Under the Influence (a links-intensive reverie of art and design)

Goodbye 2016, ending in a few hours.  2016, don't come back.  What a terrible year!

No word from Dana.  I did get the address right, didn't I?  From the one on 45th? 

I've spent some time lately thinking about old influences, those things that sparked an interest in art, specifically portraiture.  The earliest I can recall is a board game one of my older sisters had called "Mystery Date", back in Vallejo when I was two or three.  In the center of the board was a plastic device resembling a door.  Inside the device was a stack of cards each with a depiction of a potential blind date.  Presumably a bunch of girls would play together, seeing who gets the dreamboat and who gets the nerd or the slob.   There was probably a jock.  This was the late 60s, btw.  I was fascinated first by the device itself: the door when clicked would open to a random card in the pack.  How did this work?  That's the kind of thing I might have pursued in school had any such course presented itself, but none ever did.  I had a mind for such things.  I was equally fascinated by the full-body artwork of the characters, such a variety of people - though all boys, and now that I think of it not such a variety as to offend conservative family ideals of the era.  For example, I don't recall any greasers or bikers in the bunch.  No non-Caucasians, certainly.  https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=mystery+date&FORM=HDRSC2

I can place a set of books from that time as well, because we were in Vallejo.  We had a set of readers which sampled stories, and presumably works of literature for all ages.  Each volume was a different color, and one was for children.  Only one was ever used with me...light blue?  I think?  Each story was illustrated by a different artist, so there were a great many styles.  Stories included 'Me and My Shadow", something about a set of Chinese brothers, one about a dragon with a voracious appetite for balls of cheese...but there was one illustration that fueled my imagination  more than any other, and that one I believe belonged not to the story books but possibly to an encyclopedia or dictionary.  It was one of the classic series by Henrique Alvim Correa.  See the link for his beautifully imaginative pieces for the H.G. Wells novel: http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com/2015/04/henrique-alvim-correa-war-of-worlds.html .  The particular work that I was seeing as a  child is labelled "Martian Viewing Drunken Crowd" and is seventh from the top.  The night we left Vallejo, California for Portland Oregon, we passed a water tower in the dark.  I was convinced the tower was watching us and making up its mind whether to attack or let us pass.

When I was around seven or eight, I had a set of playing cards called "Authors".  These were a variation on the game "Go Fish" with classic literature as a theme.  As a device for educating, I suppose it must have been somewhat effective in that it made me curious about the life and art of being an author, though looking at the list I have read almost none of the authors or their works.  Shame.  I was taken, though, with the faces.  Some seemed dull,  some chilly or distant, some fiery, some stylish.  So, each story comes from an individual mind - from a unique personality?  Imagine that.  Was Robert Louis Stevenson's hair really purple?  What must be have said about him when he went out to dinner?  And Nathaniel Hawthorne must have dyed his hair to get it so yellow.  You can see these are watercolors.  I think I was intrigued by the unfinished nature of the clothing and backgrounds, not as a stylistic solution but for the problem itself - how to trail off a portrait, what information is really necessary.  For example, the color of Sir Walter Scott's jacket and the cut of his collar clearly indicated antiquity of a romanticized era, I knew that visually alone.  The lace worn by Louisa May Alcott suggested gentility and a matronly mind.  Stevenson was clearly a gentleman but one (the suit) but one of mystery and perhaps a forbidding or dark nature (the violet that infuses the entire image).

By then I was already well in tune with the more fanciful notions of the mind, ala science fiction nd horror.  Horror, that's  subject enough for a post of its own as  the horror  community tends to be viewed with a prejudiced eye, but I can tell you it's not the violence that allures but the quality of the unknown - of what can't be seen or understood easily.  It's also a matter of the outliers of society, the secrets, the taboos and inhibitions. 

By the mid-Seventies I had been checking out library books about horror films when I discovered Forrest J. Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine.  Perhaps by then I'd already been buying the plastic model kits of classic monsters from Aurora and loving the box artwork - which for my era had been rendered garish for the glow-in-the-dark editions.  Those too come into play as artistic influences, mostly in ways that are only now manifesting (well, 'now' being the last two decades, still exploring).  The imagery in Famous Monsters lured me in, but it was the painted covers that set me  alight.  So expressive! Lurid, some of them, yes, but also sublime.  I was especially drawn to  covers  featuring  the The Phantom of the Opera, in particular the skeletal face of Lon Chaney's Phantom and the romantic/mysterious mask of Claude Rains' Phantom...the way it suited his face, those eyes like the eyes of the mask Yvonne Craig wore as Batgirl in the '66 TV show.

That was the kind of work I wanted to do.  I do not mean the  subject matter, necessarily, though I have an affinity for it...but the textures, the style, the expressiveness.  I regret not having explored color previously.

Since I am mentioning Famous Monsters, I must also mention the anthology periodicals also published by Warren at that time: Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella.  As it happened, I only had a single issue of any of them, which was bought by someone else and fell into my hands. The artwork inside was in black and white, mostly peen and ink, in a variety of voices.  That alone stirred me.  It was a plus that some of the stories included nudity at an age when I was forbidden such material.  I could marvel over the covers, alas that I could never find a store willing to carry Vampirella .

Those works helped lead me to the art of Frank Frazetta and from him to Boris Valllejo.  I don't care for the goofy machismo of either, but the women are amazing and so are Frazetta's textures.  later I would be taken with the fantasy work of Michael Whelan - beginning with his covers for the Heinlein's Friday and the Pern series of books of Anne Mccaffrey.

Being an avid watcher of television, I bought TV guide when that magazine still had some meaning and style.  The covers by Amsel caught my eye, he was another with a strong individual vise I wanted to learn from.   What Amsel brings to the table is a style that points to itself, a mix of realism and fancy that I have yet to reach...but then I've not consciously attempted it, rather finding beauty in work that remains "unfinished" as a means of pointing to  the work as an art form.  One of Amsel's disciples is Drew Struzan, another whose work I love.

That's where most of my inspirations are from, artwork for movies and  television.  It was in TV Guide that I found Frazettas work for Battlestar Galactica and The Gauntlet (Clint Eastwood movie).  I was getting heavily into movie soundtracks and was entranced by posters from the most dynamic of all my favorite artists, Bob Peak.

I'm also influenced by the look of the movies and shows themselves.  Irwin Allen  had a knack for good concepts and a penchant to let them turn into childish drivel once they hit the air.  Lucky for me I was too young  to assess the quality of Lost in Space...but it was pretty powerful thing for a child. Home means a lot to children: imagine a home that can take off and land, even travel in space?  That was the Jupiter 2.  The design of that ship and of the B-9 Robot are classic and very much of their era (the  work of Robert Kinoshita, who also designed Robby the Robot.  A neighbor's car was a 1959 Brookwood, which to me looked very much of the same visual style as Lost in Space.  Our own  car was similar, the 1960 Ford Galaxie station wagon, but I always misremembered the Brookwood as ours.  Later the designs of artists like Ralph McQuarrie, Ron Cobb, and Syd Mead.  Then there's the nightmare sleekness of H.R. Giger.

See also the designs for Gerry Anderson's UFO and Space:1999, Kubrick's 2001...the design of the classic Klingon battlecruiser from the original Star Trek...the Mach 5 from Speed Racer...the Flying Sub from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, the Spindrift from Land of the Giants.  These are the icons of my dreams. 

