Uncle Sham

This is my reaction to living under the horror of Trump's America as we struggle to decide whether to save democracy or sell out to fascist dictatorship or Putin.  I really don't know who is going to win.  Kudos to you if you recognize the pop culture ref.

I've done a few things in color over the years but this is the first one I was fully happy with.  9x11.5 inches, watercolor pencil on drawing paper.  

I've just learned that Keith Olbermann is back.  Olbermann is my favorite political commentator - was about to say second favorite, but Rachel Maddow is my favorite political analyst, an important distinction.  Olbermann is as incisive as he is acidic, and unfortunately for America he has been his own worst enemy with a quick temper and an ego big enough to trip over, and descends to personal attacks too easily even against those on his own side.  These flaws keep getting him fired and silenced.  Even so, I've been lamenting his absence ever since the most recent presidential election began. If ever we needed KO's voice it's now.  And here he is.  This takedown is beautiful to behold:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCcw2sPlplY 
So is this 18-minute piece https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQueaSlvjCw  

Unlike, say, Jon Stewart, Olbermann has no innate sense of when to tone it down, to reign himself in for the sake of the message.  But, y'know, unadulterated righteous outrage is necessary too.  Nobody does it as spellbindingly or eruditely as Olbermann.



4304, I'm sure I had that right.

All Your Base

Tuesday, near midnight)  Capillary action, that's it.  That's the phrase I've been trying to recall all day.  Bondene is an MEK-based glue, methyl ethyl ketone.  It works by capillary action:  Hold the piece tight together, brush the MEK along the seam, and it's pulled in.  What doesn't go in evaporates immediately on the surface.  It welds the two pieces together, provided the plastics are an amenable variety.  It also rocks as a paint to add surface detail.

The day never goes where I plan for it to.  Today I've been doing the base for the 1/12 - a ratty courtyard of worn paving bricks, badly laid.  Remind me never again to cut a circular disc from 2mm plastic again.  You can't use a sawblade, and I've no metal template for circles.  Results are ragged, the scribing tool will not keep to the mark.

The disc shown earlier (1mm thick, and also not a clean circle) was scratched up with sandpaper and swabbed in MEK.  Somewhere I've a brush of hard wire for cleaning metal files with, if I knew where it was I'd have pounded the shit out of the disc too with more Bondene before and after to soften the plastic and etch the results.  Next the disc was cut into bricks of 10x15mm.  These were softened at the edges with an Emery file and a round metal file, made a bit ragged, then glued to the new 2mm disc.

I'm experimenting to get the right texture.   Sanding and filing produced some finely ground styrene which I added back to the first brick.  Results were poor as the plastic simply wanted to melt back into itself.  Another brick I left bare for comparison.  You don't want each brick to look the same, after all.  But, no, wrong texture.  To another I added salt.  Forget it, grains are much too big and they won't adhere.  Nutmeg?  Hey!  That looks pretty good!  Lay it on a little thick, then carefully soak it with MEK.  Let dry a moment, push it in with my fingertip, scrape the topmost away little by little.   Try it again with ground pepper.  Wow!  This looks great!  Okay, I won't really know until I have some fresh grey primer to coat it with, and I think the nutmeg will turn out to be the best approximation.  Then again, it has to show to the naked eye no matter the scale...it's gonna be painted so the best result is whichever yields a texture that looks good when drybrushed.   That's what I do best.  The paint job, with drybrushing. 

The MEK is a good reason to use the thicker plastic as a base.  The thinner the plastic, the more it's likely to react to the MEK by warping, and you've a ruined piece.  I built a fantastic wall for a kit once, using those plastic "For Sale" signs that places like OfficeMax sell.  Looked great until the next day.  The wall had curled up.  I'd better leave this disc alone now for a while before I finish it.  I'll be adding nutmeg and pepper and frying it for breakfast and perhaps find some other trick to roughen it up a bit.  Some pitting would be good, just a little.  Then putty between the bricks. 

The figure's feet and staff have stiff wires protruding out the bottoms to pin them into the base.  Three millimeters isn't a lot, so I'll surely need to add some height to the base.  otherwise, it looks perfect the way it is. 

This is me in my element.  How I'd love to be doing this for a living!!

