I Can Draw, Too!

Teachers vs Kids

2011-04-11T20:42:00.000-07:00

Here's something that's been sitting for a time, since January 4th, in fact, as I had forgotten about its existence until I began archiving posts from this blog onto my laptop. So, here it is:

As you may know from my previous drawings, I went to Special Ed because of my psychotic abusive dad steering me stupid, up until the sixth grade, whereupon I was rejected from school altogether.
` This one was apparently from the second or third grade, not sure which, when I had just started going to Garfield Elementary in Medina, Ohio. On the front of it is me and the 'retard kids' as we were known. Colorful descriptions below:

Yes, those were all the kids in my class whichever year that was. We were all separated from one another via wooden dividers around our desks, so it was much like going to school in office cubicles, only less cheery.
` I remember that Candace and Tim (who I called Tom for some reason) were particularly messed up, as was tiny little Alcid, who I remember was constantly taking Ritalin and coffee throughout the day, thus stunting his growth at night.
` There was Justin, which might have been the very well-behaved Justin Huffman, in contrast with Nick, the red-haired kid who was notorious for being even a little bit worse-behaved than me. One time he collaborated with me in escaping the classroom, although one time he also poured apple sauce with milk on my head.
` Jamie was a nice kid, but was cranky from sleep deprivation because of his seizures, one of which he actually had while the teacher was explaining this to the class. (It was Mr. Maglione, so that was in the fourth Special Ed Grade. I remember him saying, "See how Jamie is making those groaning sounds, that's because he's in pain from his muscles clenching up.")
` That got me thinking often about how terrible that must be, one's life randomly interrupted on a daily basis. One time in art class I remember talking to him and he didn't answer, and I looked up to see that he had gone all stiff, so I grabbed his arm as he fell off his chair so that his head didn't crash onto the floor.
` The wasp-like one was Sirrom Sturgis, who once punched me for having a crush on him (I was making kissing sounds at him). He was notorious for throwing chairs and things, and he once broke my friend Tiffini's nose near the City Pool one day. He had a brother named Ari, who ironically had a crush on me, as I found many years later after I had been rejected from school altogether.
` Then, there's Aaron, who was a good grade school 'boyfriend' until his parents changed his diet and he stopped becoming hyperactive at lunch as I did and instead retained his composure and gave me funny looks. Still, we played games on the playground as always... until he moved to Youngstown (or was it Ashland?), and I never saw him again.
` Later on, PJ (Preston James Cook), the video game-obsessed one, would later become my 'boyfriend', although thankfully that ended with the end of my Special Ed days. Wow, he turned out to be somewhat creepy, although his mom and sister were cool as ever.

In Special Ed, Us Retards had to contend with Those Evil Teachers, which I guess were actually aides for the most part. Mr Peterson, who was always hanging out with Nick, is in the center because he was Truly Evil. Really! He dragged me down the stairs in a laundry bag! HE'S EVIL!
` Not surprisingly, he was a volunteer from the Baptist Church... OF EVIL! I even called him and Nick "Mr. Penison and Nick the Dick," and understandably, the corresponding pictures were confiscated, many Xerox copies were made for all of them to see, and I was punished accordingly.

Mrs. Baton was small, with short black hair (looking kind of like Mrs. Teavee from that creepy Willy Wonka movie), while Mrs. Barlow had long black hair and a long face, somewhat like the picture, only not actually a beak. I seem to remember both of them putting their hands over my mouth until I couldn't breathe through the snot coming out of my nose.
` Mz. Mick was sometimes called the Hairy Egg, hence the depiction. I remember she was part of a poem I made up about her, Mrs. Groh, the Evil Misleading Counselor, and the fourth grade teacher Mr. Maglione, who I sometimes called Eee-ro-plane, for no apparent reason:

Mrs. Groh doesn't grow,
Hairy eggs are stupid,
Eee-ro-planes go 'round a pole
And are kissed by a cupid.

I didn't say it was a good poem, but bear in mind, it was fourth grade after all! Let's just say, it was much better than the one involving all of the swear words I knew.

This next drawing, done in fifth grade, was meant to be in the style of an Atari game called Food Fight, and I believe it was an accurate representation of the state of our classroom:

There was Justin, Tim and Sirrom, as before, as well as Chris Cepic, another kid I had gone to class with before. Ironically, so had Phil, the guy I lived with in 2005 when I had begun blogging. That was before Chris got 'Special' and started going to my class.
` Why was Chris 'Special'? It wasn't because he had the amazing ability to draw cartoon characters that looked exactly like the ones on TV (his favorite was Darkwing Duck). No, because that's a different kind of special.
` Apparently, he was known in Phil's class as Chris Septic, because he had a spastic colon. That makes sense because I do recall that Chris bathed only once a week and also had particularly bad and uncontrollable gas, which explained the smell on his side of the room -- I remember Michael Miner complaining in his high, nasal voice, "Oh, the sbell!"
` Thus, Chris was more Special because of his intestines, not his head. Ironic twist, isn't it?

Kara Higgins was the only other girl in fifth grade, and she was nicer to me than I was to her. Together, we were shunned by the teacher Ms. Kauffman, for being not only girls but retarded girls. She didn't care whether we did schoolwork, but she did have us clean the rabbit cage.
` Yes, Kauffman was bizarrely chauvinistic against girls. She didn't like when I drew pictures, but I remember her saying of one of Chris' pictures of Darkwing Duck, "I really like the expression" and she made an enlarged copy! I wonder if she taught her daughter, who she had with Mr. Porter (who had his classroom moved next to hers), to be dependent on men, or was it just us retarded girls?
` Derrick Goggins was the skinny diabetic kid, black with huge glasses, who won the spelling bee many times, and who also often cleaned the rabbit cage as well. (Maybe because he wasn't as manly as the other boys?)
` Betrias (which was how we pronounced 'Beatrice') was the rabbit of the class. PJ and I would sometimes stab her with the pencil and she would growl, and we would say, "Sharp enough for you Betrias?" We even came up with a song, celebrating what we thought to be aberrant behavior:

Neebols, neebols,
Where'd you get those peebols?
Lay 'em, spray 'em,
Then eat 'em all up!

We didn't know back then that rabbits normally eat everything two times in a row, so we just thought that Beatrice was one really messed-up rabbit.
` Oh, and I can't forget about Jason. Except that I almost have. I had to think really hard... Jason who? Oh yes, it was Jason Brasty! He was a muscly sort of kid with light hair, as I recall. I remember one day, his face was white as a sheet, and he was holding his wrist because he had hurt it falling off a swing -- and it was actually broken, so he had to go home.

The next year, I walked into the same classroom and the now-Mrs. Kauffman said to me with a scowl, "What are you doing here again?"
` Apparently I had been rejected from Garfield Elementary, at last, and so I eventually was registered at C-FIT (Child-Family Intervention Team) at 3076 A Remsen Road, where us kids had to put up with these abusive assholes:

So, who are they? The teacher, Roger Galbraith was sometimes reasonable, but his assistant Mike Swanson was really into playing head games -- as well as wearing the same 'Kent' sweatshirt every day.
` I remember I wasn't allowed to have more than one pencil, so he took all but one of my matching set of pencils. I remember somehow I got them back and put them in my bra, thinking that getting them back would be some sort of molestation, but I was wrong -- Galbraith fearlessly snatched them out again!
` Me, being obsessive-compulsive and needing my entire set or otherwise I would have an anxiety attack, could NOT stand this and so threw my remaining pencil across the room. He retrieved it, held it out to me above his desk drawer, dropped it into the drawer and opened his hand to reveal a small 'stub' of wood, with a little pencil lead at one end and a chewed-up piece of metal at the other.
` When the principal Anne Vaner came into the room, I told her about what Mike was doing, and he said, "Oh, I'll give you your pencil back," and then he pulled exactly the same stunt, right in front of her!
` Her response? "Wull, now, Sara, there's nothing I can do about it."
` I protested, "But you're the principal!"
` But, she just told me that I was in control of everything here, so if something bad happened to me, it was because I chose it to be that way. She even told me that this was the case whenever anyone sat on me! You know, they sat on us kids? They got shut down for that, but not until after my year was over.
` Anyway, not able to write with the stub, I eventually chewed it up beyond recognition and demanded my pencils back. Of course, Mike Swanson had other plans and gave me one of those giant rectangular multi-colored crayons and asked me to write an essay with it.
` Not only was writing very difficult on lined paper, nor could I erase, but now my writing changed color every couple of letters! What a bitch!

This kind of behavior is why I depicted him as being part swan and part doughnut, which was a bad word in my class, thanks to Bill "Master Disruptor of" Bliss. ("I don't want your cheap education, you Doughnut!")
` As for Mr. Galbraith's being a mushroom, that had something to do with this horrible, scary cartoon movie where these mushroom people wanted to turn this human into a mushroom person. I had a distinctly nauseated feeling for some time, and subsequent nightmares, so that image of mushroom people really stuck with me.

There were only two rooms in this end of the school -- one was our class and one was 'the other class', taught by Mrs. Hetzal. Her students were larger and more powerful, and frequently, she had to call the police on them. On the other end of the school, we were told, were much younger kids.
` Only once did I see any small children -- there were two of them rollerblading in the gym during some special event involving Mike pitching tennis balls and us kids lining up to hit them with a racket. I sent one ball hurtling up to the ceiling and it came down right on the girl's head -- whoops! That wasn't funny, but it was funny when me and Bill hit Mike in the head!

As for the others in the picture, they helped out with managing us retard kids. I remember Allison Rafter had us cooking our breakfast, and afterward we would be forced to watch some video from the other end of the school, such as Sesame Street or The Bedrock Flintstone Kids.
` They'd turn the lights off and play the tape, whereupon I would ask to go to the bathroom and then just stay there, because I wasn't allowed to go anywhere else. This caused a lot of physical fights and me getting pinned to the bathroom floor and sat upon, all because, as a twelve-year-old, I couldn't stand Big Bird or Little Fred.
` Genetta and Genine were mother and daughter, I think, and I called them "Flower-Faces", which I thought was a big insult since flowers are sex organs, and thus something like vaginas.
` Then, there was Steph, who I remember believing she had leprosy during a wrestling match with her, which really freaked me out. I don't remember who Lori (or Laura?) the Loris was, but I recall that Colleen was the counselor and I called her 'Colleen Chevrolet Used Horses' after the cheesy commercial for Halleen Chevrolet Used Cars.

You might ask, what did I do to all these adults that they were so cruel to me? Well, I would sleep in the bean bag chair all morning since I was so sleep-deprived, and amazingly nobody would stop me, and sometimes, just to get away, I would also go crawl through an empty window pane next to a door and hang from the door so that nobody could see my legs and just hide there.
` I would also get into all sorts of physical scraps with the 'teachers', and in one such scrap, I actually ran out a side door of the school, and whoever was chasing me actually fell over as I hung onto the door and then shut it and the door locked them out!
` It was so exciting to me that I wrote lists of things I could do, like this one:

Most of us kids were unruly, so we all had our own lists of things to 'get' the teachers. Bill Bliss was notorious for his antics, and there was Big Dave ('David Dovid Salad Pizza Face'), who was a real idiot, but not worth picking on because of his size. I ran into Dave many years later, though, who was the one who told me that the school had been shut down after I had been kicked out because of the abuse.
` There was also Little Robert, who was usually well-behaved; another unruly red-haired Nick; Amar, who was from the Middle East or somewhere; Jason, who could barely read, but who I wrote simply-worded books starring a bobcat cartoon character similar to the one above; Anthony, whom I called Anch; and I think another one called Luke, and maybe more.
` All of them were boys, and besides a couple of girls in 'the other class' for a short time, I was the only girl on that end of the school! Presumably in order to make me feel better the 'teachers' told me that the previous year most of the students had been girls, but seeing as this is very unlikely, I didn't believe them. I still don't.
` Assholes. Just look at them:

Again, there's Mike and his Kent sweatshirt, the Scary and Evil Mr. G, Anne (a real 'bitch' this time), the Flower Faces, Colleen (a used car-a-pillar?), Allison Rafter (so ducking silly!) and this other lady, Sue, who for some reason I portrayed as part crustacean, part construction crane, and part French bread.
` I remember once that Mike and Mr. G were laughing about how I had behaved in front of a hidden camera (which was so badly that I don't even want to tell anyone!), and also that Mr. G once crumpled up my Best Composition Ever and threw it away and wouldn't let me get it out of the garbage before I missed my van! The same thing also happened to one of my best pictures of 'them' -- better than that one, probably!
` I also remember someone leading me into the office next to the classroom and trying to get me to drink some medication. I think it was Mike who said that my mother wanted me to take it. In recent years, I told her about this and she was shocked -- in real life, she said, they had suggested medicating me and she had laughed and said, "I don't think so, and she wouldn't take it anyway!"

My mom also told me that they had said I was a "really bad kid" and could never amount to anything, and my mom told them, "I'll let you know when Sara graduates from college."
` You know what's funny, I'm 29 and still haven't graduated from college, but it's only because of all the abuse, torture and other unbearable experiences I've had to pull myself through -- no thanks to other people who were supposed to be helping me -- not to mention I didn't start college until I was 24 and had to put up with a lot of abuse during my schooling. So, I've had a lot of things slowing me down, but as it is, I only need five more credits before I can get my transfer degree!
` I'm so close to graduating from community college, and I'm going to see an adviser about transferring to a four-year college, where I can then Fully Graduate From College! Maybe then I can look up ol' Mr. G and Mike and gloat at them. Bitchez!

Copying vs Freehand (without visual aids), a personal history

2011-01-02T16:51:00.000-08:00

For some reason, I've never been able to draw freehand as well as I can from copying something in real life. It's always been this way for me, and I'm contemplating why that is because, well, I still don't know.

Two minutes after posting this, I realized that 'freehand' may be the wrong word!! All I mean is 'drawing without a visual aid'. Does anyone know a better word?

For example, when I was in first grade, the only 'real school' I ever had, I was given a blank bookmark to draw on, and for some reason, a Disney catalog, at the same time.
` On one side of the bookmark, I drew the talking Mickey Mouse doll from the catalog, along with Donald, Goofy and Pluto, who may or may not have also been dolls on the page, then added a stupid 'happy sun' and a rainbow.
` Pretty good for a six-year-old, huh?

That drawing was done, basically, by looking at the relative distances between the elements. Not only do I remember doing it this way, but there's also a comment among these papers from my teacher about my perspective-drawing ability; "Sarah draws what she sees, not what she knows -- table legs are longer in front and shorter in back."
` That is, indeed, how I drew pictures of tables in perspective, along with cars, and anything else that I was looking at.

But, in just plain freehand drawing, there is nothing to reference, unless you can visualize some picture just as vividly. I remember trying to do that when I was five, with an image of a rearing horse with wild purple hair, but I was never able to keep the image in my head long enough to draw it.

Moving on, let's look at the back of this same bookmark: I drew my own little scheme there, which unsurprisingly had to do with fighting and conflict and scariness, which were common themes in my life.
` Looks like the sun is freaking out because the duck pond with the winged frog is a battlefield for fire-breathing, laser-shooting cyborg monsters, which seem to have emerged from a most ominous cave.

Creative, yes, but the monsters are not nearly as well-formed as the Disney characters, presumably because I wasn't copying them from anything and thus, didn't quite know how to draw make them look realistic, which was usually what I was going for.
` I didn't copy very often, though, so I probably didn't notice this pattern back then.

Years later, when I was about 10 or 11, I was looking through a Christmas catalog at all the neat toys, and came across a photo of a puppy in one of the gift scenes. Since I was constantly drawing animals, I decided to copy it as closely as I could.
` I sat really still and did my best to duplicate the lines and the spaces that I was looking at, and the picture emerged:

That looks quite realistic, don't you think? At least, it doesn't look like a cartoon, which was how all my other drawings turned out, no matter how hard I tried.
` For example, this Mu-loo, a fictional animal I invented and loved to make look stupid and cute, could never have the realism I wanted:

It still looks like a cartoon because I never figured out what a 'real' Mu-loo would actually look like. In other words, drawings of real things could look so real because I was able to look at their real-looking-ness!