As a child, the space race filled me with awe.  The Apollo CSM may have been our greatest achievement at the time but for looks it didn't have the beauty or mystique of the LEM or the Gemini craft.  I've always had a soft spot for the Soyuz as well,  which must have been a decent design as it is still in use today.

Don't even get me started on cars...(the '66 Batmobile, classic Corvettes and Thunderbirds, Supervan...)

Devotees of any of these fields may be disappointed that I have not pointed to artists who are more obscure.  I'm sorry, I was always a pop culture kid and still am.  The point is to be honest, and honestly this is the art that made me want to create.

Do the Math

(night of December 9th)

I hab a code.  A code!  Idd by doze, a code.  Add by thwoat.*

Not doing too bad for having had only three broken hours of sleep over the course of last night, and kept waking in a cold sweat as the toxins seep out, and having been up for a long time now.  No point laying down if my nose won't clear.    Not desperate for sleep yet, doing okay...want to push it as long as I can or until my nasal passages clear long enough to be worth the attempt .   This is the aspect of colds i hate most, needing to sleep and not being able to.

What I want to do is create, suddenly I'm in the zone.  To draw, paint, build, sculpt.  Anything.  Now, when I'm sick??  Okay, sure, why not?  I need to do something if it  isn't sleeping.  My workspace is again not cleared for it but I can try.  Maybe I don't need a specific image, just some detail I like.     I've been pointed toward a home-made modeling putty that might finally be the right medium for sculpting details.  Unfortunately, the details would have to be fine, a little at a time when I'd rather be working in bulk.  Simple stuff, superglue and baby powder.  haven't got any to try yet, way shot on money.

I want to post, I want to post tonight if possible and I would like to add some image to justify it.  Anything, new or old.  Maybe I'll check out what little is on my flashdrives.  (Oops.  No, that was the flashdrive I lost.)  New would be better though that means waiting.  It's...oh, it's a mood thing.  the dream below was a mood thing.  We...need...to...express. At some point, everyone is on fire with a need to be heard about something.
  
Expression is very much on my mind lately, especially given the election.  If you don't know why then you have not been paying attention to the news.  It is a cherished American right and we are in serious danger of throwing it away mindlessly. 

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There's a  group on IMDb that picks short-lived Tv shows, watches an episode every Firday, and discusses them.  We recently finished Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's UFO, and I posted each of my own reviews to my other blog.  Might as well, it hasn't seen any other activity.  We are now voting  on  what to watch next.  Possibly Twin Peaks or Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

(Blog, what an odd word.  Sounds perfect to decribe how this cold makes me feel.  Blug.  Blogh.)
We voted a name for ourselves,  we are now The Sages of the Single Season (our motto: "We have episodes").**  I suggested The Idiot Box Savants, but it would probably offend someone. 
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Dana, grab a pen and something to write on.  Add 2129 to the address you lived at when we were in school.  Clatsop, that's me.  You can check a zip code map but I think it's the same yours was.  Whatever you've  chosen, at least don't leave me in the dark.  I've earned this, goddammit.

 Can you tell your story to yourself?  Because if you can, then  you can tell it to me.  Write it down, just for yourself.  Try it. 

Challenge me.  Tell me the one thing you've  least wanted me to know, even if its' just an imaginary exercize.  Find out if I react the way  you're afraid I will. You've lost me already anyway by your own choice, so what's to lose?  I'm not going to keep thinking well of you the way things are now. 
I keep  trying to challenge you and you never step up, so you challenge me instead.  See if it turns me away.
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One of the best dreams I ever had of Dana was many years ago (mid-'90s?), was one in which I actually got to be Dana for just a few minutes.  I cannot give a couple of prominenent details, but as briefly as I can: it starts with me (as myself) listening to a live radio talk show, late-night programming.  Dana is the in-studio guest, and she tells her audience of this guy she used to know.  Though she does not name me she knows that if I hear it I will know. She wants very much to think that I am listening out here somewhere.   I'm  an anecdote, and she fuels herself with the venom with which she relates it.  She wants to hurt me and by doing so,  she wants me to feel and comprehend her own hurt.   I do not recall where I am, maybe Northern California (that rings true), in a bar IIRC (not my kind of setting).

Dream then  segues to L.A. after the show.  I am Dana and I have no awareness of being anyone but Dana.  I have driven into the Hollywood hills, not apparently to my home but to some clinic where I will spend the night.  I am alone in a large room full of beds for patients, all empty.  I have the place to myself, and I deserve it.  I need this privacy.  The room is locked, no one will  disturb me.  I should sleep but can't, and sit in bed with my back to the headboard, restless, until the pentup energy makes me throw open the bay windows that overlook the city lights.  It's a hot summer night, now after one in the morning.   Music plays on the radio and I dance.  I want to tell the world, scream at the world, rage at the world to go fuck itself,  go to hell, burn, eat shit and die.  I (Dana) feel empowered by my outrage, which I have fucking earned.  I have a vague impression of Madonna from the song I dance to, as if I look to Madonna as a role model of personal power, a strong professional woman who rigorously controls her own identity and image and will let no one take that from her.

If that was just purely my own imagination, in a way I don't care...it was intimate and exhilerating!  
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(evening, December 10th) Finally slept, still stuffy, probably another long night ahead.  Eyes are sore and keep watering, they demand rest. 

*Oooooooh...and my cough, it's been a while since my cough was bad enough that I grey out, but that's started up again.  What a strange sensation, as the brain starts to come 'round again, dizzy, aware of sounds and images swirling around me but they're too choppy to make sense of...happened just now.

** It's not but it should be.

"Beware the Monkey"

That's what she said, the total stranger waiting for the bus.  Then she explained that she was referring to the Year of the Monkey in Chinese astrology.   It was meant to bring ill luck to everyone - bad, but supposedly not lasting and that something good is meant to come of it.  (Shaking head slowly) 2016 has been a ruinous year for almost everyone I have encountered.

I didn't tell her that my online aliases are all ape-based.

Mom was supposed to have some test results coming  that would lead to a decision on whether treatment would even be feasible.  I never hear back on that, so either no decision was made or (more likely) I have been kept in the dark about it.  Now mom seems to be getting some of the earlier symptoms back again.  Bracing for another season of panic and hopelessness.  I almost drowned once as a child, and this feels like a slow-motion version of that.

The election results promise that the bad has gone from personal to national if not global.  The Year of the Monkey does not end until January 28th.  Fuck.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Maybe I should attempt line drawings, pen and ink.  Try for the 'adult coloring book' aesthetic that's the current fad?  It would be an interesting exercise if nothing else, get me far away from my usual thought process for drawing and focus on composition.  Theme?  Pages from  Stoker's Dracula, or positions of the Kama Sutra might be good.  I did a few sketches once of the actor Henry Irving as Dracula, seeing that Stoker had hoped Irving would play the role.  What else?  Kama Sutra would sell if I did a good job and found someone who could put them out, but from an artist's perspective seems kinda dry.  No variety to the sex itself, so that would be a challenge...strictly male-female couplings, one-on-one, no fetishes so I'd have to vary up everything else about the images.  Not into drawing men, either, but I'd want it to be inclusive.  Plenty of variety in people themselves.  So, the Kama Sutra, that angle sounds  a little dull but it would be a good marketing hook.  KS is more than just a catalog of positions, but that's the popular perception.  Have to admit I have not read it.

