passes alcoholic pee.

Look at him dribble!

Anyway, my mini-maaneken can piss like the best of them now.

(And I have to say, I'm feeling pretty proud that I figured out how to get his motor runnin'... and I now own a soldering iron to boot!)

pictures i took while making dinner

2011-07-15T19:37:00.000-07:00

* Dramatically-Lit Popcorn

(Back story: we got this bag of free, leftover popcorn (which used to be twice as big) after the seeing the Conan O'Brien movie at The Mayfair last night. The Mayfair is a cool, old movie theater near our place where shows only cost 6 bucks! They must have known I love both free stuff and stale popcorn. I love that place.) (...the movie was good too!)

* Dramatically-Lit Colander

(Just bought it at Sally Anne today.)

* Dramatically-Lit Magazine Rack

(Also from Sally Anne today - only ONE dollar!)

* Dramatically-Lit Bowls

* A set of nesting Pyrex bowls in beautiful shades of green (from, you guessed it, Sally Anne). I've long wanted a set and the green is a bonus as I loves me some green!

oh peas!

2011-07-15T19:14:00.000-07:00

I adore my peas...

Last year I kept a whole blog about my "balcony farm". This year I moved to a new, smaller balcony so my garden was drastically reduced. Still, I got a bunch of lettuce, lots of green onions, and several herbs are "on the grow". There's also a sweet potato and two "volunteer" tomato plants (that sprung up from last year's compost I guess). Next year I think shall just grow a shit-tonne of peas. Peas are what make me the happiest out there.

OK. Maybe some cilantro too... oh... and a couple of sweet potatoes (just because they are pretty).

* * * * *

* The peas surpassed my make-shift lattice and went up the screen. That's probably going to be annoying to clean up...

* Today's harvest. More to come.

* Lung-like.

* Two peas. A pod. You know the deal.

not dead yet

2011-07-13T08:03:00.000-07:00

I'm back from the realm of the busy - where most people manage to live most of their lives (and blog meanwhile). Being of simple mind and low energy, I can only visit that realm from time to time and must then retreat into silence.

But this blog is not dead and now continues...

* * * * *

This is what the ever-evolving-sideboard looks like today. Not everything has changed but I had to free up some room for books that are currently new and/or being read. Our "bar" was briefly stationed on the sideboard but I didn't take a picture and it has since found another home. Books outrank booze.

Another new addition is this collage-y thing I put together this morning. The poem fragment (from Langston Hughes*) and bird picture has literally spent 8 years on my fridge (a friend letterpressed it back at Sheridan). Suddenly it felt like time to do something else with it...

So I put together some old things I had lying around my studio and framed it. I also added a button/pin of my baby-self (which I've had since... well... birth I guess**). Anyway, I've never been sure what to do with this button of myself... but it kind of fits in with the idea of holding fast to youthful dreams and pursuing them with the purity and innocence of a fresh-faced babe.

(I'm 100% certain that my dreams are less socially significant and far more self-centered than what Langston was talking about.)

So here it is:

In other newness, I got a neat book of weird old photos off the discount rack when I visited the National Gallery recently. It's like having the website Black and WTF in the palm of your hand - but NOT on an iPhone - haha!

The rocks are from various travels across Canada. The black lava-looking ones come from an island off British Columbia and the lump of coal is from Nova Scotia. The rest are from locales in between.

* * * * *

*Here's the whole poem, Dreams, by Langston Hughes (but I don't agree with him that frozen fields are barren or a bad thing...)

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

** I'm not sure WHY my family put my face on a pin. I guess I was cute as a button?

sweet but not innocent

2011-06-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

I shouldn't have encouraged his poor behavior by taking pictures.

(The third and forth pictures were taken just moments after the first two, after I left the room for a bit... sigh... "this is why we can't have nice things"...)

small but wonderous details of a day

2011-06-22T13:05:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I had a day that started with this:

Included this:

And this:

And ended with this:

And I call that a "good day"...

*****************************************

1. A double-yolker egg. I always read these as a good omen of fun times ahead. I assign superstitious meanings to random events in my life all the time. I once read that this is actually a mental disorder - but it's kind of fun so I remain happily undiagnosed.

2. This stack of post-bread-baking-bowls reminded me of an Aardvark... and I feel it is important that you know that.

3. A friend's baby's first time in a lake. Splashing!

4. Driving home from the lake we witnessed a Cat-Versus-Skunk-Stand-Off. We actually turned the car around to go back and watch it. Our viewing ended with the skunk running away, the cat in hot pursuit. Sort of a Reverse-Pepe-LePew-Situation. I imagine that it still ended badly for the cat...

beautiful bills

2011-06-22T06:18:00.000-07:00

My days have been busy busy lately so haven't been able to make much art or post many photos... but I see that the internet has survived without my input. Shocking!

Anyway, yesterday I was back at the Laboratory. Cleaning out the old stuff, making way for new stuff. It's really starting to take shape.

Most of the old scientist's stuff is gone now and there is much more space for the new scientist to work in.

There was a surprising amount of personal effects left in the lab and it was very interesting to piece together a picture of the old scientist's life through the objects left behind. I felt like a private eye.

The dear old man has past on and I shan't tell tales about him here except to say he was Greek and I think he was a good guy and a busy scientist.

Yesterday I found a folder full of old Greek money. I've never been to Greece or seen it's money...