I think one of these bricks ought to be broken, don't you?  A good crack through one is a nice touch.  And maybe one with a corner missing.   Here, though is a lesson in planning, as I'm winging this and realize now that these should have been strategically placed.  I have yet to situate where the figure's feet will go, and where I want to place a nameplate. 



I've a 1/10 scale figure of Gozer from Ghostbusters which I stood on this, and it looked great.  Can't wait to see it painted.  I'll have to watch the movie again to determine the right color, there are few if any decent shots of that setting online.

I made a similar base once using Sculpey for paving stones.  Looks decent but I boiled the poly clay instead of baking it - a mistake, because they distorted somewhat and would not lay completely flat.  Texture was overdone too.  Still, that was meant to look much more ancient than this so it's being rougher works.  (Oh, is it here?  No?  No.  Treasure hunt later, not tonight.)

**********
No sign of Dana.  No dreams, nothing.  She's not there.  🙍  Have I already said I think this is what's behind the 'tormented artist' myth?  You don't have to be miserable to do great work, but it's a motivator to keep you at it.  It keeps your mind occupied for the time that you spend creating.  Too bad it doesn't last, but it can help you reach sleep a little easier.

"They're already here! You're next!"

(Sunday)
I've got the Sonnenberg mapped out on the canvas in colored pencil.  Although the source photograph is in full color, somehow it came out looking like a sepia print.  Fine with me, keep it simple.  You can't even see her face, how's that for simple?

Worked some on the Weird Science shot last night.  Wasn't in the zone but it was enough to make me decide to do it in pencil because working out the shapes is going to take a lot of erasing.  That's good, it will form a matching set with the Pretty in Pink drawing.  If I want the energy of a ballpoint sketch, I can do it again after that.  Yesterday as I was painting, I wiped my brushes off on a bit of scrap paper which had ink markings on the other side.  The turpentine made the ink visible, and smudged it.  I like the look and will need to try it with an ink drawing.  If it works...get to an art store downtown and get some colored ink!!  

My protest Uncle Sam is mapped out, going to transfer it to art paper.  It has to be in color, so I have the original poster by James Montgomery Flagg for reference to color and style.  I doubt I can duplicate his style but at least I can do the pic in watercolors.  It's an image I've had in mind since the Dubby Bush administration.  There were a few times Obama earned it a little too, but not like Dubya.  And now Trump is making G.W. look like a genius leader.  I'll have to find a font and come up with some slogans.  I've got one already in Russian Cyrillic. "I WANT YOU to look the other way".   Too bad most Americans don't read Cyrillic, but that in itself is suggestive enough.   I'd like to run it past an expert in Russian, though.  "YOU'RE FIRED" in Cyrillic might be nice too.   Can't wait to see this POS impeached and his cabinet jailed.

I just remembered an object I want to build from a movie, and I'll say little more about it.  Though Jesseca doesn't read this blog, I'd be thrilled to have it ready for her birthday.  No good shots of it in Bing search engines, I'll have to get some screencaps.  That means literally aiming my camera at the TV screen.  Some of the details I will have to make up myself, but Jesseca is a lot more okay with that than I am so it's all good.

Late afternoon, should be doing something but I really want to take a walk!  Overcast, breezy, could rain: perfect.  A gentle late evening rain would be ideal.  Take the back roads, quieter.  Maybe psych myself up for oil or watercolor? 

(11 PM)  Been working all evening, the Uncle Sam in watercolor pencil.  This part is finished.  I have not yet brushed it with water, and as I did not have any watercolor paper I hope I it  won't be ruined...because...this fucking rocks.  For me, anyway.  The eyes aren't quite right, but I think if I can deepen the sin colors and then add pure white paint to the eyes so they really stand out...I hope people will get the pop culture  reference, because the satire is lost if they don't.  Those eyes are scary, but I'd never noticed before how haunted they are.  It's the perfect image for Trump's America, this sums it up in one image.  You hardly need a caption.  Oh, well, when people think of the poster they think of the slogan.  "I Want YOU." 

