15 hours

Though I didn't cover new territory, I've been doing repair work of what's been up before.  I hope you can see the difference.  The contrast is better, with deeper darks, and the texture of the lower sleeve is much improved.  The dark edge along her abdomen makes a difference. 

Messing with the camera settings, so it's a much smaller picture.  I'll enlarge it for this page.

Find out tonight I can also see trouble spots better by reducing the size of the source image.  Normally I prefer to work from a printed phot, having it right next to the drawing paper.  Reduces errors, less distance looking back and forth.  But in addition to the luminosity I can play with things like size, sharpness, and other effects to better see tricky details.  I hope to finally be happy with her body tomorrow.  Relatively speaking. 

I would do more tonight but I can feel the leading storm warnings of a headache.  Need to switch out.

bulking up

Bulking it in a bit with Paperclay.  I'm beginning to get the feel of Paperclay, which is like a clumpy bar of plaster oatmeal.  It doesn't hold together well for something like this, but I'm using it for shape rather than detail at least until I know the stuff better.  I'll definitely need the Porcelain Miiliput when it gets time to attempt a face.  I'll keep bulking him in a little where needed, but not so much I can't add a sealing layer of putty overtop.  This guy wears baggy clothes, so I'm not too worried about that.

He'll be holding a staff.  I'll want a rod of durable metal, hard to bend, that I can wrap putty around.  It needs to taper a bit.  I have a wooden dowel that's the right circumference where he grips it, and I've wrapped a sleeve of paper around it to model a hand on.  After all, I can't have the hand adhere to the dowel.  I'll try to make the hands from Sculpey over floral wire.   Must go buy a few more blocks. I'm starting to get the hang of that stuff too.  Get enough and I should try a figure using just that.  Maybe a larger scale though...I'd like to do something in 1/10, 1/8, 1/6, 1/4.  At some point half-size or lifesize. If I can do one of each soon, each scale  will help me learn the shapes. 

I removed some of the Sculpey from Jesseca's project.  That figure looks much better now, stylized without being quite so cartoonish. The body is built around a paper tube into which will go a wooden dowel.  Next step will be to sculpt a head onto the wooden dowel.  With the head done, it will be easier for me to place the upper opening of a ceremonial collar.   I scribed lines into the front of the dress - not bad but I can do a more even job of it and so smoothed the marks away.  That comes before the arms, which will have to be before the shoulders so that the arms can move freely - they won't be placed in position until the arms are full and armbands placed.  Then ornamental jewelry and mark the lower boundaries where the collar will go.

No drawing today.  I have not been able to sleep, cannot quieten my mind.  Drawing for me is like a walk in a Spring or Fall rain, or doing a jigsaw puzzle to good music.  I'm too jittery and tired for it today.   


**************

Next time someone asks me what happened between Dana and me, I won't have any reason anymore not to tell them.  I don't care. For thirty years I've been protective toward someone who doesn't give a fuck whether I even exist.  It's a joke.


**************

Another fight with my asshole sister.  I don't live here, this is not life.  I endure this abuse for my mom's sake.  Karla's been running me down since I was a small child.  Nothing I do is ever right.  Nothing I don't do is ever right.  Trump is her hero: neither one believes in taking responsibility for their words or actions.   Power means keeping everyone else down.

Treat someone like that all their lives, it sinks in.

I've tried to remember whether there was even one good memory of Karl in my life.  There is not,  When we went to the beach, it was her friend that saved me from drowning.  Pointed out to her, she said to leave me alone as I was just playing.

the other day I almost tripped over the edge of the bathtub getting in to take a shower.  I could have cracked my head on the porcelain and bled out.  When I go out, part of me hopes I'll get hit by a car or have a power line fall on me.

I like the Buddhist  belief of reincarnation.  I want to try again fresh with another life.  I wish I were free to end the current failure.  Someday I will be.

**************

Taken with camera, limited editing, rendered grainer than it should be.   Still, we'll see if the scanner can do a better job when it's done.  Did a half hour of repair work, and her jacket is finally starting to look like leather again instead of a battered pea coat.