I almost (almost) wish I knew someone in video production.  Caught part of a movie review show on local cable access.  Kudos to them for actually making it happen, right?  Beyond that...hate to criticize them for the effort but it was dire.  So it made me want to try it myself.  On the other hand that might mean having to watch myself in order to edit...a prospect I loathe almost as much as having to hear my recorded voice played back.  Still, might be worth it to bring more attention to the movies of Shinya Tsukamoto.  I might not be up to reviewing Sion Sono as I don't have a bead on his work, but I do have a decent collection of his to work from.  Actually, I'm looking for anything I feel inspired to review and mostly coming up blank.   I  tried to write up Blue is the Warmest Color a year ago and it read more like a sociopolitical lecture than a review (I'm pro-, not anti-).  Jesseca has suggested Paul Naschy.    I have a few but they are all censored versions.  Most of the directors I've collected are mainstream, thus already well covered.  Argento is so well-read that I miss most of his influences  from Jung to classical artists of every field.   Ah, you can tell by my mood  that, um, I'm in a mood.   Anyway, Jesseca and I batted around a few ideas, if I could get Scott  to shoot me with his phone discussing movies and zip the files to her in New York, she could play around with them.  Full production, I'd love to do a Sinister Simian show for the Portland cable access market.  At least here the Sinister Cinema nod would be appreciated.  I wonder if I could manage a Planet of the Apes styled makeup job to turn me into a macaque like my avatar...that could be fun!

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The morning before Thanksgiving I dreamt of seeing Dana on TV, co-anchoring some half-hour news-magazine.  Her hair was straight, medium-short, and lighter.  Strange thing is I can't recall ever seeing her wear her hair this way in real life yet I've seen her look this way a number of times in my dreams.  Don't know why.  I reached out to caress her cheek but all I could feel was hard, cold glass.

(earlier today) Dreamt of Dana as a talk-show host interviewing her own alter ego.  She glanced at me watching the interview and seemed upset thinking that I preferred the exaggerated persona rather than her complete, authentic self.

Not quite two years since I reached out to her on FaceBook.  Though I want nothing more to do with FB, I keep hoping that my gmail will tell me she's sent a  friend request.   Someone looked at her page back then and told me that she was living with a guy. She could have children don't know.   I didn't want to know she was with someone , but okay... that wasn't unexpected.  She's probably with him still.  Well, I'm only asking her to open up a conversation with me as a friend so that's not a reason she can't talk  with me.

If I was ever going to fall out of love with her it would have happened a long time ago.  It's never going to stop hurting that I also lost her as a friend.  Funny thing is that if we did ever become a pair I don't know if we'd even be happy with each other.   No dream ever promised any such thing.  I saw little beyond us meeting again.  I held her in my arms once in real life (backstage after a show - she wouldn't have guessed what it meant to me).  I'd like that again.

Halloween

Usually my favorite holiday, not feeling it this year.  Saw Phantasm: Ravager, Shin Gojira (finallty, a new Godzilla flick from Toho, with English subs no less), and The Shining all in theater.  I also carved a couple of jack-o-lanterns for the father of a friend.  He's big on Shari Lewis' Lambchop.

That was fairly easy, and a small pumpkin.  I also did my standby, a skull, because I've had practice at it.  haven't done one in many years.  This was large and heavy, and relatively dry.  Some pumpkins crumble, I got lucky that this one held detail.  Now, the shape didn;t come off as well as I like - the sets of teeth too wide and not fully deep enough. On the other hand this has been the most structurally sound of them all, as I usually fully carve eaach tooth in the round and separate the jaws.  Because I remove all of the skin, these pumpkins shrink quickly.  That's also a problem for the bone structure between the eyes and nasal cavity - I never learn to make them smaller than I want them to be, allowing for shrinkage.  With a gap between upper and lower rows of teeth, the face can distort.  This year's pumpkin leaves both jaws one solid piece.  Took four hours, so either I rushed it or familarity with the shapes paid off...looking at it, I think it's a bit of both.  I'm mostly unhappy with the cheekbones which are way below my standard, though as stated I was trying to keep shrinkage in mind.  The original pics haven't gone through Gimp yet.

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I don't care to post about my family situation.  It's still unfolding on multiple fronts.

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I still miss Dana badly, and always will.  She now only rarely appears in dreams, often only represented by proxy or symbol, and I have no sense whether any are more than just dreams.  One stood out, from  around the time I mentioned the Cronenberg movie A History of Violence.  In it, she stood inches from me staring hard into my eyes like she was willing me to read her mind. Her right eye was closed in what looked like a permanent injury. On waking I realized that was an Odinic reference, the attainment of wisdom at great personal cost.

A few nights ago a dream-version of her said that she knew I wanted her to stay away from me.  I've never wanted that.

In all the dreams I've had of her from the beginning, there's been one thing she's wanted from me.  Not sure I know the single word with which to express it though...more than acceptance.  Tenderness.  Caring. 

I've always tried to offer her that. I still do though she never takes it.

nine hours later

Heard back enough to know that whatever happens will be short term.  mom has to decide on a surgery one doctor thinks she won't make it through or do nothing at all.   Family poison has started already with siblings getting nasty.  I need to escape this.

now

I have days.  Mom is being transferred to a hospital now after spending all night in the ER.  It has spread to other organs including her intestines.  They are deciding whether to perform emergency surgery.  Thy do not know if she will be coming home.  Jesseca may be able to get me to New York, but she hadn't planned on having to do it anytime soon.  I do not know what will happen.  My father in the care facility does not know that she is ill, but he's been having persistent nightmares suddenly that she is dying.

(no title)

I have finally learned what the doctor had to say.  If I am going to survive, I need to be out of here in a few months.  6 months to a year is the formal word. I need someone to help me be away by then.  It's not going to get easier.  There won't be any going to school here. 

closing

I am not being told the truth and my time is nearly up.  I will not have time to escape.  I was hoping to get a grant and some loans to go back to school and learn a trade, something I could use my talents or interests for but it cannot happen soon enough.  Jesseca has said that she will get me to New York and fix me up for a job somehow, even working for her but I don't see how she can. 

I love you, Dana.  I was a good friend to you.  I wish you'd known it.

Hit 'Send'

We're awaiting more tests.  Know a little more and I'm not sure what to make of it.  My sister is the only one cleared to discuss this with the doctor.  She plays things up, maybe, but my mom plays things down.  What I know is what I see.  Yesterday mom had a stent put in.  Hasn't had time to make a difference yet.

I've got things to say and no patience for putting them into my own thoughts and words. 

My new personal song.

Bleak

Things are deteriorating faster than I thought they would.  I am in a hole that I cannot get out of, it would take longer than I have.

Out of Time

Mom keeps falling asleep tonight when I talk to her.  My time is up, I think.


Those dreams I had that I believed were psychic?  The first four I ever had that felt like "that kind" of dream were of the future.  I had them back when I was in high school, and then when Dana first arrived in LA.  These dreams were set at some indeterminate point in the future, after 2010.  I dreamt that Dana and I reunited after a long rift.

There had not been any such rift when I had those dreams.  Nor did I believe in ESP at that time, yet I woke up with this puzzling certainty that the dreams had just shown me something  that was absolutely going to happen someday.