When the movie Dumb and Dumber was released in 1994, I was 12 years old, and I must have been attending the last year of my 'special' education.
` When I saw Jim Carrey's face plastered across the cover of Nickelodeon Magazine, I simply had to make one of my own in order to poke fun of him:

I was somewhat impressed with that, and so, I was always disappointed to find that the best I could do without a picture was cartoons! Here's a parody of the neurotic people who had abused me in the last year of my 'special ed':

I had been hoping for photorealism to some extent, but it seemed as though I were incapable of that. Was Jim Carrey just a fluke? Why was it so realistic?
` Later on, I drew pictures of animals, copied from TV and books -- here are the most boldly-striped species of the genus Equus, a somewhat artificial grouping, collectively called zebras:

I had trouble shading them, just because they're black and white, but otherwise, the stripes look 'correct' because I could just see how they went. However, I could not get the fictional hoofed animals, the Mu-loos to ever look like anything more than cartoons.
` Here, the Mu-loos have killed and stuffed their first pair of hunters, and have taken the hunters' trophies as part of their hunter-hunting re-enactment scene, with a 'hunter trophy' photo on the left, and at the table, Hunter Stew! (The end of the recipe is at top.)

That's pretty messed-up, isn't it? And I believe the two Mu-loos on the right are telling the story about how they bagged the hunters!
` Anyway, I tried my best to get everything looking like a photo, and once again, failed. I could never understand why sometimes my drawings looked fairly realistic and why they usually didn't, but at some point in time, I realized what the difference was.

Drawings copied from real life always looked accurate, because I had an accurate representation. But what of drawings from my mind? Apparently, my mind has just never been accurate.
` Today, at age 28, there is still a very marked difference between these two approaches. I wonder; is there any such way to stabilize an image in my mind so that a drawing from it looks like a drawing from real life? Would having a vivid imagination change that?

I can't say I've ever had a vivid imagination, because I was always being punished for thinking, for believing anything I saw in real life, and for playing 'let's pretend'. I remember always seeing the images in my mind shudder and warp, and for a while, I had none, save for dim memories.
` Perhaps that is the cause for this phenomenon? I don't know. I don't even know if psychologists have ever studied it, but I would be surprised if they haven't. Perhaps I will come across it someday.

For now, I'm just going to try training myself to see vivid images in my head, and we'll see what comes of it -- probably on this blog!

I Can STILL Draw -- and it helped change my life!

2010-12-24T15:17:00.000-08:00

I'm finally tearing through overhauling my life! It may not be going as fast as I'd like because of the enormous amount of things that I'm working on, but now that I don't constantly have crazy roommates to hold me back, I've developed techniques to finish things and a strong motivation to keep going, to the point where I have confidence that I can keep up with my goals!
` In fact, the Good Doctor Nociceptor's already written a bunch about this, which you can read here.

On October 19, long after my last post here, an amazing transformation has occurred in my brain. This one psychology professor, who finds me to be fascinating (presumably because I describe to him what it's like to pass through various stages of childhood development, as an adult) said that this transformation, or at least aspects of it, normally occurs in people who are only 2 1/2 years old.
` And to tell you the truth, I've gone through even more since then, but none so shocking as the first one I mentioned!

And what was it, and why is it significant? Well, in my past, I had a very terrifying and unpredictable life of abuse, and for a while I developed a fantasy life to escape. I'd been violated so much in so many ways and brainwashed to believe that I didn't exist because my own thoughts and perceptions weren't really happening and something else was instead.
` I hated humans, because I thought they were all horrible, and often imagined myself to be some small, furry, fictional gliding mammal, like this one:

They seemed a lot more interesting than the abusive lunatics that I knew and thought were 'normal, happy people' because I didn't know any better. I knew that animal behavior could be predicted and catalogued much of the time, but humans?
` They were always saying one thing, doing another, and telling me that what I wasn't conscious of wasn't really what I was conscious of. I was cut off from the world and everything in it... except for the fuzzy animals I liked so much!

Trying to survive in the adult world, after years more violation and abuse, and living with crazy people and trying not to jump at the slightest noise, I had figured out that earplugs helped me find my 'mental space' as long as I couldn't hear anything around me.
` For a while, this was nearly impossible because of the 24/7 loud noise I dealt with in the condemned house I'd lived in with all those crazy roommates and the fish tank motor that echoed throughout the house and kept me up all night. I literally lost my willpower and went back to 'survival habits' and low-level fight-or-flight consciousness. I was dead on the inside because I couldn't move away, and felt ashamed of myself for wanting to kill myself.
` At last, by October, I was finally living in a quiet house where people wouldn't be constantly invading my space and making me feel that my own room was their territory and that I had limited rights to it. It was my own this time, no one could take that from me.
` I had also come back to those feelings of escape and of self-identification, and drew another one of those gliding creatures:

And on October 19, I was thinking about all this, when my identity with the furry thing kind of clicked together, as if putting on a mask, and I 'turned into' myself! All or a sudden, I felt as though there was a boundary around my body, my personal space, the room around me, and the moon shining through the conifers outside my window.
` This abstraction has greatly streamlined my thinking and perception so that I don't literally have to look around the room to see what is there but can instead just remember it -- the room is 'just there' in my mind.
` Without the constant noise and space-invasion, I finally feel that the space around me will not suddenly change without warning as it has for most of my life. It's just my space. The objects that I call mine are just mine, and I feel a connection to them when I hold them in my hands.

It also helps me perceive objects contained within a space. When I think of a bag or a drawer with objects in it, or even an abstract category with items within it, I can picture it, rather than having to think about it in mental long-hand.
` It's really changed my life and everything that goes through my head is so much more efficient, straightforward, and less blundering. I also realize that I now rely on more assumptions about what seems to be certainly 'there' in the world, but at least I don't have to think so hard all the time to keep it 'together' in my mind!

Such are the human mental shortcuts that allow us to be misdirected -- but I greatly prefer them over mental strain!

My man, Lucas, is on his way to stardom! We hope.

2010-05-27T19:33:00.001-07:00

No, really! Lucas Ernst (a.k.a. Lou Ryan to his music fans) has been involved in three more projects as of late, all of which you can watch on this post!
` First of all, he stars in a surprisingly good short film, in which he shows off his acting ability, stunt capabilities, and, his Sex A-peel, all in the span of five minutes!

With all that action going on, including the special effects, it's hard to believe all that was 'thrown together' in only two days! That's why it's called the 48-hour Film Festival, and I think it's going to win some prizes!

Lucas also shows off his martial arts skills as the 'dancing janitor' in this made-for Microsoft Office 2010 TV commercial, by a different producer.
` Though it became viral on the internet and was favored overwhelmingly by the public, it only came in second place in the contest -- in other words, it still lost. No prize money for poor us! You know, something about 'production value' or some rubbish.

So, I'd say he makes a fairly decent sexy action star, as well as a playful, mop-twirling janitor genius. But, does he also make a good drugged-out loser?
` Well, view the trailer for a hopefully-upcoming TV show tentatively entitled 'Hump City' (which apparently shrinks during the embedding process) and decide for yourself!

Upcoming Pinprick Films Web Comedy Project from Pinprick Films on Vimeo.

Uncanny, is he not?

I hope this makes up for my having slacked off on this blog once more -- but you know, life has been excessively busy, for both of us! Luckily, that's mostly been a good thing.

What fun! Drawings from my abusive childhood!

2010-04-10T14:43:00.000-07:00

Hola! Qué tal? Boy do I have a huge art post for you! First, however I must say that I'm back in college this quarter, taking Spanish and am doing really well!
` My life is on track, and it's been two whole months since I've had abusive roommates stressing me out and occupying me constantly, which drastically had interfered with my ability to do school assignments.

Now it is so easy to just live my life! I am so happy now, living in a big house with a beautiful view of the sound, the best fiance ever, who is at this very moment on his way to film a TV show that he STARS IN called Dry Hump City -- and will also star in a hilarious feature film called The Boob, as long as it isn't picked up by Paramount!
` I also have the best cats ever, not to mention some easygoing roommates, and I'm planning going to go to my friend Ananda's Born-Again Trekkie Party tonight and be a huge geek!

It is ironic, then, that this art post takes place during my very first attempt at school -- that is, elementary school -- which only lasted until sixth grade when I had to be removed for 'behavioral problems'.
` These problems were assumed to have come from me, but as I well know, nothing could be farther from the truth.
` Now, having uploaded all the surviving drawings from my childhood, I was struck by how many of them from first grade alone portrayed what had been going on back then.

In this first-grade portrayal of my family and an anthropomorphic dog, can you see who the problem was?

It's very obvious. That's supposed to be me in the red dress, and it appears my mother and half-brother are protecting me from my dad -- look at their arms! I had heard about this exact thing happening in abused children's drawings, but I thought that might be reading too far into them until I saw this!
` As for the animals in the picture, that is one of our pet birds on my mom's shoulder (either Robby the robin, who loved my mom, or a starling), and what I used to call a 'half dog-half man' apparently being reluctantly pulled away from the rainbow.
` The okapi was evidently added when I found this drawing a few years later in a box, apparently because I would have rather had an okapi around than an anthropomorphic dog.

By the way, other drawings of my family show my mother being all by herself on the side and looking worried. Why was she worried, and why were they protecting me?

I think this says it all:

My dad put me through this all the time. He'd give me rules, and regardless of whether I'd follow them or not, he would punish me brutally. Even worse, when I would cry, he would start laughing at me, and finally, I learned to laugh when I was terrified of what was going to happen to me.

Did anyone at school think I was being abused? Well, it's clear I had serious behavioral problems:

'Twirling', 'hiding under desk', 'singing', 'bumping head', 'difficulty following directions', 'not paying attention', 'don't want to do it'... not only did I have ADHD, but it was ten times more difficult to function because I was terrified to follow anyone's directions since at home that always led to punishment that I couldn't escape!

I remember once being in the principal's office and I was so afraid of what my dad was going to do to me later that I started looking up at the ceiling and laughing. The principal, Mr. Leher, was so angry that he slapped me in the face!

I just wanted to be left alone!

I could not stand to see people who were happy to be with one another. Most people didn't like me and I was jealous of their happiness with other people, and constantly felt abandoned.

I wanted to kill other people who were happy and doing well. After my own family birthday party (I wasn't allowed to have anyone unrelated to me over), I was treated like garbage.

I just wanted to destroy everyone and everything.

I remember years ago reading Mrs. Padais' comments about me in first grade, which included the phrase; "Baby thunderbird crying because a monster ate parents." It must have been referring to this drawing:

What can I say? I saw other families being portrayed as having the parents being there for the kids. Not so for me -- my dad found every excuse in the world to punish me, and my mom seemed to agree with him, though sometimes she would protect me instead.

I was pretty suicidal as well -- I remember contemplating trying to kill myself by throwing myself down the stairs when my dad walked by. I told him I felt like I wanted to kill myself and he said everyone feels that way sometimes.
` I said, "Well, I feel that way all the time!" I thought if he was really my 'parent' he would ask why, but instead he called me a liar!

Nevertheless, my 'thunderbird' tried pretty hard to kill himself.

Needless to say, I felt trapped. Unfortunately, other people didn't seem to notice.

Also, I stopped using color in my drawings around this time. Why? I really didn't see the point in it.

It was a sad time, and it only got worse when I was moved into Special Ed, where the principal, Mr. Leher (who ironically followed me from 'normal school'), would also play a role in more physical abuse, i.e. helping Mr. Peterson drag me down the stairs on my knees, and then blaming me for getting hurt.

In fact, my life just got worse and worse over the years, between being abused at home and at school, and I had no real friends. Then, I was taken out of school and abused at home, full-time, and by then my dad was a psychotic mess.
` During the day, my parents would go to work and I would be alone, obsessing over whether my dad would kill me as he often threatened to when he got back home from work.
` At night, he would often keep me at the dining room table, sometimes until sunrise, telling me how awful the world was and how everybody was out to kill him, including me and my mom, but that I didn't remember trying to kill him because I was crazy.
` He told me that my mom killed her own father, and all kinds of other terrible things, so I grew to hate her until I was seventeen and she told me that my dad was crazy. I didn't have anyone to compare him to, but I somehow knew she was right, so I stopped believing him and started trusting her.

Was that the end of my problems? Far from it. In a way, my life still got worse from other things, especially being literally tortured and locked up in a place I thought I would die in.
` I was treated like an idiot for needing emotional support and abandoned by almost everyone, including 'therapists', my mother and my so-called boyfriend, who was utterly unaware of what I was going through, but still bought me an elaborate engagement ring despite my refusal to have a physical relationship with him.

So, for needing to straighten myself out, I was treated like I was weak and stupid and for years I just shut down. I felt that I wasn't tough enough for 'the real world' when really, those other people had no idea what I had been through and what it was like for me to have chaotic terrible thoughts racing uncontrollably through my head and no happy memories to fall back on.

I finally started to care about myself and taking control of my own brain in late 2005, and since then I have been working very hard to construct, for the first time ever, some happiness and order in my own thoughts.
` Since my crazy roommates (and other low-lifes) are finally gone as of this year, this is the first time my life's struggle seems to have entirely paid off.

It has been a very long journey. And now I live in a wonderful house, with a wonderful man, who is driving off to shoot a TV show as I type this. Probably next spring I will be attending the University of Washington to become a science writer.

Who knew this could happen? I would never have guessed.

There are more of these drawings, including non-depressing ones (which I'll get to next time) in the First and Second Grade Set on my Flickr account.

More Corrigendopedia illustrations... I mean, 'drawrings'!

2010-03-23T21:59:00.000-07:00

I told you I'd be back!

I've just been, you know, busy with college and then other web projects that have higher priority than this one. Yeah, that whole thing. And life, too. I just saw my friends at the library for the first time in weeks!

But, enough about little old me! Let's look at what else I have on the Corrigendopedia so far!

This is one of the first drawrings I put up on the Corrigendopedia; an ostrich turning his egg.

It is the illustration for the page Fast Facts and Trivia: How much of it is true? (Not much, it turns out!) It's extremely fun, if lengthy, and... let's just say, I learned more about ostriches than I ever thought could be true in my dispelling myths about them.

This 'drawring' is a harvestman or 'daddy longlegs' arachnid.

As with the ostriches and other things, I similarly learned much more than I thought possible about harvestmen (Opiliones), and all about their poisonous secretions on two glands above the mouth (it's not venom, though).
` I talk about them as well as people who have inferiority complexes in the article Opie-WHAT-o-knees? Arachnids and my personal struggle for 'just the facts'.

It's also fun. And neurotic. It'll make your ears bleed.

My final drawring for this post doesn't have an article yet, but it's about the time one of my instructors started telling the class all about pi, and then started talking about how it's the Golden Ratio, which is actually phi, so I tried to tell her they are two separate numbers, but she didn't believe me....

The ironic thing is, she was touting this book The Golden Ratio: The story of PHI, the world's most amazing number, and she was holding it in her hands, and it had a picture of a phi (along with phi-filling) on the cover and she didn't realize it!

How humiliating!

Luckily, the next day at school, she realized her error and reported this to the class. I guess you could say it was one of many 'corrigenda' I did at college, but it was the only one with such a positive outcome.

She was so cool!

As I've mentioned, the article that this picture goes to has not actually been typed in and properly written yet, but I have quite a bit of it on paper!

That's basically all I have on the Corrigendopedia for now. These drawings and their respective articles can be found in the section 'Is that a Fact?', which I am currently organizing and building onto, and may be a lot more complete in the near future.

Next post... I'm doing those drawrings I drewr from childhood! And I'm not doing them by age-group either, but instead, by subject matter.

More Drawrings for the Corrigendopedia

2010-03-07T22:20:00.000-08:00

Ah, my Corrigendopedia project! 'Correct yourself' is the idea behind this website of mine. It is supposed to encourage people to think for themselves, so they shouldn't take my word for it!

One article, which has been partially deleted, is about the UFO hoax pulled off by Chris Russo and Joe Rudy. They liked the article so much that they actually emailed me!

To see how these pictures and more, and how this web project of mine is going, a good page to stop by is How To Figure Stuff Out, And How Not To! I don't have much there, but I'm hoping to delve into the meat of it within a month.

Tons of new old artwork up on Flickr!

2010-02-16T16:45:00.000-08:00

Life's been crazy as usual, but I somehow managed to get some old, old artwork up. And I mean old, starting with my earliest education, which ended here at first grade!
` As you can see, this was a class assignment of my imaginary encounter with the Easter Bunny! Hells yeah!