Go Figure

 

This is the figure project starting with a 1/12 scale armature I made once and never used.  The white arms were epoxy putty of another brand to re-enforce the wire, and some you can't see for the  upper torso and pelvic area (leaving the lower torso free for positioning).   Mod Podge was used to coat the wire so the putty would adhere to it.  I've covered that in standard yellow-grey Milliput.  Three sessions: first, just a blob on each foot to see how well it blends and hardens, and to secure the ankles.  I have cardstock cutouts for the soles of the shoes, as a guide for getting the shapes right.  Each session takes roughly three hours to cure but I give them a little longer.  Second session was the legs, upper arms, and Paperclay on the lower torso.  Third session was the joints (to secure a pose based on a screencap) and more on the torso. 

The rough=hewn disc is 1mm plastic sheet, which will be the beginning of a base.

The  fingers are going to be so thin that I think I need to do them separately in polymer clay like Sculpey.  I could leave them until last by making open-ended sleeves and gluing the finished hands into them, but it will look more natural to attach the finished hands and then blend the wrists before making the sleeves.

Fourth session, this morning. Yes, the pose looks a bit awkward from this angle.  That's okay, it's meant to.  The head hasn't been positioned yet.  I'm thinking next I will try filling in some of the volume with Paperclay. 

Not having adverse reactions to the Milliput, as I did with the Aves. 

Need to go buy more Sculpey for the figures for Jesseca.  Female figure's breasts look too large but I haven't got the arms  folded down yet.  Or even started, they're still just pipecleaners waiting for clay. Also, these figures are done in Jesseca's signature style, so they're highly stylized.  I should ask  her to send me a design for a standing figure, I'd love to try that.  For now I have to do the arms and try the details of the clothing before I bake.  I can set her on the throne for short intervals for fitting, but not leave her there.  Sculpey melts plastic if its not baked.  I accidentally allowed plastic tool to sit on some, and they turned into a puddle of mutual goo.



(later) Not much change, but the pose needed to be exaggerated a bit.  I've held the feet down flat and built them a little, added to the hips and ankles. 

One reference point for shape, as mentioned in a previous post, is Aurora's Monsters of the Movies series of 1/12th scale figure kits.  I have only two of them, Dracula and Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde.  The J/H has interchangeable heads in glow plastic.  The MotM series was introduced when Nabisco bought out Aurora and then sabotaged their sales by replacing the wonderfully sculpted regular line with these stiff, simplistic snap kits.  Aurora folded not long after.  They're not bad kits, I just happen to have the two least expressive from among them.  Part of Jekylls' hand is not evident in he shot, but I have it around somewhere.  Dracula's has flash (excess plastic from the casting process) that hasn't been trimmed yet.

Current music: Pretty Little Head by Eliza Rickman

Climate Change

It will be a few days before I have either of these drawings done (and that's if I remain in the zone), and I might not wait that long before I post this.  My bad mood is not lessening.  I'm depressed, I'm hurt, I'm pissed off.  I have more subjects lined up to draw but am only half-hearted about them: given the political climate with seemingly half my fellow citizens acting like brownshirts for Trump, and my alienation from Dana, I feel like drawing something more defiant and definitive.  I want to stand up for my own values, and while I'm at it post something of a 'fuck you'.  Maybe I can find a drawing in one of Annnie Sprinkle's more infamous scenes.  She had a stand-out moment in 'The Devil Inside Her' that put her on the map.  Bad photography, but it might translate.  Annie Sprinkle is one of my heroes for the astonishing bravery with which she has publicly explored all aspects of sexuality, refusing to feel shame.

A year or so ago I read of a court case about Facebook censoring classical artwork.  Look it up, it involved Gustav Courbet's 1866 'Origin of the World'.

It reminded me of an occasion in school when Ms. McNamee asked me a startling question.  One of the major periodicals,  probably Time, had used a piece of classical art involving nudity for their cover.  As an artist, wasn't I offended by that?  I've never been good at expressing myself through spoken word, and I'm a quiet person anyway, so I didn't know how to respond.  What I wish I had been able to express was that what offended me was the assumption that I would reject (a) the human body, (b) sexuality, or (c) freedom of expression in any form.   The impulse to suppress, that's what I found offensive.  The mindset is offensive.

 The painting seems to have been a reaction against hypocrisy.  It prompted another equally laudable:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMm8GjoDNZ4

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I posted something much longer, extremely personal about myself and dreams I've had on a particular aspect of sexuality.  Once it was up, my instinct was to cut it.  I still have it in Notebook.  It reveals nothing about anyone but myself, but it's best to give that warning.  The subject is roleplaying, BDSM, and emotional catharsis.  The upshot is that I'm extremely jaded, and I'm pro-sex as long as it's consensual and not destructive to the participants.  I'm not necessarily into everything, but I have no biases.  Some aspects of BDSM do it for me, some don't.