It's beautiful old paper through don't ya think?

in-between painting

2011-06-16T12:43:00.000-07:00

layers of paint and shape. i don't know how i started or where i'm going with these - i just do them over to the side of my work space when i get bored, stuck, tired or annoyed with what i'm doing.

Misc.

2011-06-15T08:01:00.000-07:00

This is the view from my home/office right now (I'm procrastinating).

I think the whole paddle-boat fleet must have been unleashed out there! Nice day for it.

And here are some gems from my lab-clean-up project from yesterday. I spent most of the day clearing out five over-flowing, 4-drawer filing cabinets. So far the oldest thing I've found is a manuscript from 1958. I found a reprint (from 1962) of Francis Crick's paper "The Genetic Code". Yes, THAT Crick. From science class. The double helix guy. Those were the glory days of science.

The cover of this journal will look familiar to most Canadians. CBC's "Gem Logo" came out in 1974.

These journal covers are luscious enough to make me want to do some Liquid Chromatography!

And a friendly reminder from the Feddy Gov (this message was only on sporadic file folders, not all... to keep you in suspense):

Dress 9 - The Dress Quest is Dead

2011-06-11T09:57:00.000-07:00

Well, I made it to Dress Day #9 (which was actually Thursday past but I've been too otherwise-occupied to write here since then).

I started a temporary job (I'm a "casual" Fed for the next couple weeks) that involves being in a Scientific Laboratory. It requires biking to work and having to wear pants and shoes in the lab - so the dress-up is dead. I was growing a little bored with it anyway, truth be told.

The job is a fun one: cleaning up Husbo's new lab space which was previously occupied by another scientist for 30-odd years... and he was a bit of a pack rat!

This might not seem fun to very many people but it is almost heaven for me: old government furniture and surplus, old science manuals/gadgets, and the paraphernalia of a stranger's working life just sitting there to sift through - and getting paid for it!

I enjoy cleaning up and organizing really messy spaces. I find it very satisfying and it's something I'm good at.

So, that's the update on that.

This last dress wasn't even a dress but a skirt and long shirt. I'm mostly posting it because I took some adorable/stupid pictures of my stupid/adorable cat at the same time.

He and this rug really tie the room together. He loves that rug.

the elevator ate my homework

2011-06-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

I found this homework/script about Organic Farming in my building's elevator and it is hilarious... I don't know what it says about the state of critical thinking and persuasive argument skills in our nation's youth but I've certainly been quoting it around the house all day...

"That's no moon! It's your vegetable!"

(Click on the pictures to make them bigger.)

Read. Enjoy.

drawing my own - plus some hockey talk

2011-06-08T06:58:00.000-07:00

While I waited to hear about an illustration yesterday I started another painting of my own tattoos.

Here's the progress so far.

This figure-8 knot was done about a year and a half ago by Steve Baker in Guelph, ON. I think he did a really nice, clean job on it.

Not much to say about it: I like the look of knots (I used to be into tying fancy, decorative knots), I like the number 8, my sister-in-law was about to get married so I had the phrase "tying the knot" (and eternity) on my mind.

This one was done several years ago by Lydia Stalingrad in Halifax, NS. At the time I think she was a bit nervous about the smallish lettering but she did a great job - true to the feel of the old advert it came from.

This was sort of a memento of living in Halifax, to my love for hockey/hockey-history/Canadiana, and to my love for old advertising all wrapped up in one.

I don't play hockey... I did play soccer for a bit... but I've never been able to "get into" soccer (despite reading The Ball Is Round - which was a good read). The game is just too long and boring for me. There, I said it.

Hockey captures my attention on many levels. I'll happily admit that it's partly due to living in the province of its origin for 5 years and running into Sidney Crosby a few times. (I watched the Pens win the cup in Sid's boyhood arena - it was hilarious and cool.)

Anyway, I get attached to places via the history of those places and Halifax's and hockey's histories happen to be intertwined.

This little book made a good argument about Halifax-Dartmouth being the place where hockey really began. Also, it's a quick and informative read about hockey's interesting history. I recommend it.

I might get the little striped guy tattooed someday... maybe when the Pens win the cup again.

I thought this tidbit (or should I say "timbit"?) about the acrobatic influence of the goalies from the "coloured leagues" on the NHL was really interesting.

Dress 8 - and the Ol' Bounce N' Roll

2011-06-08T06:32:00.000-07:00

Dress: H&M via thrift store.

This frock is the dress-equivalent of track pants.

To paraphrase Seinfeld, I feel a little like I've given up on life if I wear this during the day. I usually just wear it during that strange sartorial period between a post-yoga-shower and bedtime.

I never wear it out of the apartment building. (OK. I'll admit to going as far as the laundry room in it - for shame!)

..but it's light and loose and today's gonna be the hottest day of the year so far... and I need to start and finish a final illustration for tomorrow morning... so today it's OK to wear this dress all day.

This photo makes more sense if you know that it's taken in my office on this weird sitting-situation I've employed of late.

It's a Bosu Ball on top of a footstool on wheels and it is the perfect height for my drawing board. I arrived at this set-up through trial and error. It's working well so far but it's always an adventure to sit on because it both bounces and rolls. One never know when tragedy could strike!

Also I can bust out and do some core-strength at any moment (but that rarely happens)...