Bird is the Word

Once again, Doodles has enlisted me to make a piece of art for one of the silent auctions being run through the Electric Moustache art gallery at Krankies. So I put together two versions of this idea. Below is the version that I'll probably keep:

In any case, the silent auction starts at 6pm on Saturday, Sept. 6th, where you can see (and yes, buy) Version 2 of this fine art piece (?), as well as many other works from much more reputable people. I hope to see you there!

Hip to be Square

About a month ago while sitting at Krankies one day, innocently drinking a Boddington's Pub Ale, I suddenly found a little square piece of wood shoved in my face... Doodles had enlisted me to create a piece of artwork for the Electric Moustache's "Square" exhibit.

After making a trip to Michael's to get art supplies, I went about making my first piece of artwork in several years, and to the best of my knowledge my first painting ever. Here it is, and my sister's are below:

I titled this one "European Rooftops" after taking photos of various
buildings I liked from Google images and smooshing them together.

Doodle's first picture, which she titled "Ganesh"

Doodle's second picture, "Simon Bolivar," modeled after a famous portrait.

The exhibit happened last week, and was accompanied by a silent auction. I was around for most of the auction, watching my picture from afar. I was amazed when someone actually placed a bid down (the first piece of art I've ever sold!). I resisted the temptation to walk up and talk to the bidder, as I imagined he would ask "what can you tell me about this painting?" and then I would say something stupid like "This is the first painting I've ever made... I was figuring out how to use acrylic paints as I was going along," and then the man would be filled with regret and try to scratch his name off the bid list.

Musical Flight

Short note that my pal & fellow contra-dancer Leah will be playing a couple hours of classical music starting at 5:30 tomorrow (Friday) at RayLen Vineyards as part of the Sky Meadow Strings trio. I expect it will be an entertaining couple hours with wine, fine music, and nice weather... My other understanding is that this concert is ultimately being performed to help the trio advance their noble goal (?) of collecting beer money to help kick the weekend off with a bang, so donations are appreciated.

Here's a link for more information -- hope to see you there!

http://www.raylenvineyards.com/index.php/Future-Events/

Not So Happy-Go-Lucky: Winston-Salem and the Art-House

After hearing a passionate endorsement of the movie Happy-Go-Lucky by an NPR film reviewer about a month ago, I was determined to watch it. I ended up going to moviefone.com and doing a search for the nearest place where I could watch the movie. The closest place ended up being Washington, DC, a good 300+ miles away. This in turn partially prompted me to embark on what eventually became my sugar-addled DC trip.

Since then, the movie's made it to Charlotte, Greensboro, Asheville, Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, but not Winston. So the moral seems to be that if you're willing to drive, say, up to 100 miles, you can generally find the movie you're looking for if you give it a couple weeks. But generally, an art-house movie is hard to find in this town. I regularly attended the North Carolina School of the Arts' Films on Fourth movies last year, which brought in some great movies. But then the series ended last December, because there wasn't enough interest and attendance to keep them going. Outside of the RiverRun Film Festival in April (mark your calendar!), this town's got nothin'.

C'mon people! If this town is supposed to be known as North Carolina's "City of the Arts," we can do better than this!

Pumpkin Carving in the West End

Yesterday I showed up at a friend's pumpkin carving party in the West End. This ended up being my second pumpkin carving party in about three days (after being to a sum total of about zero in the last... two decades or so?) and I was so tired from carving the last one that I decided to just spectate and snap this photo of everyone else's fine work.

At the earlier party, I discovered that the downside of having an extremely large pumpkin with cool warty skin is that trying to cut things into it with those little pumpkin carving tools is something like trying to cut leather with a butter knife. Luckily however, there were a bunch of kids that were willing to pick up the slack on the carving duties at Pumpkin Party #2.

Patio Art #2: The Skull of Love

I was intrigued by Esbee's suggestion of following up my first contribution to patio art (Have a Nice Day on Dirty Concrete) with a power-wash drawing of "calaveras" (the Spanish word for "skulls"). Interesting... I could draw the bad-ass tattoo that I never gave myself on my patio! Sort of like vicarious wish fulfillment.

In any case, I drew this one yesterday:

Title: La Calavera de Amor ("The Skull of Love")

There was some intention of making this more bad-ass, but in the end I decided to draw lots of hearts around the skull, in the hopes that these happy, friendly touches would make my neighbors less scared/concerned about why I was drawing skulls on the patio.

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...Epilogue/Coda: What now? I have learned some interesting techniques for drawing on concrete with water since the first sketch, and it has been an exciting journey. Unfortunately my patio now looks something like a page of doodles and scribbles created by an 8-year-old, and it is time to clean the slate. Unfortunately, I am now learning that removing patio art is harder than creating it. Next step: Learning How to Remove Patio Art!

Patio Art #1

As I was washing old paint off a wicker chair with a power washer on my back patio, I discovered that I could use it to "draw" on the ground. A couple days later, I drew this:

Title: "Have a Nice Day" on Dirty Concrete

Amazing but true! --The "i" on the word "nice" was originally undotted. The dot is a final touch added by a bird a day later.

What should I do for Patio Art #2?

Kingergarten Teaching in Korea

My sister Doodles sent me a little how-to guide on teaching kindergarten kids from her current station in Korea [click to enlarge]. I especially like the implication in the last panel that she is thinking wistfully about those golden days of corporal punishment. What have those kids done to you, Doodles?!?!

And also: "Hmm... " you ask. "What is a post on teaching Korean kindergarteners doing on a blog about living in the South," you ask? Well, rest assured, she is living in South Korea. (I would double-underline the word "South" if I knew how, for extra emphasis.) So count it!

Why... So... Serious?

Charlotte (the girl, not the city) recently showed me some pictures she took from her photo session with the bacteria "B. Cereus". I especially liked this one, which shows the bacteria as a tragic, Pac-Man type figure, world-weary from running away from his ghosts:

Charlotte writes about the picture: "The stain is indian blue. It is a negative stain, meaning that it stains the actual glass slide, leaving the bacteria unstained. It is viewed in a compound microscope in oil immersion under 1000x total magnification. I took the picture with my digital camera through the microscope's eyepiece; that's why it is sort of blurry. "

Sometimes a shirt is just a shirt

An idea for a t-shirt I came up with a couple days ago (the drawing is by Ralph Steadman):


After mocking this up, I discovered that apparently, I am not the first person to come up with this idea (see especially the "first" link), but I think my execution is better.

Way of the Dodo

For a really really really brief time, I had a comic strip that I drew for the college newspaper that I called "Way of the Dodo"... I hadn't seen the strips for a long time, but found them as I was transferring files off my old computer. I did 5 strips total, and stopped because each 4-panel strip took me several hours to make. Those people that can do this kind of thing in 15-minutes make me sick (this means you, Doodles...).

Super-Doodle

I was rummaging through my stuff on Sunday and ran across this cartoon that my sis ("Doodles") snail-mailed me a year ago. Probably took her 15 minutes to make, but I love it! Even if she is basically mocking me.