Not to mention, photos of what's been going on in my life, including my fiance Lucas' concerts (that's him on guitar)... that concert was with Johnny the Freeloader, now another X-roommate, who got up from his drums twice, in the middle of a set, to go get intoxicated!

That's all I have here for now, as I really have to go do more important stuff than blog. But rest assured, I'll be back here because part of the reason I've been not around much has been all the crazy crap going on, which is over with! Thank deity!
` Go here for links to Flickr, that stuff, including blog posts about what's been happening!

Illustrations for The Corrigendopedia!

2010-01-25T15:21:00.001-08:00

For months, I've been making illustrations for The Corrigendopedia website, and... how could I not display them here? Lookit -- here's the title page heading!

Another illustration, which was going to be like a banner at the top of each page (because there's a section for that on the new layout), I finally decided to put in the Corrigending the Corrigendopedia, which is a record of all my updates for the site.

Also, don't forget the 'drawring' I made for the Preface back in August of my 'dedicated' face.' Cause I'm so dedicated.

There are more illustrations already on the site, which I will display in future posts. For now, I ought to fill you in on what's been going on since my last troubling update:
` We got the 'circus' to run away from us -- and you'd know that if you'd been keeping up with my other blogs.
` Basically, we pretended to get ourselves evicted so that the crazy roommates would stop trying to retaliate against our efforts, perhaps even after they had left, and finally the Crazy Couple and Drunk-O have left, once and for all!

Which reminds me; I'm due for another journal update on Science, Wackmobiles and Spurious Brainchildren, as well as Introspection of a Struggling Mad Scientist, but since I haven't made any 2010 updates here at all yet, I figured that updating this one first was more important!

Hope you enjoyed, and there's more where this came from (like The Corrigendopedia? Duh!). Also, there is a lot more of my artwork and thousands of fun photos you can get lost in on my Flickr site -- here are all my sets!

I'll be back soon!

Can you believe this circus?

2009-12-11T04:36:00.000-08:00

Just when I thought it was safe to relax, disaster has struck me once again! Our psycho roommates are really making no sense and are terrorizing me and my fiance Lucas! No, really! And one called the police on Lucas for hiding from him! I wrote about it on another of my blogs!

Whooo hooo! Now I can blog again!

2009-11-27T14:16:00.000-08:00

That's right - I've been offline for a while because I haven't had any personal internet access AT ALL - the best I've been able to do is write stuff on paper, then find a computer to use and type the stuff I wrote into it. It REALLY SUCKED. But now, with my new laptop, I'll be able to upload photos so easily and I'll have tons more new posts on all my blogs!

Be back soon!

How many rabbits do YOU see?

2009-10-24T14:50:00.000-07:00

Over a month ago, I uploaded this picture to my Flickr account, then promptly forgot about making a blog post with it, for which I profusely apologize. I originally drew this for Thom Lee's art class back when I lived in the ghetto.

The object was to draw a rabbit and make it look like it was going fast. I drew my rabbit in the act of catching a bullet while at the same time running faster than two other abnormally-fast rabbits. I also used certain design techniques which add to the illusion of motion. I hope that much is clear.

I was also careful not to put the three rabbits going in a straight line, because one technique of creating the illusion of motion is to do just that. To make sure the rabbits looked distinct from one another, I made the one catching the bullet lightest in color, the rabbit on the right looking more like a hare with black-tipped ears, and the rabbit at the top is supposed to be a mini-lop.

So, imagine my surprise when Thom Lee put it up on the wall and asked the students how many rabbits were supposed to be in the drawing.

Most of them saw three, but some of them only saw one rabbit drawn three times! I failed to do what I set out to do, and thus got this comment:

That's right. I got a 3 on this project because I was unsuccessful at making my three rabbits look distinct-enough. That one I did not expect!

Night of the Living Dodo!

2009-10-07T22:16:00.000-07:00

Sometime in 2007 I was reading a book all about... Dodos! And it had lotsa pictures. Dodos went extinct in the 1500s, so there's no photos of them, but people did think to draw a few pictures.

And then you know what I did? I drew pictures of the pictures they drew. Brilliant, huh? Many of them aren't that great, however, the head in the upper right was drawn by a naturalist or some such who had a dead bird in his lap before it was butchered and eaten, so he had a very good model (as opposed to after being butchered and eaten).

secondhand dodo sketches

Also, the lower right hand one is copied off of this painting by Cornelius Saftleven, which you can compare with here:

I call that dodo 'Flaky'!

Of course, bones have also been found, so I lightly sketched the articulated skeleton of a dodo, then drew some flesh on it.

dodo reconstruction

Many years ago, I used to read all about dodos (Raphus cucullatus) which were large, flightless and supposedly fat (at least part of the year). Dull in color, they had greenish bill sheaths which were apparently shed each year (like 'Flaky', above).
` People who messed around on Mauritius didn't like to eat them, which must have been why they kept pigs, who did. Supposedly, pigs eating the dodo's eggs was what really finished them off.
` Dodos were also of the same family (Raphidae) as similar birds that were boring brown instead of boring gray, called solitaires (unsurprisingly also extinct) who lived on the nearby islands of Rodrigues and Reunion.
` The males had large clubs on the ends of their wings, for fighting and for rattling against their sides as a display. They also had petite-looking bills, looking more like the smaller relatives of dodos and solitaires; pigeons (which are the same kind of bird as doves).
` To be precise, dodos and solitaires are of the same order of birds as pigeons (Columbiformes), though pigeons are a different family (Columbidae). That's about all I remember at this point.

Anyway, I highly suggest that you see what's going on in my other blogs - Lucas has his own TV show, plus I have a year's worth of photos up on Flickr, and I'm organizing my Corrigendopedia website. There is something wrong with you if you don't.

A few Sketches of Silliness

2009-09-05T23:08:00.001-07:00

So much for adding content to this blog during my break! I have, however, been diligently kindling The Corrigendopedia site, and hopefully it will soon blossom into something super-amazing!
` Unfortunately, I'm going to have to take a week-long break from the Corrigendopedia because I'm going to visit my mommy in Georgia, for the first time evar! However, I may still manage to update this site because I do have a post in the works.

Anyway, as for my sketches, from around the winter of 2006 and 2007, I drew a few silly things you may enjoy:
` First of all, Evil Monkey outside of my closet (from last post) had a funny idea. Though I'm far from being a believer in "grays" (especially after I turned one purple during a sleep paralysis episode), I couldn't resist drawing it as a tribute to Steve Irwin.

gray irwin

No, Gray Irwin, you don't want to mess with Dr. Nociceptor! She'll turn your ass purple!

I also had a funny idea, but I had no idea where to go with it.

dam nation

'Tis the plight of the industrious beaver, I suppose, but look! You can see the next drawing through the paper! It's a little more amusing....

Have you ever heard of the Anime called Sailor Moon? Well, this is her cousin, Whaler Moon! "In the name of the moon, I shall harpoon you! For great justice!"

whaler moon

Drat! Now I have that song stuck in my head... "We're whalers on the moon, we carry a harpoon, hi ho the dilly-o, we're whalers on the moon!"

Argh!

Anyway, I'll try to put my next post up in a few days, while I'm still on vacation.

Sketches of My 2006 'Night Life'

2009-08-15T17:31:00.000-07:00

I was going to post this earlier, but I absolutely had to finish my library book before I could let myself off the hook. So here I am to dote on any faithful readers left with some more of the artwork I wish I could have posted at the time I'd drawn it....

Way back when, hanging out with friends was a welcome distraction to ghetto life. And what better way to distract oneself than to hang out with some unusual humans - including Cheshire Human!

cheshire human cat

She lives in Victoria now (Canada) so I don't see her too often anymore.

I recall we went to Castle quite a few times with X-Dan (elf) to see the drag queens, and more often than not I would wind up severely mangled. Somehow.

miss something

Today, Castle is no more! I wonder where they all went? Bye Rusty! Bye Fendi!

drag queens

Oh yes, and we can't forget this creature... it's TallGuy! Also known as Stephen.

evil monkey

...As opposed to the evil monkey in my closet... he's another story.

Anyway, that's my spectacular post. Tomorrow I'm going to make a post for Corrigendopedia. ... I think. I'd better check my schedule. Yes, I have a schedule for keeping track of which blog posts I should do and when, I just neglected to take it with me.

Scout's honor.

Now that school's out I have time to get on the internet each day, and I'm not going to schedule posts to go up in a few day's time. That way I can get a regular routine for being online and won't let myself skip days.

I remember what happened when I let myself skip one day at the gym. I got massively sick from sitting-around-induced constipation.

That's what I said. If that's what it was. Searing pain. Up. To. My. Esophagus. And I almost passed out because I have hypoglycemia and couldn't get my blood sugar up. And all because I didn't go to the gym one day and my habit counter reset to zero and I forgot that I even went to the gym each day the next day and then missed gym the next day....

So here's my point; I'm not often able to go on the internet in one day, so if I try to set up a habit and it's broken the next day because I just can't get on the internet, I forget that the habit is supposed to exist. That's how screwed up my mind has gotten. It's kinda scary.

Similar with electric piano, I haven't played in so long because of all the complaints I get. They can't hear me playing because I'm wearing the headphones, but the noise that the keys make when they move up and down causes vibrations that travel through the walls until I get yelled at for banging on the walls.

And the guy who yells at me the most is the only person in the house who I want to yell at for banging on my electric piano and turning it all the way up so everyone in the whole house can hear because we all think that sounds awful.

Anyway.

Food-buying time. Got to go.

When I frequented Denny's...

2009-07-20T18:49:00.000-07:00

My computer is SO LOUD. Turning it on jangles my brain. Like a vacuum cleaner. Thus, I only use it to upload pictures. However, I have no excuse for being late with these, as I had uploaded them months ago.

I just haven't been online much. Also, I had for a second time established a regular internet habit when, just like last time, the internet went out and the habit quickly disappeared.

Imagine that. Struggling to start an internet habit.

Three years ago, I really needed to cut back on the internet habit... and that's when I drew these pictures whilst at Denny's. I just didn't have the technology to get them online. So, here they are:

peoples at denny's

If you actually check out the Denny's photos I took with my Crappy Digital Camera way back when on my Science, Wackmobiles and Spurious Brainchildren blog, you will be sure to recognize Dandruff (or X-Dan - he has since given himself a new, better, flaky and powdery nickname but I don't remember what it was) as well as TallGuy, Wendizzle and Xenophon.

Below is the terrifying... Nymphomaniac! (And her seven-pointed star of lust!)

evil nymph

And, to keep her evil powers at bay, it's my pal and yours....

jesus

He's not really Jesus, though. He's just White Jesus. He's still pretty cool, though. He works in mysterious ways.

Oh yes, and as I recall, X-Dan wasn't dying. He was just being a sissy. Though he was indeed going to hell in a handbasket. But at least it had flowers on it.

hell in a handbasket

Nympho likes the nose. It's good eatin'.

I got to go, as I am currently engaged in a conversation with Johnny about the above pictures. Apparently Nympho is hot and I must get her to be seduced by him. Business as usual.

My triumphant return... Release the Cyborg Puppies of Doom!

2009-07-01T09:06:00.001-07:00

I've had interesting stories about pets, but this is the first time that it turns out a human has effectively peed on our carpet and counted on us to blame it on the cats.

Just earlier, Lou Ryan was leaving a phone message for his lawyer brother that went something like this:
` "Is it illegal to pee in a cup and then empty it on someone's carpet in a malicious manner? One of these days, I'm going to consult you about something normal...."

I'd say, that's life as normal for us. Onto my drawings...

...Back from 2006! It's Dr. Nociceptor, and she's anxiously pacing, which tends to stir up her mechanical henchmen.

restless nociceptor

Yeah. What's Nociceptor so restless over? She just may be worried that her Cyborg Puppies of Doom are going to get caught by the mean old dog catcher....

puppies are coming

Aren't they so sweet? And they're much better-trained than people who pour bottles of piss all over your house the night before the landlord comes... and then later on that day when your friend brings over his dog.

WOW. Right?

Even worse, B-Gangsta screamed at me and Johnny for hours on end, like this:
` "A cat can't pee all over the house in one night! How could you not notice one puddle, then another, then another? The whole house reeks! You're a bunch of pigs! You can live in a piss-filled house, but I won't tolerate it!"

Just because of this territory-marking, the cats haven't used the litter box since then - even though the carpets are now cleaner than when we moved in - they only use the great outdoors now.

Who would do such a thing?

It's John who works at Gold's Gym, apparently retaliating for us kicking him out for his meth consumption and making meth-pipes in the Man Shed. If his boss were to read this post, he'd have some explaining to do.
` Probably won't happen: My blogs only seem to be read by people who live far away from here, though a couple of locals have read them at least a few times.

Yeah, pretty fucked-up, isn't it? We also found some of his piss in a Smirnoff bottle in the downstairs bathroom.

In other news, don't forget to check out Lou Ryan is Killed by Psycho-Bitch With Gun, a post containing a short film which was made in 48 hours. It also has the rest of Crypticon Idol on it, too, featuring Lou Ryan as Pinhead, except for the live show from June 6. I don't know if that one's going on YouTube, but I'll tell you if it is.

Clumsy sentence structure. I have no time for such silly things as editing.

Crypticon Idol! I'm in it, too!

2009-05-14T18:09:00.000-07:00

But really, my boyfriend is one of the stars, Pinhead. The makeup was pretty impressive for that - a work of art in itself!
` The ads are really a series of American Idol spoofs, with Pinhead, Carrie and Jason as the panel, judging people on the basis of their screaming abilities. Anyway, please check it out. I'll love you forever!

Drawings of people back at the ghetto apartment

2009-05-03T09:01:00.000-07:00

I know I wanted to show you my drawings from back when I first moved into the ghetto apartment, like the comics I just posted. Well, how about a few photos from people I drew who stopped by the ghetto apartment?
` Though B-Gangsta lives with us now, he used to only be our most frequent visitor.

B-unitt

Lou Ryan's world-traveling friends... all in the same room at the same time before going back to their respective countries. No small feat!

travelin' 5

Looks just like a photo I took of them, too!

Here's a former co-worker of Lou Ryan when he worked for that awful man who didn't know anything about construction and was always telling everyone they were taking too long, even when they were busting ass.

Rex

He wanted that page so badly, I had to make him another drawing!

Next time, I'll post some more interesting stuff!

It's Next Time... More Comics!

2009-04-24T04:30:00.000-07:00

Amazingly I am back from my travels just to stop by and post this... it is inspired from actual events that took place from back when I lived in the Nautica Apartments in 2005 - from which I took some awesome photos of the naval base and sunsets and sunrises, etc. with my Crappy Digital Camera. (Ah, I remember the Crappiness!)

This really happened, and yes, that's a real song I made up. Click for a larger image.

first nociceptor comic

I'm sorry EdgeWalker! Or not. I'm not sure. The guy in the top panel is Larkin McIntyre, the Neo-Nazi that I also wrote about because he was so crazy.

In the second comic, we are very much more towards the present (at that time), which was after I had already moved in with Lou Ryan. This would, then, be the stalking phase that didn't really occur just before that. The drool, however, is accurate.

nociceptor spies lou

ISN'T THAT THE SEXIEST THING YOU EVER SAW? And so, of course, when you find yourself obsessed with a man, the next thing you must do is get his attention....

nociceptor confesses love

Is that not the most f'd up thing you've ever seen? And I did that almost three years ago now! Oh, and I even made another comic... it's a flashback from Dr. Nociceptor's painful childhood - which also happens to be my painful childhood as well.

young nociceptor

Wanna know something cool? The actual real-live dinosaur statue is the same as the one underneath the red dragon in this charcoal drawing I did when I was about nineteen. (Honestly, I didn't know what else to do with it!)

charcoal drawing

I think the dinosaur, which I made whenever Scipionyx was discovered, has since gone into a storage shed which my mom is planning to loot soon. Maybe she'll say 'hi' to it!

Lou Ryan Comics, and Dr. Nociceptor, 2006

2009-04-20T06:05:00.000-07:00

In the past, I have mentioned my comic strips and other more recent artwork from my Red Sketchbook. Among the first was the comic strip I had drawn to promote the next musical performance by my newly-discovered boyfriend, Lou Ryan, as per his dictation.

I told you he was a superhero.... Click the images for a closer look.