I hate to stop where I am but the next step is a big one and I'm risking a headache already.  It will need to be scanned in, and I'll need the editing program on the other machine to add text and a border.  (Heh, add a border around Trump, there's a joke in there...)   Once I brush what's there I can add regular watercolor paint to deepen the colors.  Could be done with the main image tomorrow if nothing else comes up to stop me.  Oops, a little bit more on the sleeve.  Tempted to put a little Russian flag pin on the lapel to satirize American flag pins, but that's overkill.  For two or three decades the Republicans have been shouting at the tops of their lungs how they're the only patriots in America, yet they're the first in line under Trump to sell out to Putin and cheerlead the wholesale dismantling of democracy.  True colors indeed.

For years I kept hearing how there were still sane conservatives left who wanted to take their party back from the extremists.  Where did they all go?  You never hear about them anymore.  I never did agree with conservatives, but at least in the Reagan era I could understand where they were coming from. Today's brood stand for nothing but naked power.

Mm.  Quarter to midnight, late supper as is normal, and I added some peanut butter to the jasmine rice.  Not much, just enough to flavor it.  Good call. 

Purgatory

The Nostromo looks hard but can be broken down into 7 subassemblies.  1) The bridge complex, 2) the forward hull, 3) the rear hull that spreads out to the engine nacelles, 4) the docking and upper exhaust block, 5) the rear exhaust complex, 6) the engine nacelles, and 7) the landing gear.  An interior support structure could be considered an eighth subset.  For that I wanna give it a simple box structure to build the rest around.  What I'm weighing is whether to do the landing gear first.  It's the landing gear that will be the most difficult, I have no firm plan going forward.  I'll have to see what works, beginning with some hard metal rods from a hobby store and hoping I can bend them at a sharp enough angle.   I'm  also not looking forward to the landing/takeoff thrusters.  The Nostromo is an odd-looking critter.

Design for the auto-inspired single-man craft is practically dictating itself, but i've only sketches as yet.  A visor should be easy, and the cockpit only needs determining a scale.   Landing, gear, though...hmm.  I could claim it's a suspensor vehicle ala the Star Wars universe craft.  The undercarriage I haven't envisioned yet.  Go old-school with propulsion?  I wonder what propulsion systems of the future will look like, will we be able to abandoned jet-style exhausts?

Workspace needs clearing off again, it clutters so fast.    Doctor Who new season begins in 90 minutes.  If I can stay awake, Kolchak, and see what I can do about drawing.  Not in much of a mood for anything...at least, don't feel like building or sculpting.  Maybe drawing.  Mitchell, or a new one.  Reluctant to do a ballpoint but only because all the pens here keep running dry.

I've a bunch of 4 x 4 inch canvases, and I've tinted four of them for experimenting with.  One of Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, one of Jesseca, two of someone I probably won't post.   All portraits but for the Sonnenberg, a half-body shot of her playing the violin.  One step at a time.  Try not to think of the finished work, just...   Skin tones, though, damn.  talk about diving into the deep end.  I'm warned off "flesh" oil paint.  It's generic, for one thing, but worse it's opaque.

Looking over online pics of paving bricks for texture.  In 1/12 you probably shouldn't see any, except that they should look well worn and ragged at the edges.  They're none too neatly laid out.  I think I'll hit them with rough sandpaper, tear up the edges a little, paint them with bondene to etch where the sandpaper bit, and try some powdery substance immediately while they're still partially melted.  Baby powder?  Ground pepper?  I can use a Dremel to grind some plastic, and hope it doesn't totally melt away in the Bondene.  It's been years since I did any detailing. 

My home environment keeps getting in the way of drawing.  I need quiet time alone to do that, and when I've had sleep.  If I could be asleep during the day and awake at night, that would be ideal for me.  Unfortunately, not for anyone else.

I only sleep when my body is tired enough that it just can't stay awake.  Tried to sleep just now and it wouldn't take.  The depression  wavers like a note.  Wonder if the next shipment of Milliput is in yet, they said a week.   Go to Michael's too, find a metal ring to make an incense cone burner with.  Cones won't burn unless air can reach the bottom side.  Need a metal tube or something strong to serve as a handle for a tool to carve hair with.  I have some fine sewing needles already. 