I really believed it would.  I really believed Dana would reconcile with me.


I don't want to die, but I also don't want to live with the grief that's coming, the  terror of being homeless and penniless, and I cannot face being alone.  I have nothing to live for.   I just don't want to hurt Jesseca.

The Shape of Things

Again I looked at the ref and thought I was seeing the shapes, but they went away again as soon as I started to transfer them.  What I'm putting in is rough estimates.  The bottome line will be whether the sleeve looks like leather once I've pulled it all together.  It does not look convincing to me the way it is right now.  Mostly it's the undulating surface and the way the light plays off the crests of each wave of leather, flowing into the next - it ain't there, I'm not getting it.  I'm rushing the details to fill in space, not teasing them out as I should.  I'm anxious.

This is busywork to escape thinking about the hopelessness of my situation.  I don't see a future.

My head is not in the game.  Right now my mom is in the waiting room of a clinic.  Supposed to be one of the best endocrinologists, at least.  She seems worse every day, just a  little.  One of my brothers is out on the back porch replacing a wood structure that had rotted.  Said he might need my help with the boards in a while.  I'm dreading that like crazy, because he's going to want to have a private little talk about how the future is shaping up, which will have the effect of making want to kill myself right now.  Just get it over with, spare myself the worst of it.

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I've three photos of Lori Hamilton I wanted to draw, but all of them copyrighted.  They were taken by a photographer friend of hers.  In one of them she's a little baked, the other two are beach phots where blowing sand has her eyes squinting. 

Took a few screengrabs of Malala Yousafzai which might yield good portraits if I ever get around to them.  Could be used to promote my work, and are not especially easy to draw but not challenging either.  Not excited about the actual drawing of them.

I also have two screen grabs from Weird Science, but they have such low resolution that if I attempt to use them I'll have to fake it and guess the details.  One has Dana at a mall rocking a serious Pat Benatar look, with attitude, smoking a joint or cigarette end.  If I could just make out her eyes and  the placement of her fingers, there's potential for a really good portrait here.

Slipping Down the well.

2nd post today.  Everything I should be doing, my soul says 'don't bother, it's too late.  It's wasted effort.  there's no saving anything.'

I like the way the hair turned out on Sharon Mitchell.

.

Time

We still don't have all the tests in yet, but what we have is the scariest news.  I don't know if it's going to be months, weeks, days...it feels like minutes to my can't-shut-down brain.  Mom acts like she's better off than she is.  That's avoidance, which is ingrained in me.  I have it from both parents.  An organ is shutting down, there are gallstones and a mass that may be cancer.

The doctor's are incompetent.  Something was triggered by a bad piece of pineapple that set mom's moth prickling with pins.  They laugh  and scoff and say, "oh, pineapple always does that to people.  It's acidic, you know."

I never learned how to survive.  I'm not a survivor.

I also now cannot leave the house unless there is someone else here in case of emergencies.

Someone said something about getting paid (a grant) to go back to school??  Why has no one mentioned this to me before?  One of my nieces supposedly could advise me on that, if I can just get hold of her.

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I'm having to get rid of  everything.  First the trash, soon it will be the things I treasure.  All to Goodwill or the garbage.  All the projects, all the things I hoped to someday do.  Pare it down.

TMC recently aired James Cagney's movie of William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life.  I found a photograph of myself from high school, trying on the costume I put together for our stage production of TToYL.
That's me looking at a pocketwatch on a chain.  I was Tom, a simple but sweet guy who needs looking after.  My big scene with Kitty Duval in her bedroom got cut by the school principle, censorship.  First time I ever auditioned for a play, took one of the leads.  Did a pretty good cold reading for the bad guy, a mean cop,  during a rehearsal too.

I may be one of the few people who enjoyed auditions at school.  Those damned uncomfortable wooden chairs in the auditorium, I could drape myself over them like taffy and be right at home.

Dana refused the role of Kitty.  Dana could have been anything or anyone she wanted to be with me.  Why  wouldn't she let me make peace between us while there was still time?

Obstacles

Well, this blog was supposed to be about how hard it is to get past a block, right?

I'm having a shitty night and morning. 

First, though, I'll tell you that I was on a new med for high blood pressure, some thing they push for diabetics.  Damn thing had a long list of disastrous side effects.  I spent a month pumping that shit into my system before I found out that was the problem, now I've maybe gotten it back out.  My body is still having trouble. My mom has a problem now too, which might be liver disease or may be a form of hepatitis.  We're awaiting results.   If anything happens to mom, the bank gets the house.  I have no money, no job (practically unemployable especially with my health the way it is) and no one who would take me in.  I don't have a plan for survival and I don't want to survive.  I want it over with.  Some people have told me they pray for me.  I'm not ungrateful to them but I think that if a God exists he's evil and a monster.  He keeps fucking piling it on.  He won't stop until I'm destroyed, and he's hurting other people to do it.  God has taken a shit on my family and I wish people would stop fucking telling me how kind he is.

I just awoke from a dream in which a friend told me that Dana is dead.  Since her FB page is blocked I've no way of finding out.  Would someone please tell me  she's alright?  I could ask on FB but she doesn't want the attention drawn to her.

I always believed Dana would be the one to rescue me.  Jesseca would if she could but she's got a guy, she's on the other side of the continent, and I'm not financially viable.

I asked her to marry me once.  Not that she knew or would have said yes.  It was one of those Valentine's Day personals in The Oregonian.   The point was just so she'd understand exactly how I see her and that she'd know I meant it.  Figured there was a chance at least someone who knew us might see it.

The last time I tried to draw my head wasn't in it, and I missed nearly all the details I was trying to capture - didn't even see them when I looked at the reference picture, I wasn't in the zone.  It's probably salvageable but I'm back to where I have to force myself.


Oh...wanted to add that when I sent her a friend request a year and a half ago, I didn't look at her page.  Sorta wanted to but mostly dreaded it.  Someone else did, though, later, and turned a tablet so I could see.  I did glimpse one thing that made me happy.  She had used a rainbow-covered photo of herself as an av, one of those generated pics everyone used on FB to celebrate for a few days when marriage equality finally passed.  I was proud of her.  For some reason I've always had the impression that she was fairly conservative, though I don't know what that impression is based on.

(no post title)

First, please help me/my family with the GoFundMe in the post below.  No one has been willing to do so.  We're barely holding on and I d not see a way out.  I don't see us  surviving.

Okay.  Per art: I think in this time of desperation my block is lifting.  My last client says he loves the portrait I did for him.  I'm now twenty hours into a 14x17 family portrait that may take some fifty hours.  Price is up in the air, depending on what the guy who commissioned it can work out with his brothers.  I might make minimum wage for the first time...or I might get seriously underpaid.

The first was scanned, the second was from a photograph (cleaned up by Jesseca) second one is not up to date as I have begin the next brother and added the boat that's behind them.  I will not be drawing the ground beneath them, and will add the background only with the barest, most representative lines.  There are four brothers in the image.

So...my block had lifted and it may be too late.  When I work I feel a despair that it's not worth it, that it can never add up.  People don't want to pay minimum wage, they want a flat rate.  Ten bucks an hour?  They balk. And, ya know what, In the past two weeks I've come to really value what I do on so many levels.  This is not entry-level stuff.  It ain't washing dishes.  It deserves more than ten bucks an hour.