I want to know why I keep having a particular series of dreams, since the early 90s.  I want to explore what they mean to me, my reaction to them.  In part I wrote, speaking of a hypothetical lover, "If something turns her on, I'm turned on by her response to it. (...) That's what sex is for me at is fullest: not the fetish, not the act, but the woman who can share the things that get her there, and trust me with the need behind it.  That I respect.  That I treasure.  That takes courage."

I'm still pissed off enough to be reckless and post it anyway.


(edit)  Fuck it.  I can't take any more.


If explicit sexuality makes you uncomfortable, this isn't the post for you.  Don't read it.  I  write this blog for myself, for Dana, and for total strangers.  If you know me and don't want that kind of personal detail, click away now.  Be elsewhere.

Dana has gradually become more an imaginary person than someone real.   I know more about the Dana that arrives in dreams than I ever did about the girl I fell in love with.   The real woman is a stranger by her own insistence.  I no longer feel any sense of loyalty to her.  I sure as hell wouldn't trust her with my heart. 

One of the recurring themes of dreams I've had since the early 90s has been of Dana being owned by some mafia-type figure.  These have been varied with her giving herself over willingly as a sex slave.  I don't know why I keep having that dream, why I would in the first place, nor why it has been consistent.  For a while I'd had dreams that that relationship had ended.

Okay, where do I want to go with this?  First, I don't have any real-world reason for thinking anything of the sort about her, and I have no clue how this notion got into my imagination.  Second, I'm not attaching any claims of ESP to it.  It's probably some facet of my psyche that a psychiatrist would have a field day with.  Third, and this might be the most important, I no longer give a fuck whether discussing it would make Dana uncomfortable.

I'm fine with BDSM roleplay.  To a degree, I also sorta get lifestyle dominants and submissives.  It's a grey area, not to invoke that godawful book and movie.  Whatever one's sexual identity, I get and respect how powerful it is to acknowledge and own it.  That said, some of the lifestyle people raise some red flags for their attitudes toward gender roles.  Acting out power roles is one thing, but there's a shit-ton of genuine misogyny out there - from both genders.  Some of these people scare me with their very real hatred and anger.

I'm not a lifestyle guy. I did consider it at one point in my life, and finally came to the realization that it would not make me happy.  I'd be happy exploring it with the right partners, though.  Either role, top or bottom. 

I wanted to be Dana's lover.  Moot point now.  And it needs re-iterating, I have no clue who Dana is sexually.  Not her orientation, not her fetishes, not her prejudices.   Could be asexual or burnt out for all I know.  I always wanted to know, though, as far back as school.  That would have been heaven if I could have explored that with her.  For that matter, I wanted her to know that side of me too, wished she would have been curious to explore it about me.  So I will confess that as far back as Franklin I had a few fantasies about Dana as a dominatrix. 

What's curious to me is that I have never had a dream of Dana as a dominant.   Actually, that's not quite true:  I did have one.  I was in my bedroom, and she was suddenly there dressed in shiny black latex.  I got the stark imression that she wanted to shock me, to see how I would react...but that she actually wasn't in the frame of mind to actually play the role.  And when I lay myself on the floor before her, ready to submit, she looked embarrassed and disappeared as if she were physically backing out of the dream as fast as she could.  It was supposed to have been a provocative joke on me, and it backfired on her.

A few mornings ago I had a dream in which Dana was in my bedroom, in my bed.  I stood to the side as witness - she was being dominated by a man and a woman.  The point was to get a reaction from me.  The man was a cypher, not even described by the dream.  The woman was sitting on Dana's face, about to ejaculate.  The woman looked into my eyes, smiling, waiting to see what I would do.  I bent down to her, my face next to her cheek and said just loud enough for her to hear me, "Do it.  Do it all over her face."