Something is different.  If my dreams were always just that, all in my head, just imagination, and for some reason I'm not dreaming of Dana any more...then, why not?   What's different?  Nothing that I'm aware of on a conscious level, yet my subconscious is no no longer feeding that narrative.  Thirty years nonstop, now nothing.  And why did I inflict them on myself for thirty years with a slowly evolving narrative?  And why did some of them mirror the events of real life where I couldn't have kno- shit, it circles back to that. Some of them in the past did turn out to be psychic (or coincidental on an impossible scale), which would leave the same question but with a different range of answers: what has changed?  Either I broke through finally, for better or worse, and there's no sign of that...or she's just no longer looking.  If Dana would ask me to keep waiting a little while longer, prove to me that it's really her asking and just say "please wait, I'm trying", I would.   It would mean so much.
But she hasn't, and I'm finally learning to hate her more every day.  It  doesn't help. 

If there's any reason left to censor myself about Dana, it's not to be careful of her feelings.  I wrote something last week asking about another former friend of hers and the falling out they had, then I erased it without posting.  Dana had made clear in '88 she didn't want to talk about it.  Now I'm wondering again what really happened between them.  They were best friends, then Maria  was out of Dana's life.  Why?  I managed to sit on venting for a few days and realized that the answer - even if I got one - wouldn't  make a difference anyway.  The truth is I was asking because I wanted to hurt Dana's feelings.  And I still do.  Okay...one, I need to stop caring about whether her feelings get hurt.  Two, I don't think I could hurt them anyway.   If someone in her life turns on her, they're out.  If someone is supportive of her, they're out.  All these years I've been defensive on Dana's behalf.  I must have been mad.  Things would be so much easier for her if we would all just drop dead.  That is what you think, isn't it Dana?

Will you ever regret hurting  me?  Ever, enough to have a pang of conscience and do something about it?  Must I go through this for the rest of my life?

I love you, but I hate you. If you don't want me, please let me go.

face time

It's a start.  Let the yellow/grey Milliput dry, do the details in white Milliput when I get it.  I'll also do one separately in clay, and use whichever comes out the better choice.

(Sunday evening) Discovered that Mod Podge with sawdust is a nonstarter, the result just falls apart.   Also, Milliput does not  adhere to Paperclay, so I gave those sections of the 1/12 a coat of Mod Podge.  Sanded down the staff, will give the lower band of the headpiece a thin layer of putty to widen it, set it apart from the main body to stand out as separate.

Man, the model kits that are out these days...(salivating).  Way too expensive though.  There's an Yvonne Craig Batgirl I want on the more affordable side (still thirty to forty bucks) and a Catwoman ...but I'd rather have an Eartha Kitt.  Julie Newmar was the actress who was allowed to sex it up, but Kitt pushed my buttons.  For hardware there's a 50th anniversary Starship Entrprise from Polar Lights in a huge box, with visible bridge and shuttlecraft bay for something like $160.  Damn.  Instead I bought some X-Acto sawblades for ten dollars.  I will probably never have that Enterprise...but if I could have a USCSS Nostromo that I built myself from scratch, that's worth pursuing.

Some friends in New York will be launching a podcast on Monday, May 1st at 1 PM (I'm pretty sure they mean NY time, so that's 10 AM West Coast).  "The Lat, Late Show".  That's not a typo as the announcement repeats it several times.   We're all fans of Night Vale, The Black Tapes, and Tanis so I'm wondering what they may come up with. 

(Tuesday)
That perfect staff is three quarters of an inch too short.  Minor setback,  the headpiece is salvageable with only the main body of the walking stick needing redone.    Primed the hand, I have some white primer already but grey is better for revealing problem areas.  Insides of the fingers look a little fuzzy, there are more divots to fill in with Squadron.  At this scale I think floral wire is too thick, and I will have to try Milliput over thinner  wire.  I'll want to try a female figure at 1/12th scale just to have done it, then in future stick to larger scales. 

I've prepped a few more future drawings, including one of Shanna Evans that is simple and straightforward.  Maybe I'll do that next to clear my head.  Trying to find a subject for ballpoint that feels right.  There's a good Fay Wray shot that's perfect but might be more involved than I want to do right now - need a quick  fix, one I can just finish.  Everything worth doing takes time, and I'm not patient enough at the mo' to deal with  time.  Tired, don't care.  Fuck everything.