I've trapped myself  by teaching myself to use a mechanical pencil.  I need to try to incorporate regular pencils for areas of shading.  That's a scary thought - mechanical get me a level of subtlety and clarity that I consider to be a part of my signature.  I am loathe to compromise that.  Besides...it not being my voice, I kight just suck at regular pencil work.  The quality  may suffer significantly, my voice may disappear.

I managed a full 8-hour workday drawing a week ago.  No headache either, so I know I can do it.  I've done 15 hours over the course of Monday and Tuesday (the family portrait and the Sharon Mitchell pic), even with everything else happening. - but I did manage to give myself a  headache yesterday. My nerves are shot and I pace the house.  I'm unsteady at shading until I can calm justa  little, and that's nearly impossible.  My mom and sister spend all day every day on the phone and internet trying to find anyone  in authority who will help.   I'm  becoming  dependent on Xanax, though I'm taking only a quarter pill at a time.  Last night it only afforded me 90 minutes sleep.  haven't had any more yet.  I'm fucking  terrified for my future.  Jesseca and my mom are the only reasons I'm even trying to hold out - I don't want to hurt either of them.  But I'm so fucking tired, and tired of being afraid, and tired of the depression.  I do not want to talk  to anyone about it, and I don't want to be medicated.  This is now my permanent state of existence, I've been this way for a month or more now.

Dana is gone.  She has been since 1988.  I can no longer afford to believe in her.  My dreams - well, the hopeful ones anyway - were hollow self-delusion. 

I feel like I'm in a jungle, alone, in quicksand.  My arm is stretched out and every now and then  someone comes along and stretches their own out to me...and instead of grasping my wrist and pulling, they pat me on the head and wish me encouragement, then go along their way.  There have  only been two or three exceptions, and one I know genuinely couldn't help who would have if he wasn't also sinking.

 To those who have shared my posts, who have expressed a genuine concern, and especially those three or four who have helped my family financially inside and outside GoFundMe... to them I cannot express my gratitude strongly enough. I am in your debt bigtime.

Please Help My Family - Emergency

https://www.gofundme.com/2zv2npek

Going Under

Right now I'm wishing that Dana really did have ties to the mafia.  We are in desperate need of an aggressive lawyer and maybe some muscle.  Our money is gone, the two weeks of having someone look after my father (badly) is half over, the primary care physician is dedicated to blocking us.

My branch of the family is drawing to a close.  For the past month I've been getting  two to three hours of sleep a night.  I never did learn how to survive on my own, and honestly I have no real desire to survive anyway.  Was already having a hard time dealing with depression before all this. 

Trying not to take Xanax.  It's been offered.  Would be so easy to depend on it.  Can't relax, mind running marathons whether I'm laying abed or not.

My art is not going to move fast  enough to conjure up any money, but I have to try.  Hoping to find someone who will pay for a drawing.  I've been talking to artists at Saturday market, but everything requires initial investments funds I don't have.

I'd bet that Dana would make a great agent/manager.  We'd be a good team.  If ever she is going to offer me a kind word, it has to be now.

I have Moony's drawing done, hoping to hear from him in the next day or so.  I have a drawing for Scott traced lout and prepared  to begin.  It won't bring in enough, but I'll take what I can get.

I also have three images of Marilyn Monroe traced out.  Now...I do not have the money to have prints made.   Obviously you can't sell a print for the same price as an original, but you can sell more copies.  The original I can only sell once.  So is it  worth the time?

What should I be doing?

Dana, if you're out there, please help me.

Latest

Cannot work on drawing.   The situation is deteriorating, we need a lawyer though we cannot afford one.  We had a glimmer of hope yesterday,  finally got a doctor involved who has a clue and wants to help.  Sadly, he is under the thumb of the primary care physician, a big name with Providence, who is determined to block any care or help.  My father is beyond our capacity to help and keeping him in our care is a dna\\anger to him and to my mother.  Every time he is sent home he is worse, every time he has an episode he gets worse.  they know this, but refuse to keep hi, or even offere diagnosis.  If they did that, Medicare would kick in and they would be fined for the number of times they sent him home untreated.

Medicare will not help.  The VA will not help.  Providence has formed a human  wall to block to block care.  They  forcing us to pay out of pocket.  This will leave us homeless and penniless in under a month.


* * * * * * * * *

Edit:  I did finish my drawing of Dana, and have scanned it.  The scan doesn't quite capture the work - for instance, the light bounces off it badly on her elbow where I heavily shaded her jacket.  Tomorrow if I get a chance I will try to photograph it.

We've got my father placed for two weeks in a care facility, and that will  cost us some three-fourths of what money we have left.  I can qa least finish Moony's drawing now.

Caring for my father takes at least three people watching him 24/7, sometimes needing us to call a neighbor for help when he has an episode.  We are frayed to our end, exhausted and undone.  Two months ago he was out back chopping wood.

Untitled

I'm so close to having completed my first fairly large drawing, granting that only a portion of the page is being utilized. I've tried going large before, this will be the first one I didn't abandon. Smaller might end up being my thing after all.

However, I have not been able to work on it for two weeks now. A family situation has arisen that has everyone struggling to cope. There's not going to be a happy resolution to it. It's a slow-motion unraveling that no one is prepared for. The issue at hand is a medical one centering on my father. The hospital and various insurance agencies are determined not to render care, and are trying to take our every last cent. I do not wish to discuss it here, nor with anyone. Jesseca knows. I have no intention of announcing it on Facebook as...well, I hope this doesn't sound dickish but people will want to be kind and wish us the best. And it means a lot, it does, but I can't deal with that now and have no intention of inviting it. This is a very bad time for everyone involved, and I do not see how it works out.

The drawing I am working on has two small areas left to complete. One should be easy. The other I attempted twice the same night and found that I was not on my game: after trying two different approaches and erasing both, I was in danger of ruining the paper for future efforts.

* * * * * * * * *

Some progress today.  Worked about two and a half, three hours on this.  Stopped hopefully before a headache could set in.  Because this is a sketch, I'm not being overly carefyl on precise details of hair or the folds of her jacket.  I also will not be adding her earrings: she is wearing earrings in the source image but I cannot make out the details.  Maybe when the rest is done I'll find a pair online and fake it.  It would add a nuance that's missing.

Also did an hour on a color (ink)version crude and overly vivid.  Not a display piece, I hope to blend it with the pencil work in an  art program, see what I come up with.  there are at least two other variations I would like to try, and perhaps blend each of them.  If it the final blend turns out well, I'd like to get it printed on that metal paper I haven't looked into yet.  It does not yield a  metallic image, rather something about the base lends itself to images that are more colorful and have deeper black levels than regular photographic prints.  Entries in the Gresham Art Committee showings have been done on this paper, and I'm eager to try it out. 

I would like even once to be even half as much a surprise to Dana – a positive one – as she has been a constant surprise to me throughout my life.

She once wrote in a letter to me that remembered how cruel kids at school could be. I don't know what it might have been that prompted her to say that, something I wrote maybe...but I wondered at the idea that she had been targeted for that. I'd certainly had my share of it, but Dana – wasn't she one of the popular kids? Not one who got treated that way, I'd have bet. Many years later I spoke to someone who remembered her, and he related that Dana had been the one treating him that way. So maybe she was speaking ruefully from the other perspective

As presumptuous as it is to imagine I know anything at all o what's going in in Dana's head...fuck it, she's given me free license to think whatever I want. Why not? She's hardly objecting, is she?