The two  details that strike me aren't the obvious ones.  One is that I never actually saw Dana herself in the dream.  She was there but we never interacted.  It was abut her, yet my view was blocked by the woman on top of her.  It was this woman, a dream-creation meant to represent no one real, who seemed real - had a very real presence and sentience.  As if Dana were in the dream but playing the part of the woman presenting this scene to me to see what my response would be.   Would I accept or reject what was going on?  If you are unfamiliar with  it's important to understand that such acts aare consensual.  This wasn't rape, this was sex.  Dana was posited as a submissive, not a victim.  If you're not into BDSM, you need to be clear on the difference.  For that matter, if you are into BDSM then it's even more imperative that you know the difference.  Anyway, when it came down to it, I accepted Dana as a submissive.

Now, I've never fantasized about her that way.  That's not my fantasy.  However, it might be hers.  I mean, how would I know...it might or might not. 

Now I think of it, it echoes another dream from the early 90s.  I stepped into a highrise apartment, many stories up.   Gorgeous dominatrix, Asian, was in the living room.  There was a man there, also a cypher and of no importance.  I knew what was to play out - the woman and the man had Dana tied up in the bedroom and were preparing to use her in an SM scenario.  The dream didn't get further than the woman and I making some explicit overtures to each other.  Dana never actually showed up in the dream, but the presence of the other woman was palpable.  The upshot was...well, flirting with the idea that I would be invited to join in their roleplay with Dana.

Which, for a relationship as unhappy and screwed up as Dana and mine has been, that's a strange thing to dream.  I keep using the word uncomfortable. 

That's another point, I've never had a dream where she desired to be submissive to me personally.  Which of course makes sense,  people usually feel extremely awkward having people they went to school with know anything about their sexual personae.   The two dreams above are the only ones I can recall in which she was willing to allow me to witness or possibly participate. There may have been more, I don't remember (edit: no, there was a third I can recall, not BDSM but rough sex).  There have been many more in which she acknowledged to me directly that she was involved in BDSM as a submissive...and in most of those, she was unhappy for reasons she could not

communicate.  Mostly, it always seemed to be an obstacle to her talking to me.  Like, she was not "permitted" by her owner to contact me.  When I tried to set her free from her cages, she was either afraid to leave  or resented my interference.
Okay...my reaction. 

I wanted to be a lover.  I was only a friend, but there was a brief moment, a window I thought was open.  Shifting metaphors, my ship came in and then sank in the harbor before I could board.  But I wanted to be with her. I wanted her to think of me as hers. 

I'm really quite jaded sexually.  That doesn't mean I'm into everything, but I'm not judgemental about anything that is consensual and non-destructive.  Some aspects of SM I'm turned on by, some I'm not.  for example, being a Master doesn't strike any particular chord with me. "Owning" a woman - aside from the clear objection that no one, no one, is property - has never been attractive.  On the other hand...well, see, that's a hypothetical.  What turns me on is the woman's sexuality itself.  If something turns her on, I'm turned on by her response to it.  If a woman is submissive, I can happily walk her past her inhibitions until she is naked in more ways than merely physically.  B&D or rough sex, I get the catharsis it can be, the release - psychological, emotional, sexual.  I respect it.  Whatever gets her off is good.  I want to share it.  There are few things as powerful.

That's what sex is for me at its fullest: not the fetish, not the act, but the woman who can share the things that get her there as well as the need behind it.  That I respect.  That I treasure.  That takes courage.

Because I've been in love with Dana, and honestly because I am a human being with my own personal sexual nature, I wish that I could have learned whatever that side of her own nature is.  If she is the woman I've seen in my dreams, I wish I could have shared that with her.  I've never wanted to own her, but I would have responded to something so breathtakingly intimate and personal.  I'd have cherished it.  Whoever it is she is with the people she shares her sexuality with, I'd have loved that woman.

These dreams of her being owned have sparked mixed feelings in me, many of them negative...I want to think it's because the dreams themselves have been negative rather than the dreams being negative because I balk at her belonging to someone.  Jealousy is a factor, of course.  I loathe jealousy, I've been there.  But I don't want to think of her as someone who could ever be owned, I prefer to see her as autonomous.  Her sexuality is one thing, her life itself...I have my prejudices.   And like I said, most of those dreams showed her unhappy.  I want her freedom for her sake, but for my own as well. 