Can't sleep.  5:30, been up since two and didn't sleep then either.  Can't not feel.  Can't calm my mind.   Gonna be a long, shitty day. (...)  (near noon)  Two hours or less sleep.  Make a library run, try to work on something when I get home.  (4 PM)   The primer is old and does not want to dry.  I'll have to give it several days or maybe strip it and hope it doesn't affect the Sculpey or putty.  Figures, I finally had it where I wanted it.  That is one of the tricks to smoothing flaws, if I have to resort to it: using too much enamel paint.   Anyway, The hand is sitting on a high shelf in the kitchen, getting plenty of air.  I was hoping to meld it to the arm. 

Ah, sound of rain outside.  Soothing.

(Thursday evening)
Full night's sleep, finally.   No dreams of, no messages from, no sign of Dana.  I bit back a full vent a few days ago, not posted, deleted.   The feelings don't dissipate, any of them.


 
I have a 1/6 resin kit of Yvonne Craig, and while the face is close, something I can't quite pin down is throwing it off.  Looking at a profile shot of the real Craig, there's a...convexity, convexness? ...to the plane of her face that makes the model's face seem almost concave.  Her cheeks don't come forward enough, and when I bring them out with putty it will threaten to make the eyes seem sunken or the nose too shallow.  Hmm.  Shape under the lower jaw is wrong.  The ears are terrible, and can definitely be improved.  Meanwhile, seems like a good idea to try to replicate this head on its own.  Mimic it, then see how I can change it.  Make it a new face altogether?  Learn the formation of the features.  Good practice and it might even yield a usable head.   The kit leans ridiculously and has to be redone, I don't know how it got past the casting stage like this.    needs a base too.  I wonder how I can make a  full-length dressing mirror with a real mirror but in scale?  Oh...should do a search on that, seem like it might already be a thing to accompany scale dolls.

The last time I tried to replicate a head I got hung up on the eyes. I tried to use pre-formed eyes, and could not get the size to look normal.   Too small or too big and generally too far apart or too close together.   When you look up the size of a human eyeball, you learn it's about an inch.  When you try to find out how far apart they are, you're told the distance from one lacrimal caruncle to the next.  Sorry, no, that wasn't the question and it does not help place the ball of the eye.  How far apart are the actual orbs?  Not the eyelids, the eyes.  I still don't know.  "The eyes are placed apart by the space of one eye."  No, no they're not.   That's only  the visible part of the eye you're telling me about.   I'm not doing a drawing, I'm trying to place the eyeballs physically.

There's  a car ad that's been playing, featuring a designer honing an automotive shape.  The ad begins with a lightscape that doesn't reveal what you're looking at...just that it is something sleek.  I keep seeing it as a wicked cool shape for a spacecraft.  If it's a small one-man fighter I might have to break up that nice line with a bubble canopy. Now, that's a consideration...does a small ship need a canopy?  I think we get those in sci-fi just to give a sense of scale, and subliminally allow the audience to connect with the design, but so they make sense?  I guess that depends on whether we assume the material is glass or some futuristic transparent metal.  Yes, Nasa uses glass.  But then, the Mercury  capsules weren't going into combat.  You see what I'm getting at, right?  Vulnerability.  You don't need a window if you have screens and monitors.  OTOH you'll want a viewport if the power fails.  Maybe anopy covers with manual explosive bolts?

soft hands

I hope I didn't just ruin this.  I've taken a dremel head with a ball to the palm, tapered out the fingers a little, and used some Squadron Green to fill out gaps and holes.  I used Bonded to smooth out the Squadron - but I've discovered that Bondene softens Sculpey if I use too much and the forefinger is now like dough.  Now I'd better leave it alone for at least a day to dry out, and hope it hardens again.  Once it  does - if it does - I can sand and file the fingers smooth again and give it some primer.  Either I didn't bake the clay enough, or it  has enough flexibility that I can bend the floral wire a little after baking.  That helps, the hand looks more natural now.

Hobbytown was out of the Milliput I need, apparently named Milliput White. 

No dreams, no sign of Dana. 

Baked Goods

Depression stronger today.  Since I began posting here again, I have had no dreams at all of any kind of reaction from Dana to anything I've said, barring the one of she and I at her work together and her telling someone that, yes, I'm a friend.  That feeling is gone.  No reaction to anything?   Can anything reach her?