Lou Ryan 1

Oh, Sledgehorn! Now you've done it!

Lou Ryan 2

Gar... the last panel looks a little... off, but on the whole I thought it was cool.

As I recall, I went with Lou himself to the copy machine when he put together the first page and the top of the second one onto his promotional fliers. At the actual show, he had additional fliers revealing what our hero had accomplished.

As it happened, making these also helped to renew my own comic strip presence... a parody of 'The DNA Store'.

pain

It looks a little wonky, partially because I drew it while practically leaning against a mirror - this very mirror in the tiny 'closet' I had lived in at the time.

mirror of mirror

The reason this photo is called 'mirror of mirror' is because it's actually flipped backwards so that you can see the room the right way around - yes, that was my whole apartment!

You can read more about the post from which that came right here.

As for now, I have - yes! - more comics! You'll see. Later.

In-Class still-lifes year 2000

2009-04-14T11:06:00.000-07:00

Looks like this post has been scheduled two months too far into the future, so that it did not come after my previous posts about the art class I took in 2000. Hence, the large gap in timing of the posts.

So, let's get to it: These still-lifes, unlike the ones in the (supposed to be) last post were done at home, these were done in the actual classroom. Back in 2000. So I was like 18 or something.

But, before we got to draw anything interesting, we had to do the Styrofoam ball!

sphereofdoom

And don't forget the cones and cylinders!

styrofoamofdoom

Next, we moved onto actual textures. I was so happy to get a seat by the shiny ducky.

shinyducky

I remember being really pissed off because so many people had smeared this one all to heck, and I could only re-draw the parts that were shiny, while the other textures I wasn't so able to re-capture.

I also had - and still have - a stuffed toy pelican wearing a beret named Pierre, a.k.a. 'Pel'. Or, if I was drooling on my shirt, 'Peppykins', as I've had him since I was two. And then I sent him off to an alien planet... the Tri-C classroom!

pierrepelican

If it looks wrong to you, tilt your head to the left. Even so, it may still not look right. And strangely, I think the photo looks better because it came out a little blurry. Weird how that works.

Postcards I've sent this past winter...

2009-04-05T17:17:00.000-07:00

...And was too preoccupied to upload them here. And yes, my photo hosting website had in fact disappeared and so I was obliged to find another one.
` Nevertheless, here they are... this first picture is a double-whammy - a postcard of an Ambulocetus I sent to my aunt, and one of Vada I sent to my mom (to complement the one of Violet).

vada and ambu

This one is more like a 'mirror-image' whammy... I sent this one to Galen (G-man).

galen postcard

I drew it whilst being forced to serve as a designated driver, which I was very upset about considering that, for the millionth time in a row, I had been disrupted from just sitting down with hot cocoa to do a bunch of things I really needed to do... I thought I'd written about the whole thing, but don't see it on any of my blogs.

Anyway, the next one is one of those giant, plant-eating birds whose name I forget.

jake postcard

Oh yes, and I was also forced to draw this one for a relative of Lucas who is a fan of tortoises and apparently likes it when I draw caricatures of us as them. I just don't understand that sort of thing....

turtles

Anyway, got to run. Not supposed to be online, but as I'm loading up photos for someone else I thought I'd upload some for myself....

Just Touching Base...

2009-03-23T00:41:00.001-07:00

Life's been kind of insane, even though it's just after finals week. And next quarter starts on March 30th! But fear not; before then I'll be back with more stuff. I just need to upload it is all - along with a whole buttload of photos.

Assuming my photo hosting site is still in working order. (It's been kind of a while since I've been there.) I have hundreds of stuffs to show off!

Me and Inanimate Objects, Year 2000

2009-03-03T06:04:00.000-08:00

Once again in the art class I took in Cleveland nine years ago we got assigned to draw many inanimate objects. Upon doing a study of an egg carton, I became angry at the eggs for insulting my drawing of them, so I stabbed them all to death.

Luckily for us all, they were already dead.
destructiontoeggs

And then I got better at letting my subjects stay intact long enough to draw a decent picture of them. This is what happens when I put together an apple, a lemon and a banana....
crazyfruit

It's looking at me!!

Saving the best for last... my mom's dining room table (in the crappy dining room I grew up with), the evening when my mom invited her friend Rosie over for homemade soup!
homemadesoup

"Holy sh**", right? When I first pulled this drawing out of the portfolio, I thought to myself, "Oh my lanta, I completely forgot I did this way back when!" So, for the record, I remember now!

This was more like it...

2009-02-27T21:02:00.000-08:00

Reasonably... yes, I hope this is reasonable! It's been a week since I had intended to post this....

Anyway, back in that class in Cleveland I took in 2000, we also got to do portraits of one another - this time, real ones, rather than crappy contour ones!
` This one is of John and his awesome shirt.

johnandpeople

The next day, it must have been, he was drawing me more, and so I was drawing him drawing me....

johndrawingme

Then, using more sophisticated techniques, I got to draw Chad. Except... it was kinda dark, so it looks more like Coppertone Chad!

artstudentschad

And of course, that's the lovely hardwood in the house I live in currently, and I don't know for how long. Maybe just another year or so - we're in the process of suing our Crazy Landlady for being so... crazy.

Anyway, got to split, so until next time... do other stuff!

Art assignments back in 2000

2009-02-17T21:00:00.000-08:00

Oops - it's been five days, not four! Really, I lost track of what day the last one was up. Anyway, in this art class of 2000, they made us do those dreadful things called 'contour drawings'.
` The one below, of a student named Jasmine, was done without lifting the pencil from the paper... or at least that was the way it was supposed to have been done... but I really couldn't leave out her eyes!

contourjasmine

Then one day I guess we were doing sketches. It looks as if Jasmine (ponytail) was drawing our instructor, Nancy.

artclassroom

Looks as if I drew Nancy, too!

Nancy

And that one looks like... the unfinished and Jerry-rigged* kitchen I grew up with, crooked cabinets and all! It's either late at night or early morning, and I can almost register the flickering of the fluorescent tubes above the sink....

kitchen

Wow! Just clicking on it and looking at it full-size gives me the willies!

While the coil of wire hanging from the ceiling is not in view, I can almost make out the ugly blue textured wallpaper on the left behind the hanging cutting boards and the old salt and pepper shakers on the microwave!

Hmm... was the paint above the stove blue or orange? I don't remember.

There's also the teakettle on the stove, Amy's food dish on the floor, and in the left-hand corner there's a thing that says 'Olives' -- that was the cover on the blender!

And, while they are crudely rendered, I recall that right by the blender was this little shadow-box full of thimbles, while across from that by the gaping chasm in which the fridge hid, was the octagonal plate with a recipe for blueberry-orange muffins.

During my bizarre shut-in life there, I kept having delusions that the little painting of muffins, blueberries and orange pieces were actually kittens. But then, when I'd get close enough to see it clearly, I'd get kinda sad that they weren't kittens.

Enough about the silly kitchen! I'll be back... reasonably!

*Jerry = my PsychoDad.

The Art Classroom in Parma (Cleveland)

2009-02-12T18:56:00.000-08:00

Since I was taking an art class at Tri-C back in 2000, I also drew pictures while actually in the classroom.
` This seems to have been the very first one, and mostly done for the purpose of testing out my conté, crayon.

artclassroom

Notice that in this still-life, I just had to include part of the class.

setup

And in this drawing of part of the class, I just had to include... part of the class.

thedrawers

I have entitled it, 'The Draw-ers", as in "Those Who Draw". Anyway, I told you I'd be back in four days. See you in four more!

Less back in time...

2009-02-08T06:12:00.000-08:00

I still have many drawings from around 2000-2001, some of them quite striking. This one I call 'Inaccurate Narwhals' because it portrays two male narwhals fighting one another with their delicate, sensitive tusks.
` In real life, these whales actually use the tusk as a sensory organ, of all things, and even as tool to groom one another!

inaccurate narwhals
Yes, that's my foot, from when I took this photo recently.

The next one is just a regular ol' contour drawing except it's gigantic and features Dole bananas. I did it for the drawing class I took when I was 19.
` Woody... narwhal tusks... giant bananas... why do I get the feeling I arranged these photos with an intent to plant subliminal messages in people's brains?

weirdcontour
This one was another class project, where all the students went out of doors for once, in the sunshine, where we were surrounded by the Ferocious Tri-C geeses, beaks glistening red... from the berries they were eating.

geeses at tri-c
Also around this time I took one of many trips to Ohio State University and drew a really bad sketch of some friends of Phil's. Remember him? No? Don't worry about it.

mike and aaron sober
The badness of the sketch was really a result in my hurry to make up for this one, which was rather better:

mike and aaron drunk
On that same day, I also had drawn one of myself in the dorm's bathroom mirror. I never really liked it, but I thought it was kinda cool because it looks like Beethoven.

self portrait
Sorta. Well, that's all for now. Be back in about four days. I promise!

Way back in time...

2009-02-04T20:49:00.000-08:00

So I didn't make it back by Friday - mostly because my internet was down and has continued to malfunction for most of the weekend. As it has just came up again tonight (at least for now), I finally remembered about all the artwork I had uploaded before.

This next piece I did around 1994, when I was twelve years old.

Much like the drawings I'd made of still frames from Jurassic Park, I also did about 500 drawings from The Lion King, though my parents stopped me halfway through the movie (the last drawing takes place just prior to the song "Hakuna Matata").
` While I used many of those images to make calendars, I also made one very large drawing and colored it in with watercolor pencils.

I remember that I traced the middle of this image (baby Simba, the front of Sarabi and Mufasa's paws and chin) directly from a frame in the movie and then used other frames as references to add on more of Simba's parents.
` As you can see, it has my old insignia at the bottom.

Lion King age 12
I didn't know it at the time, but this is an example of fan art, and I supposed I'd had a similar idea to the one much more recently portrayed by Nido at Lion King Fan-Art Archive.
` That's right, this is not a frame from the movie, but rather it is a more sophistomacated, movie-quality fan art piece, which also does not represent a frame of the actual movie.

The next year or whenever, I received the Toy Story game for Super Nintendo, and I decided to make a very large drawing from a tiny image of Woody - I think it was being used for page numbers.

I began the enlargement process by drawing a 1-millimeter grid over Woody, and a 1/2 grid on the paper, but it wasn't as simple as just copying via a grid:
` Crucially, the original image was facing the opposite direction, so when I reversed it for the drawing, I also had to reposition Woody's sheriff badge, gun holster and even the spots on his vest so that they weren't 'backwards'.

I know, a lot more work went into it than was necessary. I guess when I was 13, I still had a tendency to challenge my brain sometimes, despite the hardships I had faced.

Toy Story Woody
The 'low-down dirty rat' was added to make the drawing work once I realized I didn't know what else to do with an oversize... er... ah... Woody.

For reference, a picture to demonstrate that yes, the Woody I'd drawn was indeed not backwards!

That's all I have for now, but next time, hopefully this weekend, I'll have something yet different up for all to see.

It's Monday...

2009-01-26T20:46:00.000-08:00

...And I've just uploaded a crapload of art - eight posts' worth, in fact!

The below drawing was adapted from one of my many sketches of dinosaurs from the movie Jurassic Park, which I did when I was about 12 years old.
` The autograph, however, was added by paleontologist James T. Kirkland a few years later when he gave a talk about giant dromaeosaurs - it reads, "To Sarah; My raptor is bigger than Spielberg's raptor!"

Of course I couldn't spare a precious Velociraptor adaptation, so a T. rex had to do....

jimkirklandautograph
I actually did about a hundred sketches from the videotape of Jurassic Park, paused on some particular frame or other.
` This adaptation, however, was only done while looking at the sketch, not at the actual movie frame, so it's probably a lot less accurate than the sketch was.

For reference, below is a frame of the movie that is similar to the one I worked from back in 1994:

I also have here a drawing someone else did of me (obviously) from the side. That was done back when I was first loading my SEO Blog onto Science, Wackmobiles and Spurious Brainchildren....

By MB
In fact, a note of this is made of the post in which I announce the completion, where a stunning photo of myself in the Cascade Mountains with the artist ("Jonathan") has been placed.
` You should check it out!

Be back Friday.

Binder O' Art - 5 of 5

2009-01-23T13:49:00.000-08:00

It's been five days since last post, not four, because I'm now updating this blog every Monday and Friday. Remember that!

Now, we've been through all three sections of my Binder O'Art, so what could possibly be left? Some elaborate little contour drawings stuffed in the pocket, that's what!

As with the other drawings, I was nineteen when I drew these. The first drawing was done in pen and traces the elaborate lines of a metal trunk - which I still use for storing things like science magazines - as well as a zebra rug and a leopard-kind-of print footstool.

(Oops, there was a shred of paper on top when I took a picture of it!)

outlinedrawing
Ohmgosh, my Psychopathic Dad bought me that trunk! I feel weird having it after all this time.

This, I think, is even weirder. It's a statue that PsychoDad actually painted red and gold. He also said that he carved the teeth and tongue in, but I've seen identical dragon statues with the same mouth since then, so I know he must have been making that up.

creepychinesedragon
The dragon statue can also be found in this elaborate charcoal drawing, which at least has the right amount of empty space!

This next drawing is a contour representation of the top of a dresser I used to have. About six blue ribbons were pinned on the wall, to accent the Outstanding Plaque in the middle of the dresser.
` It's propped against a particularly hideous little box my dad also bought me, since the giant metal one was not enough to win over my affection.
` On top of the box, we have... that armadillo-shaped ocarina! In fact, both the paisley box and the wicker one and the ocarina are three of the texture rubbings in this pic! Anyway, I thought the ocarina was a hideous thing, so I painted it to look hip. Or like a deranged mime.
` And it seems to have been wearing some kind of necklace, perhaps with one of those Celtic designs....

dressertopoflongago
The stuff that's blocking most of the 4-H plaque is the jungle balls box, with a beaver skull on top. It looks rather odd because it's partly-shattered (thanks to PsychoDad) and thoroughly painted (to protect it from PsychoDad), and because I used it as a toothbrush holder.
` Just to the left are a pair of purple granny glasses, armless but not useless, and a bottle of this stinky stuff that someone had given to me as a nerve-calming agent.
` I'd never gotten so tense over a smell in my life - I remember that spraying it in my room was so disgusting to me that I had to go sleep on the couch!

But I didn't just draw still life, as you may know - sometimes I did semi-still life! Remember, the slumbering cat I was so fond of drawing? Katie girl! I miss old Katie!

katiecontour
What a great cat she was! Always by my side, posing frequently for semi-still life! (Or would that be more like a portrait?)

Well, I'm afraid that was all I found in the Binder O'Art, but I have photographed plenty more of my artwork, both old and new, so I'll continue to have more great posts lined up!

Until Monday...

Binder O' Art - 4 of 5

2009-01-18T05:44:00.000-08:00

This is the section entitled: Sketches. As you can see, there are... sketches. Three of them, as one would expect.
` But these are not just my average Sketchbook-Type Sketches, they're what you call 'higher end'.

Remember, I was nineteen when I did these.

First up, it Leonardo DaVinci... by... Leonardo DaVinci, copied from a tiny sketch from an encyclopedia, of which I included a bad reproduction of for comparison.

LeonardoDaVinci
Below is a ten-minute sketch I did of the very tall salt and pepper shakers I grew up with. Standing proudly in front of them, a glass holds a rose, despite the fact that most of the rose has already fallen apart. Silly glass!

Saltandpeppersketch
But how did the rose fall apart? I swear, it was the Kitchen Fairies!

Creepyfairies
I'll bet they're in league with the Underpants Gnomes!

Now, there is one more post left in the Binder O'Art, and yet Section Three is the last section of drawings. What could this fifth post possibly contain? Tune in next round to find out!

Binder O' Art - 3 of 5

2009-01-14T06:13:00.000-08:00

Leaving off from last time, this is the section of the binder entitled 'Gray Areas'. The first drawing, for example, is, well... blurry for some reason.
` If you cannot tell, it is a Box O' Meditation Balls, casting a shadow on a piece of wood, which I had cut out and pasted on another piece of paper.
` They somehow emit a very low-pitched ringing, almost like a church bell, and for this reason I called them 'Jungle Balls'.

JungleBalls
Jungle Balls, Jungle Balls, Jungle all the way...
'Round my palm, I wish I had those jungle balls today....

