Ruby's Hand.

Ink, watercolor, and crayon on watercolor paper.

Another Way Home

Acrylics and watercolors on canvas, 8" x 10".

This one took forever to come together, and almost claimed my favorite jeans along the way. But it's worth it. Eventually things arrange themselves, though it's surprising every time.

Drowning in a Desert

This week's drawings

I've been working on using my dip pen and creating from my imagination instead of photographs. There's a delicate balance between going fast enough to have interesting, sketchy lines and going slow enough to think about composition and form. I've yet to find that balance. The dance of artistic discovery continues.

What You Looked Like Before I Met You

Watercolor and ink on canvas.
8" x 10".

Think of Me When Everything You Wanted Starts to End

Acrylics, watercolor, and ink on canvas. 12" x 24".

This is the first time in a while that a painting isn't better than the one that preceded it. Not that I don't love this one, but it's not perfect. I'll get it on the next try.

Aspirational Distinctives

Acrylics, ink, and watercolors on canvas.
12" x 24"

The end of each painting I do seems to come unexpectedly. I keep working on it, it seems to be going nowhere, and then all of a sudden WHAM!!!

Painting done.

I'm very proud of this one. It's my favorite painting I've ever done, and I'm inclined to suggest it's the best one as well.

Morgan Grimes.

I like the show "Chuck". It's a guilty pleasure. Morgan is my favorite. He's been having a rough time lately.

And while we're here, let me update my top ten favorite albums of all time. I did my top 50 a couple years ago, and there were some egregious errors. So I redid my top ten. Again, this is favorite, not best. A best list would look very different.

10. Redlight by the Slackers
The only ska to make the list, this is the best ska album ever. It just is. I think we can all agree on this.

9. Hello Rockview by Less Than Jake
That's because I don't count this as ska. LTJ makes me feel like I have to get out of the Iron Range if it kills me. Oh yeah, I did get out of the Iron Range. Oh double yeah, I was never there to begin with. Phew.

8. Fashion Nugget by Cake
Audry gave me this album because she didn't want it. It became the soundtrack to my stoner days. We're getting to the point in the list where almost no songs are duds anymore.

7. Something to Write Home About by the Get Up Kids
Besides the glaring grammatical error, this album is great all the way through. "I'm a Loner Dottie, A Rebel" is still the best song on here. They all remind me of the way things never were, if that makes any sense.

6. OK Computer by Radiohead
This would be at the very top of the best list. It blew my mind when I first heard it, and the subsequent 20,000 listens we all put in between 1997 and now. Don't act like you didn't try to figure out what the words meant. We all did.

5. Electro-Shock Blues by Eels
It's difficult for me to describe why I love this album so much. Part of me thinks it's the repeated listenings, but mostly I think it's because I know this is the soundtrack for anything devastating that might happen in the future. It's too bad they couldn't take out "Baby Genius". Then this would be the perfect album.

4. Parklife by Blur
Numbers two through four on this list are all up for debate. I'm actually a little surprised I put this at four. Honestly it should be at three, considering that this was the soundtrack to at least three years of my life. I can probably also blame this album for 10-15% of my snarkiness. Thanks, guys!

3. The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place by Explosions in the Sky
Wow. This totally effing destroys. No matter how often I listen to this, three things are true: 1. I listen to every single second from start to finish, 2. my life feels insanely epic, and 3. I would totally step outside for a smoke afterward if I still smoked. You really need to do yourself a favor and hear this before you die.

2. Downward Is Heavenward by Hum
When I started thinking of what I wanted my novel to be about, this was my starting point. I didn't think of characters or plot, I thought that I wanted this to be the soundtrack if it ever got made into a movie. A strange way to go about things, I know, but this is so atmospheric and rocking that it's impossible to deny.

1. Weezer (Blue Album) by Weezer
As if it could be anything else. Never has an album been more significant to me, never has an album had so high a strong/weak song ratio (10:0, if you care to know), never has an album rocked so hard. This is probably going to be at the top of the list until I die. I can't see anyone unseating them.

What do you think?

Then and now.

Silent Tiny Pieces of the Sun
April 2009
Acrylics, ink, and watercolor on canvas panel. 24" x 18"

I finished this one over the weekend and I'm very proud of it. Many failed things all came together in a way that I never expected. It's further testament to my newfound conviction that any painting can be saved if you just keep at it.

It just so happens that I recently found the last landscape I did, and I'd like to present it in the spirit of comparing and contrasting:


Ice Cream Mountains
Spring 1998
Acrylics on canvas panel. 24" x 18"

The differences in paintings directly mirror the differences in me that have happened over the past eleven years. When I was finishing up high school in 1998, I was like the older painting. More certain about colors, a little glib, not all that interesting or varied. Like the newer one, I am now more subtle, interesting, complicated, and patient. The colors in my life became far more varied and uncertain, but make up a distinctly vibrant palette.

The brilliant stroke is that the painting I just finished was reclaiming a canvas panel from another failed painting of the spring of 1998. It sort of feels like I'm coming full circle in painting.

Marcia.

Finished product.

I didn't quite make it to my time goal, but I figured artificially bloating the time spent is a pointless practice. It's done when it's done. I'm very happy with the result. Marcia always seems to bring out the best in me.

Acrylics, ink, and watercolor on canvas, 16 in x 12 in.

Painting again.

