Three Strikes! You're Out, Turkey!

Gotta make this a little quick, leaving for work in a couple minutes and running late.
First off, no piano yet, and it's starting to drive me crazy. I wonder sometimes if I just should lower my standards and get a keyboard, but they can be just as expensive to get one with all 88 keys. Oh well, I have other options yet.
Second, last week at Aiden's baptism, Kevin handed me a tape that had been sitting in his parents' house since forever. It was a band tape from the band he was in before we ganged up, and we all thought the tape lost. This was a copy no one really knew about. So, last week I listened to it. It brought a wave of nostalgia hearing it, but I could tell it was a bunch of angry kids from the early '90's. The voices were all very young (even Kevin's which is weird now), and the music very angst-ridden and grungy. Does anyone even use the word angst anymore, or did that stay with the music? It was very cool to hear the original version of Kevin's "Happy Song" though.
Third, and this is most important. New page of Golden Brown is currently up. Now that I got some time on my hands, I've been better about punctuality, so quit reading this now and go from here over to there!

Painting, aaaaaannnnnddd Comics! Shishaaaa!

I don't know what to do with myself lately. It happens after every semester, too. It's not like every waking moment is spent doing homework or working on projects, but during the week I'm always trying to plan out my schoolwork schedule and determine what to do when and how to do it. For the paint stuff, half the week is wasted trying to think of good stuff to paint. I'm not a fruit-painting kind of guy, even though fruit's a good way to learn how light hits different textures and shapes and whatnot. I very obviously suck at depicting books. You'd think painting a rectangular object shouldn't be so frickin hard, but somehow I make my books look like they're floating, defying gravity, and water-logged.
I've only been out of school for a few days, but the thought of me doing more painting scares me. I don't have deadlines, which means I have to figure my own times. I know, you're thinking Doug, you look so great in those crazy hats of yours. But if you want to paint so bad, why don't you just go out and paint?
Well, my stupid brain starts telling me I have other things I need to do, and as much as I'd love to actually go outside and try a plein air, I don't want people around. That and painting nature or buildings scares the shit out of me. The only reason I have a thought I can do it is because I had the same fear of painting still life, and it turned out okay. There's a church that was built in the '30's I'd love to try. Storm Lift stations placed near rivers and obscured by trees, downtown areas, bridges, I'd love to do all that stuff. Half of those things have people around them. Which is a little ironic, because I'd also like to try portraits.
There is also the decision of medium. I'm not into oils right now. I understand the pros to using oils, like slower drying time, but I learned with Acrylic, and right now I kind of like Acrylic. I imagine guys like Bill Wray can schlepp paints, canvas, and other materials to different sites because they know how to pack it. I don't know. I'm very lazy with my setup and am prone to easy loss of concetration, so it seems like acrylic would benefit me more right now. Anyone who uses oils on a regular basis, feel free to take exception or chew my ass about any misunderstandings of oil painting preparation.
This week's Golden Brown has been up since yesterday, and features another 2 pages! If ambitious enough, I may be able to illustrate a little preview to my next project, though when I actually get started on it, who knows.
I finished Scott McCloud's Making Comics just this past week. There's a lot of stuff he talks about that I've already come across or have experimented with, but it's given me a greater understanding of the different approaches I take or have thought of taking with Golden Brown. He's also a huge backer of webcomics. Even though I'd like to go to print someday, having the BoneDaddy blog is helping me get the feedback I need right now to prepare for something bigger and better.
One thing really stuck in my mind. It was an obscure comment in his notes from his chapter on different drawing & inking tools. In the notes it was mentioned that Mike Mognola (Hellboy, B.P.R.D. among others) used nothing but Pigma pens and Sharpies. It made me feel so much better to look at my own small arsenal and see what? Pigma Micron pens and Sharpie markers. What does it mean? It means I can eventually become a professional at this and still rely on simple tools, if that's my thing.

Daddy's Got a Brand New Hat!

Ok, so not exactly brand new. I got it from an antique store owned/operated by Kevin's mom. Give me just a little more time & an opportunity to acquire a bus drivers uniform, and Kevin and I can officially do a scene from the Honeymooners. We'd both have to shave, of course. Come to think of it, Kevin, you should totally do Jackie Gleason for Halloween.

Funny thing is this is exactly the third hat I wished to acquire. I wanted a beat-up fedora style, because I felt I needed a "Tom Waits" hat. It's awesome.