This one is called 'Crunch N' Munch of Doom. That's right. Rich, buttery doom! With caramel and peanuts, to boot!
` But why is it full of doom as well? Because... I had never bought any before that day. And when I did... it was all hard and stuck together in one continuous monolithic slab. Of doom!

crunchandmunchofdoom
Even better, there is a little white spot at the top where an art instructor actually hung it on the wall with a tack and took photos of it so she could use it in a slideshow for her classes. How cool is that?

What in the heck?
collage
Whatever it is, it is certainly not rich or buttery!

Back next time with more!

Binder O' Art - 2 of 5

2009-01-10T19:23:00.000-08:00

Okay, I lied: I've been gone from here for five days, not four. That's because I've changed my updating rounds (already!) so that I post on this blog after Sci/Wack/Spur/Brainchildren instead of before it.
` However, it didn't work out quite that way, anyway, as you can read here.

Anyway, here's the promised first section of this Binder O'Art. This is the one entitled 'Stark Contrast' and here's the first picture for that one... well, it came out a little (okay, a lot) blurry.

OutdatedOutlet
It's called Outdated Outlet, because at the time - remember, I was seventeen - I was helping to remodel a part of the house I lived in, which later became an apartment for a girl who I recall was dramatic and easily frightened, and talked as if the rules did not apply to her.
` I hope she has improved as much as I have.
Anyway, it was about time we replaced those things - looks like 1940's work!

This here is a drawing of a dragon sculpture I had molded out of paper, and was more or less wondering what to do with it. It actually did stand on only its two left legs, just as it appears, which I consider a great engineering feat for someone who didn't know much about sculpting.

MyDragon
It's pictured here, unpainted, on a light board, which is why I thought it would make such a good example of a contrasting subject. However, it frequently fell over and broke into several pieces, necessitating me to keep gluing it back together with clear nail polish.
` Finally, I just decided to paint the whole thing with various colors of nail polish (so it wouldn't break so easily) and later on gave it to someone who really liked dragons.
` However, I never did see it wherever he lived, and he kept assuring me that he had it somewhere, so I guessed that either he did not want to take it out of its box, or it had broken into pieces once again and he didn't want to tell me.

This is just a silhouette picture, which, since I tend to draw positive and negative spaces equally, was a simple matter.
` And, just for added drama, I left the transparent parts gray. Much better!

PositiveNegative
Pictured is a creepy star and moon tea candle holder, which I never did use, a candle belonging to my mom, and her little pewter dragon statue, which I still have.
` Somewhere around here.

Anyway, I've got to go for today, but the next one will be posted in four days... as long as I keep my schedule in gear!

Binder O' Art - 1 of 5

2009-01-05T06:16:00.000-08:00

As our house has been ever-changing since October, I'm glad to say that we've finally rummaged through everything there is to rummage through. One of the things I've found and put away in a secure location is... a binder.
` But it isn't any old binder. It's a three ring binder. And its contents aren't just any old sort of paper-like things... it's some of my artwork from when I was about 18 or 19 and took an art class at Tri-C.
` It even has my old monogram!
Incidentally, it wasn't until 2006 before I learned that my initials are actually S.E.H. rather than S.E.E.H. Thanks for not telling me my entire life, people who named me! (By that time, I had already been writing as S. E. E. Quine for over a year.)

So, which one's the 'real' S. E. E. Hazel? I'd say, all of them except the one in the middle of the paper, which I threw in just to placate my mom.
` You may notice that it doesn't quite 'look right' and that is because one half has an evil grin while the other has a look of utter contempt.
` That's right - evil, demented, alien, werewolf, and '4,000 mph' are actually more accurate portrayals of myself. No matter how much my mom disapproved of them.

Inside this three-ring binder are only three drawings each of the categories above - Stark Contrast, Gray Areas, and Sketches, though there were some others that were stuffed into the binder's pocket.

One of them is below, and only now do I realize that this picture is a colorized version of a sketch that is actually older than the others.

I was about 17 then. So, what's going on in here? Did a wormhole open up in my living room?

Strangely, I do remember what it was because my PsychoDad was arguing with me about it. (I mean, really, he argued about everything, especially my intentions.)
` Because of a very rare miracle of unaccountable origins, I was able to make him see that no, it's not a caricature, it's just my reflection in a Mylar balloon.

Hate to do this to you, but that's all I'm going to reveal for now... Next time, I'll post the ones called "Stark Contrast".

Be back with that in four days! In the meantime, keep an eye on my other blogs as I make my rounds! (Hopefully.)

Formerly Blank Postcards

2008-12-01T21:46:00.001-08:00

As I am on speaking terms with a lot of my family, I sometimes throw them a little correspondence, and lately I've discovered the joy of those special postcards sold at the post office.
` Why are these so special? Well... they're blank and I'm an artist. Why do you suppose?

I think Violet has a good enough answer; "It means that Mommy will sit still long enough for me to pin her to the chair!"

holdmommydown

In all seriousness, 'Gramma' definitely enjoyed this one:

postcard

My half-brother, I'm assuming, liked this one also, though I haven't yet heard back from him since I started on my 'sending off all my old postcards' craze at the end of September.

view

I have to add - since I drew this by actually looking out the window, I have to admit how tricky it is to draw a scene all while the weather keeps changing. At least it's easier when you buy special leads for your mechanical pencils.

Moving on, I haven't yet sent this one but I'm not sure I want to....

disturbing

It's just... a bit disturbing, don't you think? I'm sure she'll have a good laugh and be happy to see something come in from me.

Anyway, as it's just after ten, I promised myself I'd go off to bed just after posting this. I have a loooong day ahead of me on my second day of work - I'm leaving at six and won't be back until eight at night!
` So excited!

P.S.: Here's the exciting conclusion to this post!

Back when I had a head of long, matted hair...

2008-11-28T13:04:00.000-08:00

Personal grooming issues aside, I had once intended to make a video parody of what's going on in the country, which involved interviewing many random people. For this project, I thought I'd carry around a little notebook in which to write my 'results' in. You know, as a prop.
` The only problem was, I had absolutely no idea of what was actually going on, and didn't know anyone who could help me. So, I was stuck. But hey, if I really was going to do this project, my little notebook sure would look better if I got out my watercolors and painted across its corrugated surface.
` So, I painted... me.

Still having no ideas about what to film, or what to talk about, I then painted the back.

Still being of no inspiration, the inside has remained blank over the many intervening years. However, while I was moving into the new house, I found the still-unused notebook and photographed it on the new hardwood floor, propped up on my feet here.

It looks like I had a tan at the time, but in fact I was simply sitting in a darkened room with lights shining from behind my head.
` Jeez! Sure feels good to have gotten rid of all that hair!

Happy first day of Christmas Shopping Season!

Good again!

2008-11-27T09:57:00.001-08:00

Job training starts Monday. Until then, I'm going to post some art... and I have so much... but first, let me take care of some very important eating I have to do. Come back tomorrow for something amazing!

I'm a bad little girl who is being grounded.

2008-11-24T18:59:00.001-08:00

From the internet. It's not like I'm on here much, or even every day. Not even to do these really easy little art posts.
` I'm just not allowed to go on because... well, I already explained it here.

Hope to be back soon!

A whole new level of weird... noch auf Deutsch!

2008-11-18T06:26:00.000-08:00

In the last post, we saw how I apparently had gotten some kind of strange mail-in German education about ten years ago (in the days I don't really remember). In my loneliness, I had littered my 'homework' with drawings of the MIR Space Filler, Gourdy.

But you haven't seen the half of it.

Though this is a rough sketch, it heralds in the ominousness... Was konnte vielleicht zunächst geschehen?

Abbruch und Brand!

Ein kleiner Witz, vermutlich vom Buch!

Gourdy: "With what do you stir your coffee?"
Jitters: "With my right hand."
Gourdy: "That's funny. I use a spoon!"

My confusion: innate or brain damage? Mindestens ich denke, der ist, was ich bedeutete. Nicht eine sehr gute Übersetzung, zwar.

Und jetzt, reisen wir zu Yoshis-Insel! (SuperNintendo war mein nur Freund.) Auf Yoshis-Insel, Yoshi, das der Dinosaurier um Mario trägt. Jedoch ist Mario ein Baby, und die Dingos versuchen, ihn zu stehlen!
` (Okay, the dingos weren't the ones trying to steal baby Mario... it was the Magikoopas!)

Dieses ist, wohin wir durch Nazis gejagt erhalten! Schauen Sie! - Hitler ist Baby Mario, und die Yoshi Dinosauriere sind alle Nazin!

Die Zahlen bedeuten, dass Baby Mario Hitler aus Zeit heraus läuft. Wenn er ist, swoop verrückte Reptilien unten und stehlen ihn!

Schließlich ging dieses weit aus meiner Reichweite heraus.... Übersaurus Rex?

Glücklicherweise speichert Fräulein Plarg den Tag! (Hey, there's a math book in that explosion! Also, Jitters must really need his coffee....)

Sie töten alle Nazin und die verrückten Baby-Mario-Brüder! De blud! And de guts! And de blud!

Baby Mario und Luigi schauen nicht gebegeistert. Keine tun die Nazi-Yoshis! Krocketschläger?!

Erklären Sie mir, dass nicht dieses nicht geisteskrank ist! (Oder. mindestens seltsam!)

Aaaaanyway... that was weird. Told ya! But it was much better than Part I.

Oh, and as for old Übersaurus Rex, at first I thought the idea had been all mine, but out of curiosity I Googled the name and sure enough... he is right on the spectacular, movie poster-like cover of Samurai Cat Goes to Hell, a book I don't seem to remember reading.
` Unless it's that one where he slices the heads off the Cerberus, which are replaced with even more, smaller heads, to the point where there are thousands of tiny gnashing jaws and a very horny character wades into them and says, "This is deeee-lightful!"

For some reason, I guess, the image of that broccoli-headed dog really sticks in my mind. You ought to check that book out! Of the library, if you can find it!

Heilig Scheiße! Was ist dieses? Sprach ich einmal… Deutsch?

2008-11-14T19:33:00.000-08:00

Not only that, but I knew I had ADD back then, according to these papers. Like, how could I forget learning German or the fact that I had very severe ADD (not so bad in recent years, now that I found out about it and have gotten help).
` Like... wie kann das vielleicht geschehen? How can you just forget something like this? Well I suspect I didn't actually take German lessons anywhere but rather mailed these things to someone who spoke German!

That's a different story - I can tell this by the way the papers are all folded in the same way as they would go in an envelope! Aha!!

Other than that, the only sure thing I can say is that I had apparently gotten reasonably well at drawing Gourdy, who I had often employed as the MIR Space Filler back in my teenage years.

I also evidently had a lot of fun with German words that I learned. Here are some which are supposed to have some kind of double meaning, or else with meanings that I made up, as evidenced by the illustrations:

What does all this mean? I'm not 100% sure, but this is what I think I must have meant:

StereoUnion, LandBread
TouristBox, WonderPlan (evidently a deviant AI)
VideoBasketball, CityDoor (bigger than the skyscrapers!)
RoomHotel, MineralCard
NorthSea Ostrich, StudentMarket
CheeseLamp, DishDwelling
FlowerWater, FishInformation (don't get caught!)
TrafficCoast BeachRecorder (remarking on said beach's talent - the 'shale' may be a play on words to mean 'flat' in German, but I'm not sure)

Oh, and it looks like the MIR Space Filler, meets a that curly-eared girl. Where have we seen her? (Oh yes, that's Plarg!)

Even stranger, these papers for some inexplicable reason reveals that I had once gone to a chiropractor because my atlas (top) neck vertebra was twisted to the point where it was difficult to move my head.
` How did that happen? I have an idea; before I was 23, I didn't know that relaxing my muscles - in a way that doesn't have to do with going to the bathroom - was even remotely possible.
` I'm serious.
` Anyway, now at least I know to go to a doctor if I have some kind of spinal problem. And as you can read below, the chiropractor actually zapped me with electrodes!

And as for little Gourdy... he has woman troubles I guess.

I think this is supposed to mean; "Oh no, I'm only a drawing! Aaaaaaa - hey, what's German for Aaaaaaaa!?"
` Not a very good translation, though.

I think this is supposed to mean; "I've had too much!"

I think he's supposed to be puking in the grass or something.

Even more bizarrely, we find an indication of the Clinton/Lewinsky sex scandal, using a double entandre, which puts a date on this to around 1998 - I must have been about sixteen!

By the way, I think that a Hubschrauber ('Hopping Screwer') is now just called a 'Helicopter', for reasons which are obvious even in German.

As for Gourdy, above, he is expressing reluctance at the glorification of these 'fools'. Below, he says, "I must own these two!"
` On the left-hand side, he says, "I have eaten too much rotten fish!"

Oh, I remember the magical marker of permanence!

In German, the letter 'J' is pronounced 'Yott'... that might explain why it's in water and there are people on it having some kind of strange party. Or something. I don't know what they're saying, really....

I think this is supposed to mean 'do they have something to say?' and something about having more time for fun now that it's over, but I'm not sure what.

Breathing room!

Gourdy says, "Here we go again!"

That's all that's really practical for loading up on one post at a time, but if you think that the fact that I learned some German is just as odd as I do... stick around for PART II of this bizarrity - where we see these papers take an even stranger and more disturbing turn!

OH YES!! Mua ha ha ha!

My art is once again connected to the internet....

2008-11-07T19:44:00.000-08:00

It's been hanging out on my digital camera for an entire month, during which time my computer has been unplugged from the wall; and because my camera only works with my computer, it's had to stay there... until now!

Let's just say that I found some things which defy my memory, as my childhood has large, gaping holes in it from... well... wanting to block it out. Instead of drawings, however, let's start out with... textures.

That is, rubbings of real objects with captions of what they are from, describing things that I both do and do not remember.

Laptop computer speaker? Yeah, I had a laptop as a teenager - until my dad stole it along with everything else I'd ever written, including all my diaries from over the years.

A board I broke in karate? Karate? Since when did I ever take karate? I keep telling myself I must be mistaken. I don't ever remember breaking any boards! Maybe I was just making it up?

***

Super-weird update: Actually, my mom says I did take karate, which ended when my dad stole all that stuff, coincidentally. Whoa.
` (Well not purely coincidentally, as my quitting karate was caused by my subsequent severe depression and constant thoughts of suicide: Not only did he beat me down, but he basically mind-raped me!)

Hey! NOW I really do remember! For example, I recall that my dad would make me eat breakfast before going there, and every single time this would happen I would have horrible, rancid diarrhea from it because my stomach wasn't ready for food yet.

Rather than karate lessons, I remember running back and forth between the dojo, in the front of the building, and the bathroom way in the back. Honestly, I think I spent more time in the bathroom than learning karate - it was so humiliating, especially when I had rancid diarrhea gas.

I also remember my dad driving me to karate every day. One day, we were at a stop sign at a two-way intersection with one car approaching from the left and one from the right. Suddenly and startlingly, he floored the gas pedal and the car went screeching into the intersection, narrowly missing the two other cars, one of which honked.
` Shaken, I looked at him with horror in my eyes. (One of the usual ways I looked at him.) He said, "Damn it! Who teaches people how to drive these days?" or something to that effect. Essentially, he made several comments which I thought were 'impersonations' of what the other drivers were thinking.
` I kept waiting for him to finally smirk and explain to me, 'You wanna know why I did that?' but instead he said, "Some people just shouldn't be allowed to drive! Did you see what that asshole back there did?"

No wonder I found it much easier to not pay attention to the world! It sure didn't match what he said about it!

I also remember the time I had to walk home from karate because he didn't show up as he usually did to lecture the other students on things nobody cared about, nor believed, before driving me back home.
` About seven hours after the end of class, I finally trudged through the front door, dragging my duffel bag o' karate equipment.
` He called down from upstairs, with a smile; "What were you two off doing?"
` Who? Me and my imaginary talking car? Or was he referring to my mud-encrusted duffel bag?

Now you see why I've blocked out the memories, eh? And yet... I don't seem to remember any actual karate lessons, nor from whom, though I do weirdly remember that one of the students was a former drummer for Humble Pie.
` His name was Scott.

Evidentally, those were the types of things I thought to be most important for remembering back then. No wonder I don't remember growing up - although, this is NOTHING compared to the things I don't remember happening in my next post!

