and then came the fat kids

These fat little girls are an illo for a story ...

cleanliness is next to godliness

soap; mixed media on canvas, 8 x 8 inches. The text is unimportant, because what we have here is a failure to communicate.

sheri's portrait

sheri by the sea; mixed media on canvas, 20 x 16 inches.

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My friend Sheri and I are doing a portrait exchange. Her version of me has some wonderfully dark drama to it, so I wanted this painting to have a narrative as well.

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And then, a wee movie.

the last of my tv junk food ('til fall)

Parvati Shallow (top) won the million-dollar prize on last night's Survivor finale (Fans vs Favorites, Micronesia). Which means that my girlfriend (ok, not really) Amanda Kimmel did not. This is confusing.

Amanda won challenges. Parvati didn't. Amanda was loyal to friendships and alliances she made within the game. Parvati was not (with the exception, ironically, of her "little sister" Amanda). Amanda demonstrated cunning and no small amount of acting ability, most notably when she blindsided Alexis with an immunity idol she was not supposed to have. Pavarti showed almost nothing but flirtatious guile when she used both James and Ozzy for protection during the first half of the game and then coolly discarded them when she found the safety of a ruthless all-female alliance (which spent a lot of time stirring and cackling over an imaginary cauldron -- I'm not kidding). And even then the game plan often issued from Cirie's mouth, not hers. Meanwhile, Amanda's scrambled and fought her way to the end; several times she won immunity when that meant the only way forward. And all this coming straight from her previous Survivor season in China, with only a few weeks in between, meaning a full 78 days of game play.

And yet still she lost.

Oh, the power of public speaking -- a talent for which my poor Amanda does not possess. In China she pretty well fell apart under the stress of the hard steps that come at the end (choosing who goes with you before the jury, then facing the jury's self-righteous vindictiveness), and here in Micronesia she didn't do much better, with that long face and those doe eyes of hers, and the propensity for tears. Instead of laying out all the great things she had done to get there, all Amanda did was try to explain the depth of her sincerity. Even if she had made a good job of it, there was no way the jurors would stand for her squeezing in on the immense amount of sympathy they felt only for themselves. So instead they gave the money to someone they (or the rest of us) didn't like but also someone who just shrugged and made no apologies.

Oh well. For three month's work and her two final appearances, Amanda's made at least $200 000, of which she'll keep about half, and that's more than enough to take some time off for a Toastmasters course.

it's always a shock ...

... to find out how deeply your town drifts in backwater kitsch. I won't get into it here, but let's just say the local arts scene is revealing itself as a stunning disappointment. Oh well. Meanwhile, I've got two things to put up on Etsy, one new and one old.

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not shy at all; mixed media on canvas, 10 x 8 inches.

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several hours late at night; mixed media on paper (mostly watercolour), 8 x 6 inches.

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At least these kids can always make me laugh. Boy, talk about your good-natured hijinks. It's electric! Watch the video here.

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Oh, and I have to (have to!) add this: a great interview with Michelle Butler Hallett, my friend and darkly talented writer. With a colour picture and everything!

in my mind, I'm sleek like a matador

splashing miri, pencil, crayon and pantone marker on Albanene cotton fiber paper, 7.5 x 8.5 inches. An illo for a story with a water premise.

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Yesterday Pinkey drew me this ... I think it's a gathering of super-villains ... we're hovering around, having a meeting, trying to decide what to inflict on the pathetic yellow planet below us.

don't look

Do you know what a Medusa is?, mixed media on canvas, 8 x 6 (by 1.5) inches. A small break from the string series -- instead some smaller canvasses, we'll see what grows.

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Clouds of midges anywhere near the water these days, you don't see them until they're on top of you, in your hair, mouth, ears. You get inside and shake out your clothes like a crazy person. Good, good times.

At least there's no bombs. This weekend I read Ruto Modan's Exit Wounds, the story of what happens when an Israeli man's father goes missing after a bomb blast. The story was compelling (the missing father had a habit of going missing anyway, making the son suspicious of his disappearance) and the drawing has a definite charm, done in simple line and a muted colour scheme.

dropped seeds

Lilly Wakes; pencil and crayons on Albanene cotton fiber paper, 7x5 inches. This is a pastiche of my own work -- an illo I did for a failed children's book). Hopefully this attempt is less mannered, more muted but still interesting.

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Spent the day being bothered by rain and people. It's been like that all week. At lunch I had to run downtown (in the rain) to pick up a painting rejected by the Kingston Arts Council's Annual Juried Art Salon (the one that did make it was the lesser of the two, I thought ... but then I'm always amazed at what people like). We were told to collect our work between 9 and 12 or 9 and 1, depending on whether you paid attention to the phone message or the website. I went at 11:40 and there was no one there. Eventually I had to go foraging for myself, rescuing my painting from a half-hidden alcove. No sign, no note, nothing to sign out. Professional! A big thanks to the recycling bin though, which gave up its plastic liner so I could protect my painting from the rain. Now I'm sitting at my desk eating cold pizza and warm coke. Life-affirming!