With my basement nearing completion, I've found time again (by procrastinating on other things) to begin painting once more. I uncovered some old canvases to reuse, so this is the first one. I have three goals for this painting:

1. Take my time. Most of my pieces up to now have been done within two hours. This one I'd like to get to ten hours. I think I could build up a lot better texture if I just stuck with one painting far longer than feels natural. So far I've spent three hours on this one, and fun things are already starting to happen.

2. Get intuitive. I've been obsessed with trying to find the right process in the past; this has led to some very stale work. I doubt I could even keep track of my process with so much work going into this, but hopefully some vitality and freshness will peek out in the end product. I'm also not worrying too much about colors. Whatever feels right is what I'll use. In the past I've been afraid of ending up with every color imaginable in the same painting. But you know what? Van Gogh used a ton of colors too, and yet his paintings have definite color tones. (Yes, I'm comparing myself to him. No, I don't feel bad about it.)

3. Be accurate. If this ends up looking up somewhat like my wife (so far so good), all the better.

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I'm fighting a battle with fussiness. Apparently the black ink on a twig won't be part of the forces next time.

Two things I do better when I abandon:

1. Realistic depth, and
2. Attempts at funky line quality.

Sorry for the massive layoff, I had a lag in inspiration, followed by a homeowner crisis, followed by a "vacation". But now I'm back, and although not quite inspired, I can at least trudge along until my homeowner crisis is resolved and things return to normal.

A couple new links on the right: Urban Sketchers is a new blog from Gabi Campanario (aka Seattle Sketcher) that's basically a collection of, you guessed it, urban sketches from contributors around the world. Good viewing. One of the contributors is Olha Pryymak, who aside from being a good sketcher in my favorite city in the world, seems to be an informal student of the old masters. Also perhaps the only contributor to regularly use oils, which I find intimidating and admirable.

Jealousy and fatalism

I've been reading War and Peace for what seems like an eternity. One of the things I've noticed (because it'd be impossible not to) is Tolstoy's insistence that "great men" of history haven't really controlled the course of history. He says it's the collective spirit of many that controls things. And while I think he may go a little overboard with his historic fatalism, it's interesting to view this year's presidential election in such a light. The more I think about it, the less power I think the president has. We can all blame Bush for the war in Iraq, sure. That's the exception. But this current financial crisis wasn't his doing. It was the collective will of Wall Street execs, legislators, and homeowners that did it.

Likewise, how much difference (apart from declaring another unilateral war on Iran) could the next president make? Aren't we, the collective masses, the real holders of power? Shouldn't we affect the zeitgeist to some degree? I think so. So while Obama is sliding away from his policy of change, while I don't trust McCain now that he's so obviously in the neocons' pocket, while Palin is leading by several lengths in the People Who Should Never Have Power Derby, I don't think the world will fall apart on November 5th. It's a nice feeling.

Ten years ago

This Saturday is my 10-year high school reunion, which I will not attend. But it did get me thinking about ten years ago. In September 1998:

1. I was just starting college.
2. I had an 8-o'clock anthropology class.
3. I thought I would be a statistician.
4. I was seeing Amanda every weekend.
5. I watched Sifl & Olly religiously.
6. I was on the bowling team.
7. I discovered mp3's.
8. I was electrified as a Vikings fan by some kid named Randy Moss.
9. I thought drinking was the most fun thing ever.
10. Almost nothing was the same.

Executive

The CEO of United Healthcare makes more in an hour than most Americans make in a year. Think about that. Do you think this comes into consideration when they ponder whether or not to raise premiums?

The CEOs of major investment banks get millions on top of their ludicrous salaries when their company gets bought out by taxpayers. Somewhere to the tune of several hundred years' worth of my salary. What's the difference? I haven't endangered the economy.

Crooks and swindlers. I'd say it's time to get our pitchforks and torches, but we'd never get inside their gated communities.

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I anticipate winter unlike anyone I know. At the first sign of fall I rejoice. Even this week, in the midst of summer-like weather, I sun myself in the glorious light from the newborn football season. All is magnificence for the next few months.

I also feel like I should start doing things from imagination if I'm ever going to get anywhere as an illustrator. This is a lot less terrible than I thought it would be, frankly. I find that I'm afraid of painting from imagination not because I think I lack the skill, but because I'm worried my imagination might be stupid and boring. Pondering greatly helps the process and decreases the stress.

I need to make some stylistic changes, methinks. Pen instead of ink and twig, more painterliness on foreground figures, and stop making the clothing look so dang poofy. These are tangible steps I can take.

Sea of Leaves

The thing about living in Colorado is that the leaves don't quite gain the same spectrum of colors in the fall here. I miss seeing oranges, reds, and browns. Here, it's all yellow. Darn aspens. Last year I raked the leaves in my lawn for the first time since I was a little kid. I wanted to jump into the pile, but my neighbor was watching from across the street. I should've done it anyway. Maybe I will this year.

Parisian Coffee

I was about to ask for the check when suddenly my coffee exploded!!! Whoa!

Otherwise it was a pleasant meal.

Everything is pleasant in the fall. I even love the warm days, when they have that undertone of the coming coolness. I love doing laundry on Sundays in front of a non-stop barrage of football. Soon it will all be falling leaves and pumpkin pie and fires in the fireplace. Summer can suck it.

Autumn

Another Rion photo turned into something else.

Swan

Rion Nakaya is a fantastic photographer. You really need to check her stuff out. I've never wanted to live in Paris more, and that's really saying something. Also, Sigur Rós is unbelievable painting music.