***

Continuing as before....

How could I forget all this stuff? It all came from my own house, according to a piece of paper found with the rubbings. I mean... my dining room linoleum? Come on! I don't remember the floor? The coasters? The mirror?

One thing I do remember, however, is the Armadillo-Shaped Ocarina. I remember it because I was the one who smashed it one night. You see, it was ugly as hell, and I was really sick of people saying, "Oh, you're such an artist! Did you make that?"
` It really was an insult to my sculpting skills! Now, without the ocarina, they couldn't accuse me of making such an ghastly atrocity.

One other thing; I do have fond memories of the World Book Dictionary of 1977; because I was thinking a lot about language (without much idea of how to, I might add), I would look through that thing for hours on end!

And now... whatever these are supposed to be....

They're cool, but I don't know what they are.

Now, here's another one similar to the first, though it also has fun things like old coins from all over the world - including a huge 'antique' American penny! (I wonder if it's worth only one cent still?)

Finally, though you may not be terribly excited about texture rubbings, and I'm not really sure how artful they really are, my next post has some seemingly inexplicable and sehr sonderbares Material... Ernsthaft!

Hello from my new house!

2008-10-17T10:31:00.001-07:00

It's great and wonderful over here at the house, with my three trusted and responsible housemates. We have all of our walls for the moment (though still too many windows), kitchen appliances (including two different kinds of ovens - which work - and a non-functioning dishwasher), most of our flooring, a bathtub (and a bathroom wide enough to contain one!), two other unfinished bathrooms, and get this... a furnace! We can stay warm this winter! Woohoo!
` Best of all, the living room alone is as big as the ghetto apartment we came from - plus, we have various different rooms with real, non-hologram doors that open and close, so now we can have privacy!

It's an amazing concept.

At the moment, I actually do have plenty of material to post. Only problems is, my computer is hiding in the corner, sawdust-covered, and has nowhere to go at the moment.

I'll get back to this blog when my computer is up and running, but until then I'll be posting plenty of things on my other blogs.

One small thing, and one large thing!

2008-09-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

I was going through my photos, in preparation for uploading yet more on my website, and what do you think I found from last spring?
` Does anyone remember that post I wrote about the poor news reporting of the Texas 'Chupacabra' that was obviously a mangy canine even before DNA testing, among other similar incidences?
` I made this drawing for clarification - and you can click to make it larger and skerrier!

chupacabracoyote While the Texas Chupacabra turned out to be a coyote, the one in the drawing most closely resembles photos of red foxes I've seen with most of their fur destroyed by the mange parasite.
` Skerry also is the fact that some people actually believe that these foxes are Chupacabras, too!

Though I may be skipping yet another quarter in college, I still have something to show for what I did for Anthropology class last spring. The project was supposed to be a poster relating to food in some way.
` My chosen topic was the impact of fire usage had on early humans, and though I had been deathly ill for over a month at that point, I gave a surprisingly energetic fifteen minute speech about as much detail on the subject as I could muster.
` It was actually kind of sad because the only people who were listening were two overwhelmed-looking students trapped before an overly-enthusiastic me and this large board.

Basically, the middle part illustrates my thesis of how learning to break down food (by cooking it) affected human physiology - the left panel focuses more on teeth while the right panel is about the relative sizes of our guts and brains and why being able to cook would change them.
` Sound weird? Well, it probably won't if you read what it says - just click on the photo and then click again to magnify!

anthropologyposter Not too shabby, eh? Well... that's what I thought, too, until I found out that it had won me a 'D' for being... well... shabby.
` Very shabby.
` I learned that day that anthropology classes are not art classes. Who knew?

In current news, we lost two of our crew of six, but we'll still be able to afford the house... not the mansion we were going to move into earlier this month, but a crackhouse that we're helping to remodel for a major discount. All kinds of other weird stuff's been happening, too.
` Though we were supposed to be moved in by today, it'll probably be several more days. But hey, at least there's only four of us once again in this tiny room!

I'll be back...

2008-09-16T13:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks everyone for keeping your fingers crossed! I'm busy right now, (I'll say!) but I'll be posting more stuff when this all blows over, or my name isn't... Spoony Quine! (Though it ain't.)

...Loser mansion owner, wouldn't even answer the simplest questions!

Next up...

2008-08-29T19:01:00.000-07:00

All of this artwork will wind up on my website! And then I'll put up even more! Mua ha ha ha! Oh, that is the sound of Superhero Lou Ryan and Director Nathan Lee arriving home after a tough 12-plus hours at work. Way to go, boys!
` In other words, I'll be moving into a huge mansion with these guys (if all goes according to plan) and will hopefully get my new cable internet hooked up soon.
` There's still stuff going on in my other blogs, guys! The last of the great photos are on Science and Wackmobiles. Ciao!

Sketches I did in the Pacific Northwest

2008-08-05T05:07:00.000-07:00

After driving from Ohio to Washington (with my Katie cat), I was so messed up I just couldn't draw for a while. In fact, I hadn't gotten out my Little Sketchbook again until I had lived there for a year - and my Katie Girl died! I was so sad. I wasn't allowed to mourn, however, until years later.
` Anyway, to help cope with my grief, I tried going back to drawing labels. Here you go - Opus the Penguin blended with peach tea! (I lived in the high-rise next to the Co-Op at this time, having moved there the day Katie died.)

peachopus Yes, HonesTea - because they're honest about what they put in their tea! Hey... OMG! It's Butters the Insane Cat! That's right! And you can see her go insane! And; hear her beg for a visit from her best friend in the world - Food! (Hilarious stuff!)

buttercookies This is also around the time when Jason Baxter and company had returned from Canada. Also, notice that there's a reference to Everyone Knows it's Butters! "That's Me!"

jasonbandbutters I drew that Jason picture because I also was planning to draw this guy, EdgeWalker, who also happens to be named Jason in real life. See how very different they look? (More photos/drawings of EdgeWalker vs. Butters hilarity right here!)

edgewalker He did a lot of computery things, and frankly, I'm pleased the way the Jason sketches turned out, complementing one another somewhat.

` Anyway, these are the last of my Little Sketchbook sketches which had been captured with his camera and had been sitting on some hard drive or another, nearly being destroyed once or twice, but miraculously surviving. (Thank goodness for backup drives!)
` I uploaded them for this post in February, but kept forgetting to finish these posts until more recently. Hey, to those of you still out there; thanks for your patience!

` The only newer sketch in the Little Sketchbook at the moment was done almost a year ago in compensating for not drawing our little alien furballs when we first got them....

Hey, my art won something!

2008-07-29T20:02:00.000-07:00

...In fact, it was a category in the Zeeee contest on J. Morgetron's blog! Still, that's almost a really big deal to me! Her post says:

And the prize for The Most Morgyliscious Drawing goes to S E E Quine of ... a variety of blogs and stuff for this drawwwwring. This is the first semi-nude rendition of me in existence. I have to say that this is the one I would've chosen for this category had I been judging this myself. It has already been sold in a seedy underhanded verbal contract between Spoony herself and the world-famous G-Man. The payment included real monies and body hair ... Weird even by Morgy standards.

morgymorgmorg

If you're brave enough, go ahead and venture in to see the entire post - even G-Man made an entry!

The Last of the Ohio Sketches....

2008-07-25T15:52:00.000-07:00

` This was a very difficult period for me, by the way, what with having been tortured by a mad doctor and locked up by more mad doctors! (No, I'm not joking with you!) It all happened in August and September of 2003... or was it 2002? I don't remember now....

Anyway, I don't think I indicated anything of this in my sketchbook, as I was too messed up to draw at all for a while. Anyway, this first sketch was a while before that ... it was the bedroom of a nerdy guy, practically the only person I used to hang out with sometimes. It was partly a storage area, so it was filled with all kinds of stuff.
` So, I decided to replace much of that with my own filler; a reminder to watch a sitcom Beware of Dog - which was too stupid to survive on the Animal Planet - and the label of a kind of Raven's Brew called Deadman's Reach - our fav!

philsbedroom Ah, another sketch of things, Phil, and his family dog, Hoochie, who I heard the other day had to be put down due to heart failure. This is partly because of a very stupid and crazy family member's very stupid and crazy actions.
` Let's just say, we learned that leaving a dog in your car in the hot sun for hours because you said you were taking the dog to the park when you were actually going to have sex with some chick is very bad for your dog's heart!
` Please. Please don't give animals heat stroke by deliberately locking them in your vehicle when it's humid and ninety degrees outside! This message from the Be Kind to Animals or Else League.

atphilshouse Er... more of this. And a Katie!

stuffandwhatever And now, we have... Smoothieness! Unable to be inspired enough to draw at all for the longest time (probably because of the mad doctor incident), I decided to start drawing the food packaging of my time.
` In eighty years people will be blown away, right?

tropicanasmoothies This was my attempt to capture the very last of one phase of Yoplait containers before they went extinct! Andy Warhol, eat yer heart out! It even has a Gourdy and some kind of dragony thing!

yoplaitwhy Oh yeah, and I drew it sideways in respect to the next page, which has more of the same themes going on as previous drawings. And at the top you can see that this girl crumpled my book, thus smearing it. I'm not sure I deserved that, but whatever!

goodearthchaietc Oh yeah, and I also made note on this page that Blackie the Dull Boy had died (I mentioned him in last post). And ironically, in this case, I had been urging my mom to take him to the vet for months, and she just ignored me, and at the time I don't think I had any source of income to pay for it myself.
` Finally, one day I saw two thick runnels of green pus pouring out of his eyes and I said, "Aha, mom! This is what I'm talking about - he is very sick!"
` And she responded by saying, "Aw, he just needs his eyes cleaned again," and got a paper towel!
` Though I hate to say this about her, this is exactly the crap I had to put up every time I had a serious medical emergency - instead of taking me to the ER to get a look at my broken bone, etc. she would just look away like I was embarrassing to her and not help me at all.
` Anyway, by the time she took him to the vet, it was too late. His kidneys were beyond hope.

Next up we have sketches of stuff going on at the house of the girl who crumpled my paper - her nephews playing video games and such, her cool chair and pillow, and as for the Chinese coin things (attached to bracelets)... well, it's too weird to even begin describing!

emilyshouse Oh, and at her house were lots of DVD movies.... How do you like what I did with Monsters Inc?

goaway Er, yeah, not sure I'd like to run into those blokes at midnight! Anyway, this must have been the time that Phil's mother found this really great stumptailed cat named Figgy - Figgy the climbing and talking kiggy. And you know what else?
` He wouldn't stay still for me at all! As you can probably tell, it was extremely hard for me to draw him....

figgy1 Oh well. Anyway, he was strangely humanlike and always did strange things like walk on his hind legs and suck on his paws - and sometimes suck on his paws while standing on his hind legs (upper left)!

figgy2 Oh God! Do you recall how I described Blackie the Dull Boy's having gone insane from being declawed? Well, let's call this bad boy Yuki the Very Dull Boy. Such a neurotic mess, always trying to grab you with his nubs and bite, even harder than Blackie!

yuki Well, that's truly the last of the Ohio Sketches... stay tuned for my first Washington Sketches!

More Little Sketches from 2002...

2008-07-20T19:06:00.000-07:00

More sketches from the year 2002! And Data is a cute widdle Andwoid! Especially when Commander Riker had the power to allow him to laugh that one time....

datalaugh Ah, my gold-skinned obsession-of-the-time! (I also liked LeVar Burton, which is why I watched his segments of Reading Rainbow, which was ironically on in between episodes of Star Trek TNG!)

In other news of 2002, I had bought an Olympic torchbearer's medal at an antique shop and tried to make a rubbing of it (below).
` The wolf who receives this medal refers to a comic strip I made when I was about eleven, where the wolf enters a joke contest. I don't remember his name, but his competitor was Hickey the Hyrax, who tells such terrible jokes that the wolf eyes him hungrily.
` As a last resort, Hickey tries to surround himself with speech bubbles, but the wolf bursts through them and eats him!

medal This is actually supposed to be a reflection, so it's upside-down.

upsidedown Here's a bizarrely-enlarged drawing of Gourdy I did with my left hand.

leftygourdy I actually did quite a few 'lefty' drawings and compared them with 'righty' drawings - of note is Sideshow Bob. (God, I love Kelsey Grammar!) Do take note of the Zorak beside him....

sideshowbob You can see these better, of course, if you just click on the image. Below here, on the left page, is more bunny/Gourdy/Katie cat goodness, along with Lt. Commander Data. On the right hand page are some strange things.
` One of them is a Christmas tree topped with the head of a Ferengi, those ultra-capitalist aliens from Star Trek. It garnered a lot of laughter (considering that Christmas can be considered an ultra-capitalist holiday)!

randomness More random and purposely-distorted sketches of Katie Girl cat. Oh yes, and the mouse heads are actually inspired by one of the gross mouse stories from way back in the day of early blogging.

catsnmouseheads I had this friend Tiffini once... or twice, as she moved far away for several years at some point. I remembered I used to draw us as these little creatures - a gangly Spoonodon and an Armored Tiffinitank!

mentiffini On the next pages, I kinda got on a roll with something I invented in third grade. The black rats were the kids in my Special Ed class while the white lab mice were the 'screws':
` I was having huge conflicts because the adults would drag me down the steps and such and I believed myself to be a bad kid. Not only that, I was in a class of bad students, so I thought; Hey! Let's make a party out of it! Now we were bad... to the bone, while the adults were a bunch of pansy lameasses.

whitemiceandblackrats Actually, the original idea, I believe, came from being forced to sing - in music class - gospel songs like Angels Watching Over Me. Well, people kept telling me that there were these things called angels and that they were real and that they got rid of evil or some such thing.
` Well, as my psychotic, paranoid dad had always made sure I 'knew' I was a horrible, crazy, manipulating bitch all the time (little did I know, it's because he's that way with everyone and it is because of him that I was so fearful of everyone that I had to go to Special Ed), anyway, I figured those angels would get me sooner or later!

So, I got myself a piece of green construction paper and drew the kids as angels and the screws as devils, because I knew who was really good and who was really bad. (And yes, I was right!) Then, I saw just how cool my drawings of the devils were as compared with the dorky angels, and decided that since bad was good and good was bad, might as well switch it around, eh?
` It wasn't too long before I became too uncomfortable with the 'devils and angels' bit, so I tried a number of various creatures which look cool in black but dorky in white, and one set that I settled on was the black rats and white mice. (The black rats always had a stealth bomber, by the way... the mice just had a hang glider or something....)

` Moving on, I found it odd that I'd drawn Katie all over my sketchbooks, but not once at that point had I included any other cats. Well, here, for the first time, Katie's sister Ashlie, the former outdoor cat Polydactyl Amy (who I think may still be alive at this time), and Blackie the Dull Boy, who was always so messed-up from my grandparents having had him declawed.
` Though Katie napped with the best of 'em, and apparently snuggled with a Velociraptor, I'm pleased to see how lifelike I managed to draw the other cats in some cases.
` (I suggest clicking on this one to view its sheer size.)

thecats Oh, that one in there isn't a cat, though... it's a Tommy. In 2002, he was New To Her, and today, they live in a boat in the Atlantic somewhere.... Nice, huh?

Some classic sketches, interspersed with nonclassic ones

2008-07-11T22:04:00.000-07:00

This is what I'd call a 'Classic Sketch'. (Just smile and nod, like I've taught you to.) It's a portrait of me with the Nightmare Bunnies, Gourdy the MIR Space Filler and Katie the cat... all mah best frienz back in 2001 or so! 'Cept for the Nightmare Bunnies.

selfportraitwithcreatures This is decidedly not a Classic Sketch. It's just a random assortment of creatures, including a new and improved version of Batmantis. Just to the left of Batmantis is a Nightmare Bunny and just to the right is an upside-down version of Katie lying down with her back to me.

batmantis Hey, it's my former piano teacher person, Dawn! She must look really funny because, at least back then, there was just no way I could draw her without it looking all... weird. And so, it kind of progressed into a vicious circle between the two of us....

dawnthedemented This is, I believe, what I'd call a Classic 'Ambidextrous' Sketch, meaning I used both hands while drawing it. It has deformed clones in it. I likee.

deformedclones This is, perhaps, a Classic Sketch. It has an Ornithomimus, a hedgelty-hog and I think that's supposed to be a Phil. (Phil is no longer with us; I failed to catch him when he fell off a cliff.)

nopieces Aha! This is not a very impressive sketch, although it does illustrate what I was doing on my first scene as an extra in American Splendor. (If you've never seen it, go here to see a really dandy theatrical trailer! Except you have to watch an ad first - it's worth it!)
` This airport scene is also the only scene I'm very visible in, though when I finally saw the movie I was actually surprised that you can see me better than I had supposed here:
` (You can view my images full-size by clicking on them.)

americansplendor Finally, this sketch would be a 'Classic Sketch' involving the Amazing Katie under which I drew a checkerboard grid.

gridcat I miss my Kiggy Cat. You know what's really irritating? She died in pain, in a hospital, and was thrown away in the garbage.
` Katie's sister Ashlie, on the other hand, died recently - about three years after Katie - in her sleep whilst on a boat in the Bahamas with my mom and her boyfriend. Burial at sea.
` I wish I'd taken Katie to the vet earlier. Even though I'm such a good mommy to Violet and Vada, I still feel bad about that.

