Category: illo

Generally speaking, I don’t like small dogs. But there are more exceptions to this rule than situations where it applies. Like my misanthropism. In general, it’s easy to hate humans, but I am usually able to find something likeable about every person I meet. Usually.

Ham is the shop dog. He belongs to the manager of the place where I work. He’s a pug, supposedly purebred, but doesn’t really look it. He’s pretty leggy, and just plain bigger than purebred pugs seem to be. Of course, there’s more than one type of pug, and I am far from an expert. It doesn’t matter. Drawing him is difficult. The shapes that make up that squished up face are just a little baffling. But he’s so much fun to look at. So ugly! It’s hard not to laugh when looking at him. His walleye is just the cherry on top. He’s just over a year old, occasionally misbehaves, but is just so childlike and cheery. Add to that his goblin face and he’s just a pleasure to have around. And to draw.

I’ve been busy with things other than painting, like building my own guitar (which I’ll post about sooner or later), but recently got the itch to go back to a medium I haven’t used since school. Oils are a great medium, forgiving and gorgeous, but I had to abandon them after misusing them for too long. Just a whiff of linseed oil or turpentine would give me a headache. It’s been years since then, and the oil doesn’t elicit an immediate reaction, though the solvent still does. That’s ok, there are many alternatives when it comes to solvents. I decided to (re)start simple, using an old black and white photo (taken by Happy Traum) as reference.
John Hurt (often called ‘Mississippi’ John Hurt– as though he was the only bluesman from Mississippi– obviously the work of the recording company, to make him more ‘colorful’) was an amazing player. He had a complicated fingerstyle that sounded like 2 or 3 guitarists playing at once, and sounded very unique. Polyrhythmic. From the live recordings I’ve seen and heard it seems he was a very sweet man.

I’ve finished the painting of R.L. Burnside today, except for the last coats of varnish. It’s easier to photograph with this matte finish than it is with the gloss. This is a terrible shot, but I don’t have enough light to work with. It’s enough to tell what’s going on in the painting, anyway. I’m happier with this version, so far. I don’t think I’ll bother destroying it again if I start to hate it again. When I get better photos I’ll post them.

Last year I painted a portrait of R.L. Burnside for a local show. No you can’t see it. Really. I loved the piece when it was finished, and made sure to price it so high that no one would buy it, because I wanted to keep it. After the show I hung it, and about a month later was sick of it, and disgusted with myself for not being able to see its flaws earlier. You can’t see it because I destroyed it. I whited out the entire panel, determined to start again. We’ll see how it goes this time. I’m nearly done, and happy so far. Cautiously happy.

R.L. tells a story on one of his albums about how two brothers, an uncle and his father were all murdered in Chicago– in separate events– within the space of a year. Oy. I decided to use that to flesh out the portrait. Below is a sketch of a small part of the painting– of the death of one of his brothers. All R.L. says about it is that his brother was fooling around with another man’s wife, and that’s probably why he was killed.
My next post should be the finished painting.

So I haven’t updated in a while. So sorry. The truth is that since I started to learn to play guitar, painting and drawing have been sidelined a little. I still do it, but I’d rather play than post here. Nothing personal.
A year ago this March I started playing guitar. My first guitar I ordered online– nice and anonymous, didn’t want to be embarrassed showing off how little I knew about what I was getting into by showing up at a store and fumbling about. It was an epiphone les paul, a stripped down model they package with a tiny amp as starter kits. All told, I didn’t do too badly for not knowing a god damn thing. But it didn’t take me long to be lusting after something without training wheels.

I sold that guitar and its micro amp last summer, and bought an Ibanez Artcore AG75. It’s the model for the guitar the fella in the picture is playing. It looks smaller on me– maybe this guy’s not so big, but more likely I was thinking more of an 335 size. Whatever. The guitar is like butter, especially after I put ribbon-wound 11’s on it. Nice.

Wasn’t thinking of anyone in particular when I drew this, but it looks just a little like a young John Lee Hooker to me. It’s a rough sketch with rougher color– I don’t do too many preliminaries before painting, but it was a slow day at work.

In The Dictionary of the Khazars (a book I recommend highly), Milorad Pavic writes of a swordsman trapped in a cage of his own swordstrokes. I’ve been fascinated with the image since I first read it, and return to it regularly. I should probably paint it to exorcise it from my imagination.

The things that occupy us shape how we perceive the world– or at least, how we interpret our perceptions. This fellow may be imprisoned by his chosen path, but am I similarly snared, not by strokes of a sword, but those of a brush or pencil?

Yesterday was thumbing through the Vancouver Zombiewalk 2005 photos at flickr and wishing I lived in a city that would spawn such spectacles. There are at least two Zombie Jesuses in the flickr footage, which gives me a warm tingly feeling all over.

News of the zombiewalk made me very happy, and I spent a couple of hours drawing zombies, revenants, animated corpses, ghouls, etc. Drawing the living dead is fun and easy. You can be real loose and scribbley, in fact, often tightening up the drawing often results in cheesy over-realized cartoony zombies, which are not as much fun as the scraggly, torn and filthy shamblers who look as though they pulled themselves up through six feet of mud and sod. Deformations in shape and proportion are obviously the result of decay and the particularities of each revenant’s death, rather than evidence of lack of skill or foresight on the artist’s part.

I highly recommend it. Thinking back, it seems that I drew nothing but zombies between the ages of 13 and 17. Well, there was one other common subject, but those drawing were all shaky because I couldn’t hold the paper with my other hand because it was– nevermind.

I’ve got the “paintings for sale” section up and running now, see the right hand column. One of the pieces listed is this one: “Cogito Ergo Es”. That’s latin, loosely translated as “I think therefore you is”. Robert Anton Wilson quotes a philosopher whom I’ve forgotten in Maybe Logic, “All perception is a gamble.” He goes on to say that he’s amazed at “how often I can forget that in twenty-four hours.” Even still, I’ll bet he remembers it way more often than I do.