1/12th figure.  Well, the disc of 1mm sheet is imperfect but I can use that to cut the paving stones and place them on a 2mm disc of the same size.  Thicker plastic should be easier to sand into a more perfect shape, and it won't be wasting the first disc.
 
The staff's headpiece is drying now.  The original is a bit of sheet metal crudely cut and welded, so I cut the same shape in .020" styrene and bent it with tweezers.  Using the wire from the Chinese food carton, I added a short lenght of styrene tube at the top of a measured length.  The wire was too thick for the tubing, which is perfect: split the tube and squeeze it wider, then it grips the wire and stays in place on its own.  I glued the base of the headpiece to the tubing using Plastruct Bondene.  To add texture to the flat plastic sheet, I used a toothpick to glop a little Testors tube glue.  When it dried, I melded the tube and the sheet headpiece together with Squadron Green putty then smoothed it out by brushing on the Bondene.  That's curing now.  In a few hours I can build up the base of the staff with Milliput.  After that it's a matter of painting it. 

The staff still needs a hand to grip it.  I've never attempted a hand before.  I'm preparing one now, not sure if I'll do the left or right first...the left will be easier, as it's in an open gesture and not having to grip anything.  I only want to do one for now, to make sure this approach will work.  I've assembled a crude skeletal hand using floral wire coated with Mod Podge in hopes Sculpey will stick to it.   This would be so much easier in a larger scale, but then smaller scales are more  forgiving of crude detailing.

The head on the armature is ready for Milliput, the smoother variety I haven't bought yet.  I think I'll try a separate head in Sculpey.  If it looks good, I'll swap heads.



Not terrible for a first attempt. I hope I will be able to trim or file the clunkiness out of the fingers, and it will have to be smoothed out with putty in spots.  I won't know how much more is needed until I hit it with gray primer.  Best I do that before attaching it to the arm.  The hardest part is the positioning of the fingers, once the clay is on you can't bend the fingers without flattening out the tube of the finger.  Not looking forward to doing the right hand with fingers curled around a walking stick.

I baked the seated figure for Jesseca without finishing the arms, but building up shoulders and indicating the collar.  Once it cools I'll try to figure out repositioning the upper torso.  Having been baked, the collar and jewelry will almost have to be Milliput.  Ehm...same with the arms, I suppose.  Maybe the next question is whether or not I'm satisfied with the details scribed into the gown or whether to do them over in Milliput as well.

the week

(Sunday)
Saturday was busy, so didn't get to anything.  Sunday night now, felt like my body or head wanted to get sick.  Teasing a headache now.  Maybe three hours sleep since yesterday, in two or three shifts.  Nothing done again...stared at Sharon Mitchell's hand and couldn't wrap my head around it.  Some slight pencil smudging to clean up, a few tweaks to make but I like the body finally.  Might need to prep a new drawing to kick into the mental process of translation.  Emotionally mostly neutral.  No dreams. Hard to stay focused on anything, Been a surface-level kinda day.  Oogh.  Headache not thrilling but aspirin might aid sleep.

Had Chinese food.  The little cartons are meant to be unfolded into bowls you can eat from, but the manufacturer of these particular cartons doesn't seem to know it as they stick in wire handles that are difficult to disengage from the paper.  Really stiff wire.  I have my walking stick base element for the 1/2th figure!  I will fill out the legs of this figure with a mix of sawdust and Mod Podge and hope that it works.  It's a small figure so it shouldn't be so thick as to take forever drying.

Change of approach on the seated figure for Jesseca.  I've re-scribed the details down the front of the gown, better but not entirely satisfied.  I messed around with the arms a little and have decided that going forward with those in clay before baking will screw up what I have so far, which I'm already not happy with.  So better to preserve what I've done, and then so the arms and probably the collar and necklaces in Milliput.  I might lay down a base for the collar in clay and then bake.  I'm far from being proficient enough with Sculpey to do all the details in just that, need a ton more practice. 

Doctor's appointment on Tuesday.  Numbers have been tolerable but not great.
__________________________
(Monday)
Evening, restless.  Puttered at things,  got a little fussy bits done on different projects.  got a little more sleep  last night.  Still looking for my 8x10 tablet.  Medium texture is best for the Annie Sprinkle or a few other items where the source details aren't crisp. 