Adventures of the Bean Rooster

2008-07-06T21:39:00.000-07:00

` Okay! This post was supposed to appear magically appear on June 22. Or so I thought.... (Oh well, at least Lou Ryan's and Nate's and technically my production got an even longer chance for a few people to notice.)
` Here's what I was supposed to have posted by then:

On with the Little Sketchbook: It was 2001 and I was nineteen. And I had a friend at the time. She was very strange, as I recall, and had such unusual, alien mutant habits as... collecting Beanie Babies!
` And thus, it was she, not me, who put me up to drawing this... this... well look at it!

beanrooster1 Oh no! Whatever could possibly happen next?
beanrooster2 Uhhhh.... wha?

` If you weren't satisfied with that, then look here!
mustache What the...?

` Okay, I'm sorry about that, folks! Just come back later. Like in... five days or somethin'.

HEAR Lou Ryan talk about fight choreography! SEE the storyboards I made for it!

2008-06-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

That's right! I'd almost forgotten all about this, but superhero Lou Ryan and Director Nathan Lee have made a video explaining some of the fight choreography he did for the movie The Rat - featuring my storyboard art!
` I didn't realize it, but it's on YouTube now. It's a good little 2-minute video, very well-made! Please check it out! For the children!!

Too bad my computer doesn't have speakers... I'll have to watch it elsewhere!

This is unexpected...

2008-05-31T19:22:00.001-07:00

I never thought I'd have to use my cat-drawing skills for this....

Not the best, but it'll do in a pinch. Looks just like Vada (or Vayda, if you want to get phonetic). Of course, a drawing isn't enough - I needed a photo, but the internet on my computer wasn't working, and neither was my flash drive, and the CD drive wasn't accepting the disks we had.
` So then I had to go to Staples, buy more CDs, put the image on the CD, go back to Staples, have 20 copies made... of course it didn't go like that. Basically, the computer got stuck and I was waiting around for 45 minutes, very hungry and anxious, wondering when it would start up again. When it did, it took ten minutes to print out some really crap-tastic versions, so here's the original instead:

Lou Ryan stapled these up all over the neighborhood. But this wasn't to be of any use to us - wouldn't you know? Today - that's only ten days later - I poked my head out the door to hear Vada's characteristic "Rowwww! Rowwww!" Which, as you may recall, means "I'm scared!"
` Violet charged out the door to investigate. We found that it was coming from the basement.
` Luckily we were able to get the key within five minutes and Lou managed to chase her down. At this very moment, the much skinnier Vada is lying on my left arm and thigh with her paws in the air, kneading my shirt. And her sister Violet is still doting on her, staring at her with lovey doveyness in her eye.
` Vada, glad to know you're as goofy as ever!

She was pretty hungry first thing....

There was also a lot of doting on her on both Violet's and mine behalf.

Oh sweetie! Sweetie on my arm! I'm so glad you came back! Oh, now Lou is playing with Violet beause Vada is too tired to play yet! Oh, spoke too soon - she just got up to attempt to get in on the action!

A Trip To OSU, 2001

2008-05-15T06:17:00.000-07:00

Oh goodness yes, I feel old now! Look, it's my former roommate Phil's college roommate, Joe! (And a "Braktaur"!) I wonder what Joe is up to now?

heyjoeyjoejoe This is actually one of the hallway columns in Orton Hall, which has lots of hominid skulls, not to mention the bunny and the doggy!

gourdycolumns There's also one of these things.

megalonyxskylight Yes, that's a Megalonyx jeffersoni, a huge ground sloth, and behind it is a Tyrannosaurus rex skull.

There was this one guy who was showing people around and he pointed in the door and said there was a dinosaur in there.

"Oh yeah," I said, "there's a Tyrannosaurus skull in there." but no, he actually meant the giant mammal in front. I'm sorry, but since when are sloths dinosaurs?

Orton Hall also has gargoyles! Have you seen them? (Fantastic photo!) They're meant to be real fossil animals. Somehow, I still managed to portray them as anthropomorphic wrestlers.

ortonhallgargoylewrestlers Wow, look at the date on that. It was still September, 2001! And what was it with me always adding little vignettes of my Katie cat later on?

ortonhallgargoyles The fountains at Mirror Lake!

mirrorlake And then, there was this....

crazy Whoa-kay! Back to Mirror lake... at the time it was densely populated by goldfish and a mixed flock of ducks, including two pairs of wood ducks (the wood duck says "Svzzz!"). Occasionally, the pond was also inhabited by... dogs!

You might want to click on this one to actually see it properly:

dogandducks And the winner was... the ducks! Because they're built for swimming!

Last but not least, this is Browning amphitheater, where we sometimes ate.

browning Ugh. A bit grotesquely enlarged for its detail, no? That's supposed to be Phil and Joe, but it doesn't really look like them.

More sketches in a few days!

Disturbing and Disturbinger! Where do I come up with this crap?

2008-05-10T06:17:00.000-07:00

On with the old sketches - from back when I lived in Ohio. In Hinckley, which was somewhat near Medina, there was this dam....
hinckleydam It's called the Hinckley Dam. Really. (I would have made it nice an' pretty, but it was a 3-minute sketch.) I also used to have more hair. I always dreamed of chopping the back of it off, though (and my dream's finally been realized)! lotofhair Can anyone guess when I was drawing these? sept11 What's sad is it was originally labeled September 12! Then again, maybe I actually made the drawings on September 12. Whenever it happened, Zorak sure seemed glad. shutupzorak Yay for terrorism and death! theplane Somewhat irritated by the whole news phenomenon of it all, I turned to Brak once more. Hey, it's Brak's parents! braksparents But I much prefer Brak. As you can see in this grossly enlarged photo of a tiny drawing, you can see just how cute the little fella is. brak Apparently, Gourdy also embodies Zorak. Do not ask me what's going on here. He's a shape-shifter, because he's a space-filler, a'ight. I don't claim to understand these things. zorak1 No! Not the cute bunnies! Click this one to see the outcome! zorak2 What the hell?

Then, on the next page we find one of my deepest, darkest secrets.... fillpants Thus, my true feelings were revealed! Argh!

Hey, does anyone know I made a post in 2006 called My Sketchbook is Full of Brak? It has all the funny stuff I wrote in my sketchbook, but no sketches - i.e. there are quotes such as this titillating exchange:

"Oh my God, he'll tear your arms off!"
"But I love my arms! That's where my hands live!"

So please do see that post! They go together. Like Peanut Butter and Jelly!
tansit Tansit is such a weenie. And I totally forget what's going on with the Fat Albert Eyeball thing. thisthing My favorite character of all was Thundercleese. What a sweetie! thundercleese Somehow I just gave up on drawing him, though. It was taking a while, I guess.

` I still recommend going here to read about this section of my sketchbook. I know... I'm just too lazy to combine the two posts. Like a lazy person.

` *Attention* I'm also too lazy to come up with an ending for this post, though my next post is scheduled for May 15!

Back to The 'Little Sketchbook'

2008-05-04T11:41:00.000-07:00

This post was originally made February 28. Why I did not remember that I had completed it before is a mystery, and unfortunate because I could have had it up long ago. Anyway, here it is:

It's been a while since I've posted a photo from the 'Little Sketchbook' (S.E.E. Hazel's Freehand Art) - all such posts are listed and summarized here - it's worth a look!

Young though I was when I started the book, it stayed with me a long time. The stretch being presented took place in 2001 (after going through years of turmoil) when I was only 19....

This guy I was with (but didn't like to kiss) Phil, had some cats. This was Alfie:

alfie He died.

And then there was Sweetheart. (If you click on it, you can better read that must amusing little piece of information about the habits of this cat that you might be better off not knowing, but really, you know you want to!)

sweetie She died too.

As for Phil (who is not dead)...

elfman ...Did not yet even have a beard. He was an Elf Man!

sweetiehead Sweetie again.

sweetheart Not to be all morbid, but this drawing contains Sweetie (top), my Katie Girl (left), what appears to be Katie's sister, Ashlie - who baffles me by still being alive today - and Evil the Bunny (who is somehow second cousin to Evil the Cat).

catsketches It says: "Sweetie has ruptured her stomach and died. Why did she have to do that?" Cheery. And if you'd like to see more of these sketchbook images soon (hopefully not ones as morbid as this), you're in luck; you won't have to rely on my faulty schedule and memory!

That's right! Since the 'schedule posts ahead of time' function has appeared on my blog controls, I can now put the rest of my completed sketchbook posts on a timer to make sure they get published in a timely manner, unlike this one!

The Unglority of the Urban Alphabet

2008-04-15T21:07:00.000-07:00

This is my final project from Thom's Awesome design class, which I actually completed near the end of February. I love Thom so much. I love him with all my heart. And hearing this, he said; "Ugh!" and slowly backed away from my Girl Cooties.
But this project... I hated so much. How can something so evocative of anger and revulsion from me come from such a lovable instructor? It's shocking, I know. And the frustration did not stop with actually getting the damn thing done.

Take a good look at A and B, here....

They're fine, right? And now look at what the printers did to my letter 'B'!

lookwhathappenedtoB It's SQUISHED!!! Somehow, its orientation got rotated! How the hell did they manage that? Fortunately, my other letters managed to escape this fate. That does not mean I still did not have problems with them however. Keep going....

OH NOOOO!!! My image hosting site has shut down RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF MY UPLOADING THESE! I am not making this up! I uploaded the first ten images (one page) and... the site just stopped accepting images at that point.

Much later... I finally found a place to upload photos called My Net Images. I can hardly believe how much it sucks, though, because it puts my photos in a random order after I've uploaded them and then I have to remember what I've uploaded (*gasp*! Use my memory? It's unheard of!) and then go hunt the damn thing down.
So I have to make a list and spend a lot of time searching for what I've uploaded just to display the damn things. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as far as what order the images are stored in - not size, not memory, not anything I can see! There doesn't seem to be any way of controlling this, either.

Nevertheless, I used it to upload the rest of them:

This is actually the back of Lou Ryan's truck and the roof of my Wolfsburg back in the driveway at the old apartment:

And that, my friends, is that. I took all those (trying for times when the sky was cloudy) and now there's no more dratted alphabet project to worry about. It took a really long time to find all of them, though.

Even so, the project itself wasn't very good; I only scored a 37 out of 50. Good enough for a B+ in the class, though!

That's more like it!

2008-03-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

` Does anyone remember seeing my very first painting? If you did, you may recall that the shadows of the jug and teapot were entirely inconsistent with one another.

` So... I fixed it.

` Do you think that's an improvement?

Money Tree Caterpillars: MEET THY DOOM!

2008-03-18T17:48:00.000-07:00

` Though I don't yet have the internet in my new apartment (oh my God will the moving post be hilarious!) the next post for this blog has already been written - back in September of 2005! That's right! It was back before I had this blog and intended to be up on Wackmobiles.
` Why didn't I just put it up then? Because I hadn't photographed my sketchbook until months later, and by that time I wanted to wait until the day I got to this pagespread in chronological order.

` This is that day! So without further ado/brook trout, here's what I've already written in 2005:

` Has anyone ever seen these overly-cutesy commercials featuring a man and a woman in green and yellow butterfly larva costumes, talking about The MoneyTree? In one of them, there is a cartoon painting of the one named 'Bob', and... it blinks!!

` They are rather infamous in areas where their commercial plagues television. In fact, their infamy is no secret, as we see in this article [notice I don't mention where I got this from]...

But readers hardly confined their disdain to the Mariner ads. Among those getting mentions, along with some reader quotes: The Travelocity gnome ("lame...the least the ad agency could have done was animate the character.")

[I disagree - the object of the commercials was to portray a stolen garden gnome as part of a prank.]

The Quizno's ads with creatures that no one is quite sure how to describe (among the attempts: sponge monkeys, singing gerbils, roadkill). The secretary of state's ads on voting ("Some of the most amateur advertisements I've seen or heard in mainstream media."). Money Tree's caterpillars....

` And for all my loyal readers (yes, all three of you!), I have given much attention to this problem and have taken the situation into my own hands. Muahahhahahhaahaa! (Clicky to view.) [I'll admit, though, I've since updated the last speech bubble to something more humorous.]

` Proof that thousands of species in the world really would value the MoneyTree Caterpillars - and most of them are either insect-eaters or parasitic wasps!
` Of course, Bob and Babs have also been the subject of such internet communities as the Satanosphere. (No, it's not for Satanists; it began as an undeveloped domain, named for one of the Captain's songs...) [Who was the Captain, again?]
` One forum commenter ZomBfied observed:

I was thinking who paid for this, thought it was good enough to show and made a series of them? Did they get like story boards or do any kind of market research?

But you know what --in an advertisers mind the fact that we are talking about them means they were effective. There's no such thing as bad attention. If we hate them we remember them more than if we were ambivilant. I'm going to do some research and try to find out who is responsible.

And Paul Shrug replied:

If one were to believe ZomB's theory that these commercials aren't so much made to be good as much as notable (not a bad theory in my opinion), then I have a suggestion that would drive Money Tree's business through the roof: Have a commercial with Ice Cube shooting both of these furry things in the head.

It can work. Wrigley's Gum Company went from having the squarest, most awful ads on television into having the strangest and possibly greatest. I'm just trying to help.

I still hate those fucking bugs.

And ZomBfied added:

bug1: Hey I'm having a burger
bug2: What kind of burger
bug1: My favorite: A leaf burger!
bug1: Hey who's that?
Ice Cube: You won the contest!
bug2: What contest?
Ice Cube: The wet T-shirt contest Mutha f(beep)! (shoots them both in the chest several times)

` YES!! Wet with their pus-colored caterpillar blood! Muahahaa! Further down, Commander Pizza Killa wrote:

Kills 'em, I say, those annoying bugs!

` And Paul said:

The Commander's affirmation... now I know this is a righteous cause.

Nary a butterfly shall there be!

` RIGHT ON!! These comments, in fact, stem from this still-running [in 2005] poll about just what they think the MoneyTree Caterpillar Commercials are...

TV advertising's equivalent of "Family Circus" 2 votes -
18%
TV advertising's equivalent of "Marmaduke" 0 votes -
0%
Like Teletubbies, without the maturity and depth of character 3 votes - 27%
Will someday be the name of a drink you get at raves 0 votes -
0%
Are startlingly effective! Makes me wanna go borrow money against my paycheck at obscene interest rates! 1 vote -
9%
Were one of Himmler's most insidious, evil inventions 0 votes -
0%
Killed my daddy 3 votes - 27%
The fuck? 2 votes - 18%

` In fact, so despised are Bob and Babs that they are also mentioned in this San Diego Reader Remote Control King article as the second item on the easily-irked Ollie's list;

WHAT I WILL AND WON'T WATCH THIS WEEK...

THE COMMERCIAL ISSUE!

...three girls walk along on a beach. One says, "I'd kill for a brownie," and her friend says, "Oh, yeah, she's menstrual." Like it's the latest, hip, happening thing for a girl's uterus to slough off its interior wall. ...My biggest fear involving this is that it will become the de rigueur punchline in every stand-up comedian's routine for the next ten years.

...If I'm really pissed off and have no place to channel my anger I think about what I would do to those Money Tree caterpillars if we were ever in the same room. My scowl soon turns to a smile as I think of green and yellow face paint smeared across my knuckles, teeth skittering over a concrete floor, and the shouts of, "Please! Oh, please! No more! I can't take...oh, my antennae! No!"