What I think is this: when she imagined in me certain biases, I think she was projecting on me the beliefs she herself had grown up with. Maybe, possibly, she even saw herself that way – someone who had done wrong, someone who'd earned condemnation. And when I happened across her, it never occurred to her that I could see her any differently then what she was seeing. So she burned me before I could burn her. But if she was afraid of me judging her then, I sometimes think that ever since she has been even more afraid that I won't judge her – that I will accept her with love for whoever she really is.

I don't know what's left to say about Dana. There are more dreams I would like to place in context but nothing I care to make public for various reasons. I'd like to say that it will never be too late for her to talk with me, but...it's pretty late. I can't even see my own future let alone whether anything she has to say would make any difference later.

Should Dana want to write me, she can get my home address from Moony. Moon is on FB, she can reach him there. He also has my phone number, though I'd advise that all calls are screened and she'll get an answering machine first...that, and I really don't like talking on phones. I would love to have a letter from her.

If it's the last thing I ever say publicly about her (unlikely but ya never know), let it be that I'm proud of being her friend.

This is not acceptance of the loss. This is just saying I can't do any more.

Eyes

My eyes are starting to clear up.  I still need to be careful not to push it.  Had a followup with an ophthalmologist yesterday, and another on Friday.  Looks like it's just an infection so a drop of Ofloxacin every two hours should be enough.  If it's  something else I might have to use steroidal drops, and that has the portential to cause more harm than good if it's the wrong diagnosis.  I cannot afford to harm my eyes!

The softer lead is definitely not for shading.  I may have to erase some of the lighter work and redo it.


* * *

Sometime back in what I think must have been the late 'Nineties (earliest '00s at the latest?), I had an unusual dream that took place in someone else's imagination. That's according to the details of the dream, you understand. You know how in dreams, you just kind of know things, like the information is inherent? That's what I mean: the premise of the dream was that it was essentially someone else's, and I was appearing in it. Told you it was unusual.

The dream was this: I find myself standing in a hotel room, very plain and generic, dimly lit, the décor is entirely in red. I am alone, and naked as if I arrived directly from bed. I know somehow that this is a room in one of the upper East Coast States, like New Hampshire or Connecticut. It is late evening.

As I stand there, Dana arrives back from a night out. She has been dancing. Thing is, she does not actually enter the room via any door, as there is no door – she simply appears, strides quickly to the bed and throws herself across it. She seems despondent, weary, lonely. Soul-tired. She does not notice me at first.

I back up against the wall facing the bed and slide down it to a resting crouch, not wanting to disturb her, but she seems to notice and turns her head to see me. Instead of being startled or alarmed, she slowly drags herself off the bed and paces across the room to sit on the couch with me(suddenly I'm sitting on a couch – dreams do that). She sits with me for a while, not speaking, just letting me keep her company. I wonder why she tolerates my presence, usually in dreams she doesn't. I tell her that I like the room, which seems appropriate in the moment though on the surface it's a silly thing to say.

She gets up, still very sad, and wanders to stare at a window. The drapes (or were they blinds?) are shut, and I am certain that if I were to open them there would be no window, or that it would bricked up. I follow her and stand behind her, my arms around her, holding her in a warming embrace. She says nothing but lets me hold her. No window, no door...I reach a few realizations. This room is not real but one she has conjured in her mind, it is a safe haven to which she has retreated for solace. The reason she does not find my presence threatening is because she believes I too am a figment of her imagination. She needs the comfort of someone who loves her, and for some reason she has chosen me to call to her side.

* * *

That was the dream. It was a strong one, very clear and vivid, and felt like “one of those” (see previous post). I've never ha an out-of-body experience that I know of, but that dream very much felt like it must have been something of the sort. I believe Dana called me to her. Get this; not long after, a few weeks at most, I ran a search for her online. That's not something I 'd ever done before and haven't since, because I'm always afraid of what I'll find – for instance that she's married. I found her, though. More, she had posted her itinerary. On the night that I'd had that dream she had been in that upper East Coast state, and she'd been dancing.

* * *

So I asked about the dream I had in which she had been writing a letter at night and her hand froze up, preventing her from following through. Just a dream, or something that really happened? I don't know. In that dream, like the one above, I felt I was called to her side. Disembodied, she did not know I was there. I stopped her hand.

Vision

Getting over a corneal abrasion and eye infection.   I can finally look at my screen again but only for a few minutes at a time.  TV at a distance, if I'm not focusing on it much.  No reading, no drawing yet.

I wrote the following weeks ago.

* * * * * * * * *

Do you believe in ESP or is it all in your head?

I knew a girl named Dawnette once. Not closely, but enough to say hi to. We shared one class in high school, and that was the extent of it. Once I was no longer in school, there was little chance of an encounter. Our worlds did not intersect.

So it was curious that one night I dreamt of a chance encounter with her in a shopping mall. As in, 'What brought her to mind?' Not really that remarkable as dreams go, just enough to stand out in my attention after waking. You know how dreams go.

The every next day, I was at a shopping mall and there she was. We said hi, and went on our mutual ways. That's....well, you can say it was a a coincidence but it would be a ridiculously large one. I've had more since then, and some of them markedly upped the ante in terms of detail that turned out to reflect real-life events. I had been a skeptic, and I applied rational thinking to these experiences. In the end, the “rational” explanations were so improbable as to be insulting.

It's worth pointing out that the mall in the dream was not the mall we met at in real life the next day. In the dream we met at Clackamas Town Center. In reality, I saw her at Eastport Plaza. Dreams embellish, they get details wrong or at least take poetic license.

* * * * *

Lori H. vanished without a word near the end of '85. In 1986 I was plagued by bad dreams about her. These dreams placed her in a certain place, a particular predicament, and surrounded by specific persons. Nothing about her had suggested any of these things, thy seemed to spring solely from my imagination...yet there was a peculiar and disturbing resonance to the dreams. They seemed more...immediate than other dreams. More urgent somehow. I awoke from them with the overwhelming conviction that they were not dreams but real. Frustrating because – obviously – dreams are just dreams. That's what I kept telling myself. Disturbing because I had no way to find her or to verify that indeed dreams are just dreams and can never be more. I needed to because I cared deeply for her, and these insistent bad dreams left me feeling that I ought to be there for her, ought to do something to help. They instilled in me a sense of guilt for not being there. That was the big struggle, the tremendous guilt over not being able to help and the urgency in convincing myself it was all in my head.

One important detail: in the dreams, there was a mutual friend trying to help her. I had no real-world contact with him either, so could not reach out for confirmation.

I started binge-watching movie rentals in a bid not to sleep. Stayed awake for days at a time until I dropped. When I did finally sleep, it would be too deeply to dream. The it would happen again.

It stopped after a year. 1987 was blissfully free of bad dreams. That December, though, I met with the aforementioned mutual friend. When I asked of Lori, he said “You'd better sit down.” He then proceeded to tell me of her life in 1986 – not knowing that he was reciting my own bad dreams back to me detail for detail. It really happened. It happened at the time I was dreaming about it. I just hadn't had any way of knowing it was happening. So how did I?