Forgot to mention I suffered a little defeat a couple weeks back. I've been wanting to learn piano for who knows how long now. I got to try out Karissa's mom's clavinova (I know it sounds dirty but it's a console piano!) and got instantly hooked. I bought one of those cheap roll-out keyboards and got made fun of by Karissa for a while for it (it sounds fine enough to practice with, but it is a little dorky).
We had our Spring clean-up th second week of May. There are two streets that get picked apart by dumpster-divers with particular relish, and those are Belmont and Reeves Drive. They considered a bit "upper-class" and are more carefully taken care of than a lot of other parts of town, and the residents end up throwing out junk that is higher quality than that of us blue-collars.
Anyway, I was driving along Reeves one morning on my way home from work, when I noticed a big fucking upright piano sitting out by a curb. I thought "cool, I should take it," but just drove off and forgot about it for a couple days. But the more I kept driving by it, the more I kept looking at it, and the more I started thinking I should take it (I'm not really embarassed at taking other people's junk as long as it's quality).
One night, I parked a block away and walked up to it. The front panels were completely gone, exposing the strings and hammers and other guts of the piano. The pedals were intact, but the keys were yellowed and chipped in places. The whole thing looked a wreck. I hit a few keys to see if it would even work, and it sounded just perfect. It may have been out of tune, but this piano still had perfect tone, even sitting outside on the grass and missing cosmetic parts.
I thought, this is totally me to have a piano looking like this, and this piano should be mine. I got a couple friends to try to help me move it and a pickup, but the thing would not budge. I had figured it would be heavy as shit, but it was just too much, and the wood that was on it was old, hard wood that a lot more to the 400-500 lbs already on the piano.
I even considered getting it on a four-wheel handtruck and pushing it across the two bridges and 1.5 miles of road to my house myself, but the next day it was too late. A payloader had picked it up and dumped it into the truck long before I could get back to it.
So, defeat. My resourcefulness could have won me a free piano, but I didn't act quick enough. Back to the roll-out keyboard for now.
I'm done with my classes for th semester, and I'm anxious to get back into the comic more. I'd like to have the story done by Fall semester. The good news is that I finally got into a comics class next Fall, so maybe I can expand my abilities just a little and learn some new stuff. I'm also currently most of the way through Making Comics by Scott McCloud, which is explaining a lot of good littl tidbits to me. This guy is a frickin genius whn it comes to the study of comics theory. Yeah, that's right, there is such a thing as comics theory, you bastards.
Last weekend we went to Devils Lake for a family visit. Kevin and April went too, bcause they had Aiden baptized in the church they used to go to. I've never seen an infant take a baptism so well, especially a Catholic one.
After the baptism, we went to a reception at the Great Northern building, an old structure which used to be a hotel but now holds apartments and lends its basement to be used for receptions. If I ever get outside to paint, I've got that in mind for a subject.
Isabella gets just a little stranger every day. It seems like she's always got some new little silly dance or twit-walk, or else she's singing or talking funny. And I swear we're not teaching her this stuff, she just comes up with it. But it is entertaining. We should think of getting rid of cable and just watch her all day. A part of me thinks, "wow, what a dork. I can't believe she's my kid." Then the other part thinks, "wow, what a dork. You can tell she's my kid."

Basement Film Night

My final homework assignment is complete! There is one discussion to do for this class, and then I'm all done for the summer. This isn't the end to my painting, though. One of my classes next fall involves painting for at least part of it.

I think I'll miss this class a little, because it kicked me in the ass to try a new medium, one that I wasn't very keen on trying. As I got into it, I actually started to like it. I started getting better ideas (though some flops) for subjects to paint, and I couldn't believe I got stuff to look like the stuff it's supposed to.

I do find it funny that when I look at other painters' works, the first things I notice are "other than focal point" objects. It's sometimes annoying, because I cannot get my eyes to follow the painting around to its focal point, and it takes longer for me to "get" it. But in my own stuff, most of my favorite parts are background and non-focal-point things. I like my brick wall here more than everything else.

Anyway, the new page of Golden Brown is actually already done, but you'll all have to wait til Friday. Sorry, that comes down from management, not my policy. Karissa laughed at it, though.

Tom Waits For No One - Animated 1979 ... John Lamb

I had heard this was an unreleased video, but then just found it on Youtube. It was made in 1978, it's awesome.

Make Him an Offer He Can't Refuse...