There are a few images I'm considering that are a little more creative but I'm forced to realize I'm not a concept guy.  Most that I've come up with over the years have struck me as facile and forced.  A few turn out well.  In theory, that would be one of those 'muscles' that grow stronger if you keep flexing.  Creative types don't just churn out brilliance, they mostly produce rubbish.  What fools the rest of us is that they produce rubbish in such volume that the relatively small percentage of great ideas still seems awfully high to us, and we never know how much trash we didn't see from them.
__________________________
(Tuesday) 
Leaving for the doctor in a few minutes.  Had maybe an hour of sleep.  No dreams of Dana but maybe a proxy sighting.  Again nothing I didn't already know.  Dana, I do know things.  And I've been fighting my life out to have you in it.  That ought to tell you something about misplaced fears.  Be a little counter-intuitive.  Telling me isn't going to cause a problem that already exists, it's going to solve one.  If you're reading this then you must wish this block wasn't here anymore?  Why do you still need it?  What is it insulating you from?

I'm looking at that portrait of her on cardstock, and I still love the look of that best.  If only that paper didn't rip up so easily from mechanical pencils!  It's a good drawing, if I can finish it in the same style.  I could draw from this photo a hundred times and the expression she wears would be different every time.  I think I could do a better job if I started over today and went 1/1 scale, but I want this one done too.

Oh, I deleted a paragraph from a post from the past week.  It was up for a day before I decided it might be taken the wrong way.
 
They say an artist should be aware of the world around him.  Today I  made myself aware of some chicken biryani, gulab jamun, and some hot chai.  Best Taste of India is my current favorite cart at Cartlandia,  a half hour walk from home.  Not enough money to go often, but I always end up at BToI.

Still looking for that tablet.    The Annie Sprinkle image is a centerfold someone scanned or photographed, so a glare obscures details at the gatefold.  It won't take up much more then the center third of the page, but her right side disappears off the edge of the photo.  Also some of the details will have to be made up, extrapolated, or supplemented from other pics.   So it will be an interesting challenge, but mostly for locating it on the page and  figuring out where to leave off.  She's got a faux-fur coat I expect to remain a mere outline.  Not needed, except to indicate body.  (Plus, it's kinda gaudy...sorry.)

Have now transferred the image, fits the page better than expected.  I hope this will be a lesson in how much I can get away with not drawing (her clothing) and still have a complete image.

The lines aren't actually that dark, it's just enhanced a bit so you can see it better.  It's in soft lead  which may be a mistake, I hope it will be easier to erase as I go and not sink into the paper.  Wondering where to begin...hands, hair, or face are the likeliest starting points.  The magazine glare crosses her hands and skirt, so that's the biggest challenge - I see some of the skirt's printed pattern but hardly all of it, and not the folds at all.  I may end up not looking for realism there. 

The joke of the photo will be missing.  She's squatting next to a  fire alarm sign indicating an 'automatic sprinkler'.  Her faux-fur coat might look better in black and white.  I mean, I like purple as a color...  I don't intend to fill that in, just indicate the space and texture.  We'll see. The picture dictates what it needs.

I read once that Jill Kelly did a scat scene in Europe.  I bet I could draw that.  Not a problem.  It's blood that I quail at.  Funny, maybe, coming from a horror fan, but (shrug).  No period sex.  More power to ya if that's your thing but I'll be in the next room.   Go to my other blog and read the review of A Snake of June.  It deals with fear of body issues. Plus, it's a damn good  movie.
 __________________________
(Wednesday)
Spent most of the day working on the thrones for Jesseca's seated figures.  Scale replicas I've wanted to build are calling to me, and I must resist  them for now to get to more important things.  If these  are to be molded and cast then I'll have to build them so that the cast pieces will connect as if they were a model to be assembled.  I think I've got one such details figured out.  For the evening, I've reached the point where all kinds of things are beginning to go wrong.  Small, fussy things, but in rapid and increasing succession:  Sign that it's time to quit for the day.  The last thing to go wrong was discovering that the sub-assembly I was finally having a success with is made to an erroneous measurement, meaning it's unusable and will have to be done a third time.  OTOH, I know that my approach is working.  "Learning is never a waste".