She was alright, by the way. I didn't have to worry anymore. But it was kind of a mindfuck.

One more dream from that account, as it seals the deal. My birthday had been coming up, and I was deep into depression. I left a letter for her at her father's house. She had been through enough that.(as I was told) it was not easy for her to deal with people she knew, so I didn't hear back from her. I did, however, have a dream on a particular Thursday that she was at her father's home that day, met with her brother, and left again. The following week I called her father to ask if she had been there....he said yes, that it was probably the previous Thursday....after a moment's thought he said, yes, it was definitely Thursday – he was sure of it because Lori's brother had been in town and she'd very much wanted to meet with him.

Try to tell me that's a coincidence. Try real hard. And allow me to raise the most reasonable objection so you don't have to, that perhaps I misremembered the dream to fit the facts. It's a smart objection, I thought of it too. The fact is that I had written the dream down and could refer back to it. I'd been in the habit of writing down my dreams at the time. Especially the ones I thought of as “those kind” of dreams, the ones that felt somehow...more.

That's how you turn a skeptic into a believer. Not just personal experience, but experience that can be backed up with proof and can't be rationalized away as delusional. Given what the dreams had consisted of and how shitty I felt after each one, it was not something I had wanted to believe.

* * * * *

What do I want to say about Dana Marie? Boy, at this point I don't know. I guess it depends on who I imagine will read it, her or the people who know her. If the latter, then I'd want to leave them with the ways she made an impression on me. The Separator Wars of Kellogg, 8^th Grade. Seeing her onstage the first time, in The Music Man, which catalyzed me to overcome my crippling shyness about trying out for a play (which I'd always wanted to do but could never see myself doing). The way she quietly reduced our teacher McNamee to a jittery mass of gibbering madness. The odd reaction I had to seeing her with a cigarette for the first time in the school parking lot (smoking suited Lori, it's one of the things I missed about her, so it's not as if I've anything against smoking...but for some reason it seemed all wrong on Dana).

If on the other hand Dana were reading? What have I not already said? Or asked?

I think I'd ask her if she believes in ESP. Or dreams.

I'd especially like to ask her if she ever had a night somewhere in the 90's (I forget just when in that era – mid-90's, I think) in which she was writing me a goodbye letter, alone in the middle of the night, with an alarming aura of finality about her, and for some reason her hand froze up and wouldn't move, preventing her from finishing. That night in particular I would love to know about, learn that it was just my imagination – just a dream. .

You're balking, aren't you? It all so sounds very irrational and unreasonable. I know, I've been there. For instance, over the years I've had dreams in which Dana has been under the leash of mafia figures. I don't know where that comes from, and I reject it as having anything to do with the real world. It's not just unreasonable, it's just fucking unthinkable. I reject the idea, I won't have it. But it would still be a relief to hear it from her: “That's not real. You're nuts.”

It's not the only reason I find this hard to let go, but it's one of them. I still have dreams of her every now and then. Not many, almost never, and almost none of them feel like “one of those”. But I always have to wonder. Have you ever seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Talking with Dana is my Devil's Tower.

* * * * *

In 1986, when I was having a year's worth of bad dreams about Lori, I also had a just a few about Dana. Same feeling of immediacy, like there was an extra layer of reality about them. Same dream repeated. It didn't say much but it said what was important. In the dream I am walking home from school, but the geography is all wrong: I am walking through the warehouse district, the streets empty. Dana sits alone on a loading dock, knees pulled to her chest, arms folded over them. It's a defensive,

protective position. She is miserable and lost in herself, and though I ask her what is wrong and try to comfort her she is oblivious to my presence.

And I should have been there for her, even if it was just a dream.

Not Black and White

Say that Jesseca has sent me a sculpture to decorate the yard, and I like how it looks in the sunlight. It makes a nice tableau. So I draw it, enter it in one of the Gresham art shows, and someone buys it for a few hundred. The drawing was mine, sure, but the design was Jesseca's and I just passed it off as my won. What are the legal parameters at work here?

If I snap a pic of a vintage Corvette, I can sell it with no worries that a lawyer from Chevrolet is going to come looking for me. You see the question? I don't know where the difference lies. The Corvette is Americana and my drawing is pop art.

I have a photo, one I took myself, of a hanging ornament in my backyard. It is against some vine creepers and latticework but the central image is the ornament. I don't know how far up the production line that goes but it's somebody else's art and I'm going to draw it in watercolor pencils. What are the laws outlining what I can do with the piece after that?

* * * * * * * * *

Trying to finish that large double portrait, and it's so much more difficult than anticipated. Jesseca tells me it's that the photo was taken with a flash, and that's certainly a major factor. It makes the shading difficult to calculate, as well as three-dimensionality. Also working on a piece that is substantially larger than I normally work...I dunno, I've done one larger portrait before, but not one taken with a flash. My eyes don't want to focus on the tonal shifts, tracking them makes me feel almost dizzy. I've printed the faces out again closer to the size of the drawing, I'm not sure it helps yet. I'm also varying the 0.3mm thickness with a 0.5 as well as using harder lead. The soft lead will be last, and then a spray with fixative so that it doesn't smudge or smear.

Because of this I have not been working on the image of Sharon Mitchell. I hope to do that soon too. Think maybe I said before, I feel like I need to do side work like that just to remind myself how to draw – it's that bad, it makes me feel as if I've totally lost the ability. The double portrait looks good so far, mind, when I step back from it...but someone else will have to assess whether it's up to my best. I keep having to redo areas, and half the time I feel like I'm settling for inferior results.

* * * * * * * * *

(Tuesday, 5:30 AM)

About 90 minutes sleep, awoke from a dream about a punk wild-child girl who was attracted to me but was telling me we should have nothing to do with each other. The attraction was mutual but she was convinced of out mutual incompatibility: she was an exaggerated bad grrrrl half dedicated to her life of chaos/crime and half resigned to it, and she thought of me as...I dunno, vanilla toast. Somebody who's idea of dangerous is watching Rob Schneider movies. Someone who eats oatmeal but does so out a neon skk8er themed bowl and thinks it's edgy.. I woke up thinking:

1. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you...”
2. “Check your assumptions. I'm not afraid of how wild you think you are, and who you think I am is kinda fucking insulting.”
3. This dream reflects what I'm feeling about Dana.

I have a screencap of her from Pretty in Pink that I'm developing a sketch from. Won't be a full drawing, as the details are not as crisp as that would require. Technically not a screencap, it was taken with a camera aimed at my TV because my comp still won't play discs. Her eyes in partiular are shaded enough to require me to figure them out first. This will be in color. You remember the John Hughes movie? Dana was an extra, playing a schoolgirl and passing right in front of the camera. Her hair is , let's say, very 80's (which I like), not punk and not even Wavo (does anyone else remember 'wavo'?) , just pushed up by a headband. 

It occurred to me that I have reason not to post it once it's done, but I'm alienated enough and disheartened that I'm not sure I care anymore. In her silent way, she has gotten her message through: “Die already.” Maybe what she feels toward me isn't contempt, maybe it's just utter cold indifference. Maybe it's the same cowardice as the girl in the dream, but at least that dream proxy for her had the backbone to say something.