I'm haunted by the idea that she would ever agree to anyone telling her she must treat me as she has done, with such cruelty as she knows damn well she has inflicted.  Being told whom he can and cannot speak to, and her submitting no matter that it hurts people who love her...  Specifically, I'm disturbed that she might agree to such an order - some sick idea that she owes some Master  my pain, or that it is something she thinks she has a right to give...that she would betray someone who loves and cares about her for no better reason than that she was told to, out of some sick misunderstanding of what real loyalty is...  If there's any chance this is what has happened in real life, I wish someone credible would tell me so that I can get on with hating the soulless bitch for it.  It would be unforgiveable.  And if it did happen, and she has any hope of us ever reconciling, then she'd best lie her ass off about it.

Is this all some bizarre bug playing out in my head?  Is there anything to it?  I'd like to know either way.  I'm tired of these dreams.  It's mine to explore, and it's too bad I have to explore it alone.  I don't a shit anymore if it embarrasses her.  She might as well have always been a figment of my imagination.  She's certainly not a friend.

Bluntly, I'd like to know what makes her wet.  Leather?  Balloons?  Clowns?  Bath oils and cooing?  Dirty talk?  Men, women?  Something nasty, or soft, or silly?  Do fluffy bunny slippers get her off?  Whatever it is might not do anything for me but knowing that it pushes her buttons would.  I feel free to ask these questions now.  She chose for us to be aliens from each other.  She's not in my life, just a figment of my mind.  She's as remote as someone glimpsed in a foreign newspaper.  She's a poisonous, destructive muse.

My sincerest wish for her.  If there is anyone in life she actually has human feelings for,  someone she loves and trusts, I dearly hope that person treats her with the same selfish, cowardly cruelty with which she has treated me.  I hope that person  cuts her off cold, walls her out, and will not utter a word of explanation.  I hope her tears go unanswered for the rest of her very long, unhappy life, wondering why.

12.5 hours

Did something like 2 and 3/4 hours more, not including an hour of tweaking things here and there after I took this pic.  Taken with a camera and uploaded to an Asus T100, using limited editing so I couldn't brighten or sharpen.  Feeling rusty, and used multiple grades of pencil.

I've transferred the source photo to this computer, and discovered that the leather jacket details come across much more clearly.  Excellent, if the lead hasn't already made the paper too muddy I should be able to fix this and have something I'm satisfied with.  This evening I was working from the printed picture, which hasn't the luminosity of a screen.  I'm not happy with the shading yet of her abdomen, hence the constant tweaking (the closest I will ever get to tweaking Sharon Mitchell...)

Ugh.  the past couple of days have left me in a distinctly unsexy mood.  Like sex itself is a turn-off right now.  When I draw subject matter like this, my mind is on the work...but I do try to get a sensual feel from it when I'm done, and right now I'm looking at this and not feeling it.  The leather isn't there, the skin doesn't look warm. doesn't look smooth or fluid, I'm not getting a feel for the texture. Might be because I'm off my game, might be because I'm upset. I know I wasn't feeling it flow from the pencils, the real reason I kept switching.

The photo of Dana also is clearer on the Asus, I can figure out her hair more easily.

The pose on the 1/12th figure is being cemented in with the Milliput (first time I've tried it - so far so good) for the bones and joints and Paperclay to fill in the torso.

On my project with Jesseca, I've got a body (one of two) formed from polymer clay.  It just re-enforces my conviction that the stuff is not my medium, at least not my ideal.  It's solid but isn't modeling to the shape as well as I'd like...and as yet has no arms but for pipe cleaners.  I will add those after the clay that's on has hardened a bit...and the question now is whether to try to add the details of her clothing, or bake the piece plain and try to adorn it using the Milliput or some other putty.  I can always start over if it comes to it, but I hate to waste the material.

That's another important lesson in overcoming blocks:  Do NOT be afraid of wasting material!  I'm always gathering this and that that I think may be useful, and then never doing anything with it because I don't know how to get it right on the first attempt.  You can't learn anything that way.

Personal note - I'm trying not to think or feel anything.

avmonkey

That's the av I've been using.  I did a search on "Jacques" and found a guy who couldn't be the more perfectly stereotypical Jacques.  So I photoshopped in the monkey head, which took some resizing, tilting, flipping, a little blending and other tweaks.  Then I spent a while hoping the guy who's pic I used wouldn't run across it and feel insulted, until I saw a short by David Lynch and realized it was a character in a movie.

So that's me, "Jacques the Monkey".

Yes, this is an excuse to post.  Bad day.