The female figure sits too far forward in her seat.  I'll have to cut her in half, above or below the waste, and try to reconstruct her.  Not sure whether to bake what i ha first, but I'd like to not.
__________________________
(Thursday)
Great-niece and -nephew here for the afternoon and evening.  Work mostly will be later if at all.  I'm nearly four weeks behind on my Kolchak reviews, must watch the next one tonight and take notes.

Sleeping better the past two nights.  Not straight through but more hours.
 
Still trying to figure out the fuzzy details of the "Weird Science" screenshot.  Hand is washed out - glove, fingers, joint.  Eyes are too deeply shadowed, her cheek disappears.  I'm wondering if a ballpoint sketch  - or wash, or preferably both together - might be the way to go.  Getting the eyes right is crucial - if I can't work out the lines or hide the shapes, this is a no-go.  Get the eyes wrong and you don't have a picture, the rest won't save it.  There's an earring I can't see, and she's rocking an '80s mallbrat look that needs one.  I'll have to find one online and substitute.  The collar isn't clear at all either but the material is black.

The Look

I'd like to be an orgasm artist.  Not as in causing orgasms (wait, what?  Sure I would!) but capturing them.  Among other things.  I have my signature look, the question is what use to apply it to.

Take the Mitchell portrait.  I'm drawn to it because it's a strong image.  Bound to offend some yet it's graceful.  I find it honest, different from the usual porn pose.  I like those, of course, but they're...I dunno, a dime a dozen.  Forced, false.   Any photog can grab a typical cheesecake shot, but the Mitchell image projects character.   It's edgy.  I've got a bunch of shots of Shanna Evans but almost all of the are men's mag cliches.  They're worth doing because they're Shanna Evans.   I want to do more explicit nudity, and explicit sex, but it's important to find my own voice in the images. 

I've found one shot of Annie Sprinkle performing her signature move that I intend to try drawing soon.  The image doesn't formally lend itself to my look (it doesn't really grab me on its own) but I'm pretty sure I can make it work.   So, fair warning.  It's a pic I've seen before, might be the only one out there, not thrilled with that, and I haven't watched Devil Inside Her again yet.  But I'm eager to try this one out.

I'd do porn star portraits if I knew who more of them are.  Not familiar with any of today's names.  I was a 70s-80s guy mostly, some 90s.  Might not be a future specializing in that. 

Basically, people like the look I give my drawings, and - not to be egotistical - so do I.  Well, as a subject the one thing I want most is to stand up for my values and celebrate sexuality.  I want to be sex-positive.  The best way to do that, I think, is to take images that would ordinarily be considered... well, anything but art or beautiful, anything from vulgar to just plain titillation...and find the beauty in them.   For example, I don't think most people want Annie Sprinkle urinating on their wall.  You know what I mean.  But then most people don't want to showcase a picture of a guy getting a finger in his urethra either.  I don't - OUCH??  But people do want a Mapplethorpe on their wall.  Mapplethorpe found beauty in sex, and vitality in the honest expression of it.  Mapplethorpe's contribution has been  invaluable and progressive... not only to art but to our acceptance of our own nature and how we embrace or reject it as a society.  I don't think I'll ever be an artist to compare, but I can aspire. 

"The Male Gaze" is a big contentious topic.  Me, I love the body...but I watch the face as much as the body.  No, I can't usually tell when an actress is faking it.  But there are some that clearly go through the motions not feeling them...and then there are others.  Them I find joy in.  I find intense beauty in a genuine orgasmic expression.  I'd love to be known for that.  My idea of beauty doesn't lie in propriety, in being staid or refined or censored.  It doesn't lie in the cookie-cutter blonde boundaries of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit models - they're lovely, I'm sure, but I've never been able to tell them apart.  Give me a punk girl to look at instead.  Let me draw a sexy shaved head or mohawk or one of the brave models proving that vitiligo is nothing to be ashamed of.  Let me celebrate positive transgression of conformity.
.
Egon Schiele had his statement.  I want mine.  His was sexual dynamism.  Ideally mine would be the sensuality, the tactility of the body...the textures and tastes.  Damn, I'm finally reaching this moment so late in my life, I hope it's not too late.