A girl I liked named Andrea said to me once "I'm sorry I'm not who you wanted me to be.” I didn't know how to respond to that, but it bothered me in a way that took time to figure out.. She was trying to be kind, but...I never want to hear that shit from Dana. She has no fucking right to decide for me who I wanted her to be.

If my own assumptions are wrong, at least I've been trying to discover whether I'm right or not.

tThe cinema of David  Cronenberg has had one central theme, that of identity.  There's a scene in  A History of Violence that really resonates with me. It's the concern I'm struggling with here, not just disillusionment with Dana but what if anything I hope to do with these blogs.  I'd write up a review of the movie for my other blog but in all honesty I don't trust her to get the point, let alone ever read it in the first place. In the movie, a woman has discovered that her husband is not who he says was – that he hid from her a criminal life and a volatile identity. With her he has been a different person entirely, almost story-book sweet and unblemished. Disney perfect. Until the recent revelation, she has done her best to put on the same facade for him, so as not to threaten what they've had together. The betrayal has been his failure to trust her with his true self. There is a moment of her entering a doorway and finding him there unexpectedly. The power of the image isn't in the resentment in her eyes but the fact that she is half-undressed and refuses to hide her body demurely as she always has done in the past. That and the obscenity she hurls at him.   The gesture fairly yells “Did you think I was too fucking nice to let me know you? For you to trust me? Was I so precious that you had to wear a mask and lie to me? Let me show you just how fucking nice I am.”

Maybe I'm on the wrong track, but that's how I feel, and in a big way.

There's only one person responsible for how she is seen and understood, and that's Dana herself. I can't read her mind. At least one of us has made the attempt to be understood. Her silence has left me free to believe anything at all. She was afraid I saw the worst in her based on prejudices that were never mine...she should give a thought to how I think of her now. This time she's earned it – hell, this time she chose it.

I want to be known for who I am and not for who someone thinks I am. By her, preferably, and for better or worse. That was the main reason behind the two blogs, that through my reviews, the substance of my few posts on FB, and eventually my work here I would demonstrate my own values – because they are at odds with the assumptions Dana made of who I am when she shut me out. It's not just that she was wrong but that the prejudices she ascribed to me are anathema to me. If she's going to hate me, I'd rather it be for who I am and not for who she mistook me to be.  I don't know what her values are or whether mine are anything she would respect, but they're out there for anyone to see.

So, honestly, at this point I don't think either this blog or the other serves a purpose anymore. Not much of one, anyway. I've told others that I could have been okay just vanishing from the face of the Earth, from anyone's memory. That sounds way comfortable right now. But I'll keep both blogs going anyway. Like Dana, I'm stubborn. It won't reach her, but at least someone will see me for who I am, and just maybe they'll find something in that they can  respect.

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I'd ask her one thing. Was there ever a night, somewhere in the mid-Nineties, in the middle of the night when she sat alone in her house, in the living or dining room, at a table writing a letter...and her hand froze up, just stopped working so that she was unable to finish the letter? If there was such a night, she'll know what I'm talking about. I'm not going to explain it to anyone else.

Probably just a dream, as so many were.

4 hours in

Last time I worked on this was a week ago, been dealing with other things since.  Mood has been fluctuating.  Ah, let's see...okay, last time I was drawing while sharing a movie on YouTube with Jesseca, 'My Dinner with Andre".  I enlarged the image and focused on the finer shapes and in so doing ended up feeling I'd screwed up the larger shapes - the way the jacket drapes and folds.  Discouraging, I didn't much want to look at the drawing compared to the photo.  I've been reluctant to start in again...but it looks okay.  This lead being so soft and smudgy, there would have been no erasing to correct.  Must remember: don't fuss it if it looks convincing.  It's close enough, actually closer than I'd feared.

As you can see, making sense of the collar and hair at the nape of her neck is not easy.  Those are not clear borders to delineate. 

I've gently begun to block in the shape of her  face, but I think I'm going to switch to a harder grqade of lead for her fade and torso, and perhaps her left hand.  This was an image I made an earlier attempt at in ballpoint pen, beginning with her face, and that didn't suit her at all.  the power of this image lies in its conrtrasts, so the skin and features of the face must be drawn more tenderly.  harder lead means softer, lighter tones that I can control more easily.  I do love this soft lead for acheiveing depth of black in the jacket and will look great or her hair.

I've always thought Sharon Mitchell to be an extraordinarily beautiful woman.

Those two light spots near the right shoulder of her jacket are either snaps or zippers - buttons,  I think.  The photo is impossible to make out at that point.  Possibly I can get by with leaving them alone, but as I'm certain there must be pockets there it would do with looking at shots of similar coats.

2 hours 45 in

Give or take.  I'm finding that lead at this softness smears way too easily, and while I'm using a barrier I still have to clean lead dust off the edge of my hand.  Keep having to erase smears off the page. 

Enlarged so you can see how it works.  So, am I getting the right look for the leather?  Some of it I'm  still unsure of.

Copping a Feel

(Which I never do, BTW.  It's rude and intrusive.  It's abuse.  Just so we're clear.)

(detail, slightly enlarged)

This is one hour's work, using a 0.3mm pen on medium texture drawing paper.

You'll notice there is no clear line for the inner sleeve.  That's because I cannot see it in the photograph.  What you want to do is forget what you know should be present and draw just what you see.  Trust me, when it's done the sleeve will be there - not delineated but indicated.  You'll "see" it, and so will everyone else in spite of the contour not being present.

The cuff looks nice!  The pocket area may need more work but for now it will do.  because the image is dark, jt's difficult to exactly follow each shape made by the tonal shifts.  I'm doing my best but not fussing to get each shape right.  It's more important to capture the fel of the leather.  pay attention to the rhythm of the light reflected off the surface.  It's not the same as is is for hair or skin or other fabrics. get a feel for it and then it will flow. 

I started with that corner because I am right-handed: when I move to areas further leftward on the page I won't be rubbing my arm across what I've already done and possibly smudging it.  I should be using a barrier between my hand and the page to prevet skin oil from discoloring the page, but what the hell - I've only just started.

If I stop at one hour, I might be able to get more in later than my usual two hours + eyestrain.

Traces

I need a quicker drawing to kickstart me back to where I need to be.  Not a sketch but a drawing.  I will try to take a somewhat lax approach knowing that instinct will kick in and  tighten things up. 

To that end I have a photo I like of actress Sharon Mitchell, found online.  I'll do two drawings, one a profile and the other a full torso image.  First I zoomed the pic on my  screen (10 x 17.5") and held a regular 8.5 x 11.5 sheet of typing paper to it to trace the images. 

I then used a lightbox to retrace them onto pages from an art tablet, 8 x 10.  None of these contour lines will make it into the actual drawing, they will all be erased and replaced with as few contours and as much shading as possible as I go.  They are for placement alone.

The image was not a large file, so blowing it up to this size did not lend it clarity for detail.  I will refer to other sources as needed.  for example, I have a few old Avon catalogs - excellent for closeups of lip texture, eyes, etc. The jacket is black leather (yummy on women!), a  texture I've never drawn before.  I'm looking forward to seeing whether I can recreate the feel of it.

Not starting in this morning, already feel my eyes are a little strained staring at this computer screen too long.  Need sleep first too.

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I don't want to comment on getting through New Year's Eve.  God I fucking hate New Year's Eve.