******************

I'm trying to psych myself up to draw.  Finish the Sharon Mitchell, do a shot of Diane Lane that's made up of smaller discreet segments that are easy.  Not really a Diane Lane fan, but I liked the photo enough to tear it out of a magazine many years ago.  Trying to decide whether to finally finish that drawing of Dana or rip it up.  Or burn it.

******************

I'm trying to build again...in a mood for drawing, painting, building, too many things to do all at once.  Can't stay focused.  Not ballpoint sketching, though, not feeling that much.  Bad sleep, bad mood, bad life.  There's no happiness here, nor peace.  Just endurance, and no point to it that I can see.

I'm working on a project for Jesseca - her design, so I can't show it to you.  A ccouple of free-sitting shelf items, with bases that I'm working in plastic sheeting and strips.  They'll soon be supplemented with putty, though I have to test the putty on something else to get a feel for it.  I've read that this putty has a grittier finish than I want - the  same brand sells a porcelain finish which I'll probably have to get soon.  That's one part of the piece, the  second major section is getting a Pluffy core that I'll either use stiffer clay on or the putty.

There's another figure I'm going to try to do in 1/12th scale.  The hands are going to be so small, bet that won't be easy!  I've a full-length photo of the subject sized for study, and a wire armature with the correct pose standing in a wooden block.  I also have a couple of old Aurora figure kits in that scale, so I can study the shapes from there...though the models are simplistic and stiff, I hope to make mine more lifelike.   Must keep reminding myself it doesn't have to look any better than a beginner's work.  I hope  I can capture a likeness, and I want fluidity in the pose.  Not sure yet how I'm going to build the base for it...materials, shape, area.

******************

The last time Dana appeared in any of my dreams was...last October?  Whenever the hell the World Series was.  I remember that because baseball isn't my thing, and I wondered why it was a motif.  Probably Lucy Van Pelt and the football.

She had me tossing a baseball to her in practice for a game.  She stands fairly close to me, so it's not hard to get the ball to her hand...but because I cannot get it right into her very palm she never tries to catch it, will not move her hand or close her fingers around the ball.  While she doesn't voice it, her attitude is that I cannot get it right so she's unobliged to do her part in this exercise.    I actually start to believe it, too.  Toss after toss, she just stands there while I fetch back the ball to try again, feeling incompetent.  On the last toss, the ball went right to her hand, half in her palm and she let it fall away.  I fetch it back yet again, and  she leaves to attend  something.  She comes back almost immediately, sitting in right front of me to read a book and pretending I am not there.  Feeling ill done by I squat down before her, lay my hand gently over hers, and ask quietly "Are you ever going to make an effort to catch the ball?"  She refuses to meet my eyes, and I cannot see hers as her bangs hide them, but she lets out a wail of anguish and frustration that is almost a sob.  She doesn't indicate whether she feels bad for both of us or only for herself.  The dream held no hint of warmth toward me from her.

Hearing that sound from her made me feel bad for her then .  I don't feel bad for her now, just deeply used and insulted.

Dana, someday  when it's way too late, when there's nothing left to share, you'll hurt me again by saying "I'm here, I want you to understand what happened".  When you do I hope I have the self-esteem to close the door in your face.  There's so little left already.  You won't have an excuse in the world that will be good enough.  The only thing knowing you has brought me is hurt.


******************

Had a shitty night, and it's a shitty morning.  The farther in the day goes, the angrier I'm getting.  Trying to use that as an enticement to work on something, take my mind off it.  I might even know the issues she's dealing with but I can't say them openly out of some disabused notion of friendship or loyalty.  And I'm the one person she knew who would have been completely in tune with them.  Oh, well, respect goes two ways, and she threw away what respect I had for her.  It was more than she'll ever know.

It's not your secrets I hold in contempt, Dana, it's you.


******************

Jesus, I just did a search on Sharon Mitchell - I want to see if there are any shots of her I can get from any of her early 80s movies I can get a drawing out of - and found a link for "Sharon Mitchell obituary".  Fortunately turned out not to be her. Learned that her birthday is day before mine, if her bio is real.


******************

I just want an explanation from her at this point.  I just want to understand it.  There's not going to be a friendship.  Let me move on finally. 

"And if I've built this fortress around your heart,
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire,
Then let me build a bridge, for I cannot fill the chasm,
And let me set the battlements on fire."

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.