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This summer C was published in an anthology called Writing at the Edge. Recently The Danforth Review did a nice interview with the anthology's editor and publisher, Zsolt Alapi. You can find it here.

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And finally ... my Etsy shop is up and running again. It's going to be a place for drawings and small paintings -- stuff that is easily mailed and framed. I'll even throw in some aggravating correspondence.

karens

karens; pencil crayons on Albanene cotton fiber paper, 8.5x6.25 inches. For a story.

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C put a gun to my head and, after buying me dinner (I know, I could hardly eat for the shock), made me watch The Darjeeling Limited. A Wes Anderson movie, so you know the idiosyncrasies involved. It was okay ... a bit Wackiness Lite. The short film at the beginning (Hotel Chevalier) was the most interesting. And the song "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)" by Peter Sarstedt is worth the download. Oh, and Natalie Portman showed her bum off, which C made fun of (she's ruthless that way).

k in kingston

oceanaria; pencil and pencil crayon on vellum envelope (you can see the seams), 5.75x4.5 inches. Also: does everybody see two drawings and one photograph in the post below? Because someone is telling me different, and Google/Blogger has been known to produce ghosts.

drawings and a quicky mart

Miez; pencil and pencil crayons on Albanene cotton fiber paper, 8.5x7.125 inches.

Sheri (first study); pencil and pencil crayons on Albanene cotton fiber paper, 8.5x7.875 inches.

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Me and my buddy Martin, establishing a menacing presence out in the burbs.

montreal, then tagged

I went to go see a certain joker in Montreal this weekend. We had a nice afternoon together, just the two of us (mommy likes to nap), wandering the city, alternately motivated and fuelled by freezies and ice cream. Someone was even tired enough at the end of it to fall right asleep after the reading of a mere seven books.

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And when I came home I got tagged by Sarah (not as dirty as it sounds). And now I have to come up with seven "random or weird" things about myself ...

1) As a kid, I spent two summers at Ranger Lake Bible Camp. Our cabin 'counselor' would play born-again tapes at night as we tried to sleep, these profanity-laced stories told by chewed-up biker types about waking up bloodied and abandoned at the bottom of a ditch with broken needles in their arms and a sudden, inexplicable sense of Jesus in their hearts.
2) Sometimes when I'm painting I completely lose any sense of self.
3) I really enjoy chess and poker even though I'm not particularly good at either.
4) Growing up (with my six siblings), our breakfast was the same thing every single morning: cocoa and cereal.
5) I take a size 14-wide or 15 shoe.
6) I am a maker of lists; I think this is related to being a slow thinker.
7) I've often wondered, deeply, about my luck.

... and, to spread the love, I've tagged the following persons:

melissa
connie
michelle
cathy
kiddet
kim
alli

... finis.

bow tie

This handsome beggar is for a story I'm taking to group tonight.

we'll see what kensey says

the best news I ever heard (my entire life); mixed media on canvas, 24x24 inches, the string series continues. More portraits of people I don't know (or will ever meet). As only a slight departure, Sheri is next.

save yourself (from Illustration Friday)

Teasingly warm, almost feels like spring today. Just a few encrusted snow banks hanging around, trying to look grim. And with the end of winter comes the final death of Illustration Friday Night, a site that was very cool for that brief time when just the right community of talent came together, but then started to melt under the slow-burning heat of popularity and, by natural extension, hackery and vulgarity. Steve made the call today. All props to him for the slog and the success and the knowing when to go. For those of you who want to throw some dirt on the grave, the final theme is closure.

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Still, Illustration Friday Night was only ever the bastard child of Illustration Friday, and just because it hanged itself somewhere in adolescence (I'm thinking the garage might be nice, but in the basement over the ping pong table is pretty cool, too) doesn't mean the original daddy monster should stop marching blindly onward in its Leviathan-of-Kitsch manner we've all come to love/abominate (last week it had over 700 entries, for Christ's sake). This week's theme is save, so I went all out and drew the same kind of Jesus that we had in our house as a kid (my mom used to push us out the door to go to church and/or Sunday School while she stayed at home).

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Yesterday I put together a spring compilation for C ...

Your Heart Is an Empty Room, Death Cab for Cutie
Breathe Me, Sia
I Will Follow You Into the Dark, Death Cab for Cutie
The Man Who Sold the World, David Bowie
Over and Over Again (Lost and Found), Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Jonathon Fisk, Spoon
Connection, Elastica
Hips Don't Lie, Shakira
Stayin' Alive, Bee Gees
Work It, Missy Elliot
Beasts of England, Rejected Youth

... and as you can see, she likes the candy. But I always try to mix in some vitamins too, and as long as I don't label anything, she'll ask about the good stuff despite herself. (The cd is called, by the way, "My Husband Rocks").