I did this last week for my Imaging class, but wanted to let my guitar painting get a little attention first.
The assignment is to do an illustration for a story. The story I chose was Godfather Death by the brothers Grimm. Its about a doctor whose father, in a real genius parental decision, passed on offers from god & devil to choose Death as godfather for his baby. The whole point of the story is that every man answers to Death in the end, and the picture, though very simple, shows him looking over man and child.
I'm currently inking the new page for Golden Brown. I know, I should be getting it done by Friday morning, but oh well. Besides, I don't owe you people anything, so stop acting all entitled to my shit. It should be out by this evening.

The Masonic Music Machine

Instruments, instruments, always with the instruments!

The goal of this assignment was low-key painting, or darker shades. I did a no-no on the brim of the cap, making it look misaligned with the cross. The sunglasses look a little sloppy. Otherwise I like it. And I got to put my other hat into a painting. I enjoyed doing this one, mainly because I like low-key paintingsHooray!

I have to get my ass in gear now, because I haven't quite started on my last homework assignment just yet. No peeking until I get it completely done! That means you, April! None of that leaning over my should to get a good look business! It won't have the creepy "I killed someone" look of the previous one, but hopefully will turn out as good.

Garage Days Revisited

I was cleaning out my garage this weekend (more on that later), and I came across some of my old drawings from high school.

This is one of the last drawings I did of Mordechai (I think there are some pics in my archves of him). This is a whole "choose between 'good' and 'evil' catch 22 kind of drawing with Jesus, Satan, Michael and Gabriel in the pic. My name & date are in the stone floor. Sorry the pics are bad quality, but I took them quick cause I was busy.

I kinda took the idea from a mask I saw in a catalog.

I found a bunch of old ceiling tiles in our shed once that my dad obviously wasn't going to use (I had decided he wasn't, anyway), so I wanted to do a bunch of drawings that would come together to form a big evil mural. Unfortunately, I only did three.

Death is, in reality, a big drama student who loves to walk his dog/s.

Opposites attract.

How the pieces fit together.

Nocturnal Perambulation to Clear My Diurnal Machinations

I just got back from a long walk. My fingers don't want to move very fast right now, but not from the cold. Every muscle in me feels like it's been put under a hanky and stomped on by a Jewish groom. It was totally worth it, though. I just wandered along the sidewalks and bike trail in East Grand Forks, and the sky was so bright from all the city lights hitting the overcast sky and bouncing back down that I could see the river from across the huge field. I usually hang out at the point, but I decided to go a little further this time.
I was about halfway across the Murray bridge when a car went speeding past, and the driver startled me a bit by leaning out of his window and yelling, "FREAK!" I just smiled, looked back over the railing as I walked, and repeated the word 'dumbass' in my head for a while. Fuck him anyway, that guy probably listens to every song Ryan Seacrest recommends and shops at Abercrombie and Fitch. He probably also wears socks with his sandals and tries every now and then to sound cool by saying "True dat" whenever his buddy talks about how cool it is to ride their kawasakis to the coffee shop.
Ah, well. If I'm a freak, I'm proud of that. That means I'm at least trying to be human.
Anyway, I finally found the pedetrian bridge that's been eluding us for who knows how long. It was really cool, because I noticed that the bridge was positioned in such a way that it divided the sky. North of it, the lights of Downtown brightened the sky and made everything a pinkish hue across the waters, and South of the bridge was dark and foreboding. Walking on the bridge, I had the distinct feeling of passing straight through a battleground of good and evil. On one end, light and comfort. The other, a yawning void where the water ran into total darkness. It was really cool.
To add to that, a bunch of dead trees were piled on the west bank of the dark side. Everything seemed to just fit right into place. And I didn't bring my camera. Fuck.
Anyway it was totally cool and you guys all missed it. Ha ha.

By the way, new Golden Brown out came out just before midnight, sorry it was a little tardy, but still Friday!

What is it?

It's not a toaster! I know it looks like a bagel toaster, but let me ask you: How many bagel toasters have you seen that have 3 slots??

It's actually a nautical pulley of some sort. The floor of our bathroom looks a bit like an ocean floor, so a while back I went for a "tragedy at sea" theme to decorate. I've judged this pulley acceptable as "debris". Despite the lack of bouyancy in the character of my bathroom, I didn't do the cast shadows quite well enough on the pulley, and thus have inadvertantly given it a floating quality. Ooooops.

Ah, well, it's growing on me. This was an assignment in high-key paintings (really light). Coming up: low-key painting.