` Me too, Ollie. Me too. Just another example of how much the MoneyTree caterpillars stir up so much hate from the people!
` It's true, we're an ugly bunch when you show us such irresponsible cutesieness. And perhaps that is MoneyTree's intent! Perhaps they want us to go insane so that we will do what they want!!
` How insidious of them!

` Then again, don't a lot of commercials do that? Yet another good reason I'm glad we don't have television. Except for CBS and UPN for some odd reason. Hey! South Park is coming to UPN! [Yes, this was definitely written in 2005, and no, I no longer have television at all, nor do I live with the same people!]

` And just for this blog, a special bonus photo - the last 'drawring' in my sketchbook at the time I had drawn the caterpillars.

` Every Person Who Lived In My Apartment At That Time Knows It's Butters!
` ...Butters, and her best friend, Food!

` I'll have my very own internet by Friday, so please be patient. My upcoming moving post is definitely worth reading and full of humor - and a few more cat photos! Overall, the experience of exploring our new apartment was full of surprises, including a bucket of poopy water, huge clods of dog fur and an entire empire of mildew!
` Great place, huh?

` Update: If you think the caterpillars are weird... how about a Kotex commercial featuring a beaver as a girl's best friend? Mutters' blog post concerning this (and my link to the video) is right here.

Drawings of dinosaurs - from real life!

2008-03-02T18:24:00.000-08:00

` Told you 'next time' would be soon! If you're familiar with my drawings (and only about two people are), you can easily tell whether any one of them - even a simple sketch - was copied from real life rather than one where I wasn't looking at anything.
` And this, my friends, was sketched directly from what I was looking at!
fromreallife Indeed, in the sketchbook, the Suchomimus is actually commenting on this - he was in front of me and that's why he doesn't look cartoony! (They could talk, right?)
` And that's because I was drawing from a painting. Ho ho! I almost got you thinking I was a nutcase, didn't I? Gee, I hope not... anyway, when I'm copying off of anything, my drawings definitely have a different texture than when I was drawing, say, Gourdy as in my last post, or even a dinosaur from my own imagination.
` That's because I'm looking at the drawing instead of seeing something, and my picturing (things in my mind) skills were quite poor. As I would have commented:

albertosaurus Deciding on what something looked like in my head was not an easy task, so it wasn't so clear. (My ability to estimate value was almost worthless without something to work from.) This is what you call 'undeveloped skills'. And so, almost everything I drew was referenced by an actual source.... dinoimagedrawings In fact, you may recognize these images, as I got them from the internet. Real exciting, huh? But here's one that definitely was not....
alittlesculpture It's the head of a sentient little ornithopod! ...I sculpted him myself!

A Closer Look at Gourdy

2008-02-26T15:33:00.000-08:00

` Back in 2005, when I lived with a coupla guys, I made a blog post 'Which Ones Are Modern Myths?' where you can see Gourdy, the Vector-Drawn Yurk^TM as a sort of mascot.
` But that's the only computer-constructed version of him I ever made. He's all over my sketchbook, of course, notably when he reveals himself in his fight with Nights, arguably one of the fruitiest video game characters in the world.
` Later on, after the vector incident, I drew a whole rash of Gourdy evolution in my Twisted Little World sketchbook, though it started - bizarrely enough - with this hilariously terrible idea for a kid's coloring book! (Click to get a closer look.)

gourdy1 Charming, isn't it? And it really got me thinking... what if Yurks could be farmed? Then, it just got out of hand....

gourdy2 That, near the bottom, was Butters, the biting cat we'd just gotten at the time. (After my oft-drawn Katie had died.) Before I knew it, I had started changing Gourdy's feet....

gourdy3 ...And his bill.

gourdy4 ...Not to mention his resistance to magic rings.

gourdy5 ...and his ability to slay demons.

gourdy6 All that from a little silhouette on the cover of a book I had designated Zum Ersten Mal, actually a journal in disguise (one I had after my Dad had stolen all my journals). Yes, Gourdy has come a long way.

` Anyway, I hope you enjoyed these little sketches - I have much cooler stuff for next time. Which will be soon. I promise. And I'm sorry I haven't been by lately - I've been spending too much time at my other blogs whenever I get some time at the computer!
` Indeed, I keep not coming back precisely because the posts are so simple to put together. I'll try to do better. I mean... right, there is no try. Only do. So I'll do that.

I'm Back! And I'm a Robot!

2008-02-03T21:41:00.000-08:00

` Since all three of my ImageShack accounts are apparently over-bloated, I've moved onto Free Image Hosting, but since that one (including my photos!) has disappeared from view, perhaps never to return, I remembered... my PhotoBucket account! (Remember the BotouFuckit Incident?) I noted that both of today's posts' images are less than 800 pixels wide, so they can't be squashed!
` And just what are they? Two more sketches from My Twisted Little World sketchbook! (I'm almost through it by now!) I drew this one after I had moved into the Nautica apartments, which rather ties in with my last Twisted post. In case you cannot psychically guess what robot that is, it's Sonny from the movie iRobot.

` Isn't he so cuuuute? I think he is much cuter than any of the robots from the book, which I also read and found to have almost nothing to do with the movie. (Since the book is a collection of short stories about Susan Calvin running around psychologizing insane robots, I take it the movie is meant to be like an additional short story about her, but enough about that....)
` Well! Drawing that got me thinking about what I would look like as the same model of robot....

` ...but I kinda lost interest. Well, maybe someday....

` Need more to ogle at? Well, I did just upload a bunch of photos (on Free Image Hosting), including some more for the Cattain's Log section on my Abnormally Humorous Photo Gallery! So, if that comes back, you can check it out!

` P.S. This Sketch is not a coincidence in regards to This Photograph! (Assuming you can see it....)

I was just going to upload my next post...

2008-01-31T20:58:00.000-08:00

` ...But my Image Hosting Thingy is out-of-whack.... Give me a little while.

Five Color Oil Paintings - my first ever!

2007-12-29T16:29:00.000-08:00

` This is what you've all been waiting for!! (Yes, all three of you!) I've finally been able to sit down at my computer, edit and upload these babies.
` While Rockstar / Superhero / Manly-Man Lou Ryan goes off scouting for shooting locations with Director / Cutie-Pie Nathan Lee, I've decided that, since I've already cleaned the Faucet Leak Cat Litter Sludge off the bathroom floor and picked a soccer ball-sized wad of cat hairs out of the carpet with my fingers (because I've just discovered the reason for the cat hair buildup is that the vacuum has stopped functioning long ago), I can take a break long enough to indulge you with a new post, which took two hours of my time:
` Behold, my first color oil painting, done with a pallet knife!

` Sure looks like it, don't it? Just like frosting a cake! The interesting coloration of the background is actually just the mud I made trying to mix the right colors for the little fruits. Instead of just wasting all the paint, I might as well put it to good use, right?
` Onto my 'rough brush' version, I made the fruits bigger so I could actually focus on figuring out how to make the right colors. (For the record, the red thing is a tomato, not an apple or a peach as so many people have declared after saying; "And I can even tell what it is!")

` On my third try, I was supposed to blend the colors in order to make them more realistic and detailed, so I made the fruits huge. Not lifelike, but not bad - although still, many people identified the tomato as a gigantic peach.
` Speaking of which, the tomato's vivid red color is due to my discovery of something called 'plain linseed oil', which you can mix with regular oil paints to create a transparent glaze that you can use to make your colors a bit more bright and consistent.

` You may not believe this, but when I first stood back from the finished painting I was surprised to see that my diligence resulted in the pear and plum showing reflections of the apple and tomato. I was not even aware of these details in front of me; they 'appeared' because I was focusing on getting the colors exactly right!
` And about the shadows... does anyone remember the problem with the first painting I did? Well, I screwed up with the shadows here, too, so I made the surface more uneven-looking in order to compensate. So, do you think that's even remotely convincing?

` Well, I didn't fix the shadows of my first painting like I was going to (yet), but I did try 'wet' painting, where you mix turpentine with your paint so it takes a really long time to oxidize. That way, you mix your colors as you paint, and they change with each stroke of the brush!
` I employed this technique to do my self-portraits, using a limited palette of black, white, Naples yellow, Prussian blue and fake burnt sienna: Since I could find no burnt sienna, I had to wing it by mixing raw sienna, brown and cadmium red.
` I started by sketching a self-portrait of myself in a mirror....

` Hey... guys! Not to sound ungrateful for this wonderful painting opportunity, but I can't work with people standing right in front of me, holding a conversation that I can follow perfectly! I've just screwed up my third sketch and I'm not going to be able to get one right unless I'm not being distracted constantly by the sound of human speech.
` Thank you.

` ...Wow. That sketch conveys some real negative emotions. Yay for stress! But pretty cool nonetheless. The question is; could I translate it to canvas? Only time would tell... three hours to be exact!

` Uuuhhhhh.... Let me just say this; not one person I showed it to recognized it as being a self-portrait, despite the fact that I was standing right beside it in the same pose - so I didn't bother telling them that's what it was.
` So, let's just say, he's my cousin Lenny! That's the thing with drawing a picture of something and then painting from it - it's more freakish than making a photocopy off another photocopy! All the little 'deviations from the original' that you made in the drawing are magnified about ten times.
` Then again, it's nice and twisted. And I like twisted! In fact, I like twisted so much that I really took great pains to try to make my next sketch as weird-looking as possible.

` There! That doesn't quite right at all because the different facial features are from slightly different angles! Now maybe if I do a painting, I thought, it will look more normal! So, I got out my paints - this time with real burnt sienna and Paine's gray instead of blue....

` Nope - now it's just more exaggerated than ever! Not that it looks bad. And what's the story behind the painting-eating-the-artist thing, you ask? (I'm pretending you ask questions, okay, because I can do that in my own little world!)
` What happened was, in my sketch, which was done two days before the painting, I forgot that I was wearing two shirts and that one was showing through on the left side. So, I mistook the undershirt showing for the collar of the overshirt and painted it that way.
` That kind of screwed everything else up and the rest of that side all went to hell, so I decided to be 'creative'. What better thing to have happen to a weird and twisted artist that their own creation appearing to be consuming them?
` Why not? And then why not have the other arm being squished by the painting? Perfect!

` And that, my friends, is that. Have a good New Year's! (For our New Year's, we're hoping that an old movie star friend of Lou's calls us when she gets back from her ski trip over on Mount Baker!)

Super Artist At Age 3.... (What? It's fake? Aw, man...)

2007-12-26T06:13:00.000-08:00

` I had photographed my oil paintings and was going to put them up here, but then I wound up surfing videos at Heavy.com and found a one of the most incredible things I've seen in a while! Zach will amaze you with his well-developed style and the amount of realism he can convey with fingerpaints - at age three!

More videos from the "Contagious: WTF Theater" channel at Heavy.com

` Next-Day Update: I've viewed the video a third time, this time not while falling asleep, and I do see that it's definitely a trick - especially since Galtron pointed out some things for me in the comments section. It's actually an advertisement with the advertisement cut out. (Not very effective, is it?)
` That explains why, when searching the web for a kid named Zach who can fingerpaint, I found other kids, but not him. But now, if I search for 'turtlekids', I find not only Zach but other kids doing unbelievable Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-related things.
` So now that my brain is going fast enough to spot editing tricks, I've decided that this video's status has gone from 'could be fake but doesn't look like it' to 'looks very fake'! I guess it's all about how much you're aware of what you're seeing as well as aware of what you're not seeing.
` Note to self: Do not look at internet videos when not very aware of anything.

` Anyway, next time I come back here, I promise I'll have my paintings up.

` ...Stop watching the damn videos, okay? You'll wind up going insane and cutting off an ear!

The illustrations I did for my post Darwin vs. "Darwin"

2007-12-18T10:22:00.000-08:00

` UPDATE, Dec 23 - images now visible!

` I've spent most of the last couple of weeks practically living on Pepto Bismol and Pedia Electrolyte, during which time I churned out all of the illustrations (but one) for my a blog post I call 'Darwin vs. "Darwin" - if you can't beat 'em, caricaturize 'em'.
` That was two days ago. However, I happened to check my email at the same time and had received a message from David saying that Worthy Science Sources sponsorship had been terminated.
` So I chucked the blog - but don't worry, its content will be coming up on my website, S E E Quine's Anomalous World. Speaking of which, I've spent the past couple of days refining my first Anomalous World item - Carnival Cruising - it's actually funnier now. I'd actually put Darwin vs. "Darwin" post up today, but I am going Christmas shopping with people and expect to be gone an abnormally long time.
` But, in case you wanted to see my illustrations, why not /EDIT!/ visit the original post, which I've re-posted at Nociceptor's.

` Go here to see them! They are pretty!

` I really must go now. I'll be back with paintings finally, though!

My last weeks of Fall Quarter...

2007-12-07T21:51:00.001-08:00

` Hooray for Fall Break! It's that magical time between Fall and Winter Quarters! While I was sad that my trip to the Seattle Art Museum was delayed once more (*shakes fist at weather*), I did nevertheless complete all of the paintings I shall put up here.
` But before I do so, I thought you might enjoy this photo I took from my little corner in the art studio....

` On the left is a sketch I did, then my second self-portrait I was doing from the sketch (with one eye all wonky), then Fruit Painting #3 (which I just touched now up at home) and my first self-portrait (with the chin and other eye all wonky).
` I also thought you might like to behold my bestest art-oriented classmate this quarter, Igorina, who is best known for doing drawings similar to the ones by this fellow here.

` I also thought you might want to gaze upon four of my lovely artificial assistants....

` I'll have more stuff up this month. You know, because I'll have time. Just let me take a bit to recover from my natural body chemistry vs. my G.I. tract....

Mark Kang-O'Higgins

2007-11-21T00:44:00.000-08:00

` This guy - Mark Kang-O'Higgins - is going to teach painting at EVCC Spring Quarter! (Part-time, anyway, he has a 'real' job at the Seattle Academy of Fine Art.) I'm planning to be his student! Just look at how cute he is:

` Er... ah... trust me. He's cute. And has a cute Irish accent. I saw him one day whilst painting fruit. That was the day he got his job interview. Er... ah... he hasn't actually been painting all that long, but he produced some really nice stuff - in front of some of the art faculty! They were so amazed!
` Well, I think I'll amaze you - the next thing I get up will be all three of my fruit paintings (I'm just getting back to finishing the third one), and then some self-portraits (I did my first one the other day within three hours and Sandy was stunned by how amazingly great it was)!
` Now that I actually paint for hours every day (instead of less than two hours a week), I'm getting things done a lot faster! If only I realized I was permitted to do that earlier....
` By the way, if you'd like to see more of Mark's paintings and drawings, go to his website. Here it is:

---> MARK KANG-O'HIGGINS' WEBSITE!!!! <----

` Go there. He's good. And he looks good in a hoodie! Iddn't he a cutie widdle art teacher?

` Is it just me, or do I have schnoogie-woogums disease?

` ...But he's so cute! Just like that gay guy who I just... um... nothing.

` And he's not gay.

` He has a wife and children.

` You can see them if you just go to his website.... Go!

My First Oil Painting!

2007-11-04T19:07:00.000-08:00

` My World Art instructor, Sandra Lepper, is so awesome! I came to learn about the psychology and sociology of art and she declared me 'born to paint' and gave me some paints and brushes and a little setup in the art studio! Apparently, it's open on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 30-45 minutes of my available time. (I wish it was every day!)
` Therefore, my first painting took two weeks to paint, though the actual painting time was two hours. By last Thursday, it was finally dried (or rather, fully oxidized), so I took it home. Only then did I notice that I had forgotten to make the shadows match.
` So here we have a jug that's lit from a light source somewhere above the handle and a little teapot that's lit more from behind and off to the side. Or maybe, they're on a curved surface?! Personally, I like that explanation better.

` Sandy was really impressed. I think I'll take it back and fix the shadows, though... it only would take a minute of my valuable painting time.

` Anywho, that's my first assignment - broad brushstrokes in black and white. My next three are color paintings of fruit.
` The first one was with palette knives (which is like trying to paint pictures with different colors of cake frosting) and I'm almost finished with the broad brushstroke one. Next will be my 'realistic' one, and when they're all finished, I'll put photos of them up!
` After that, I get to go into self-portraits! Gee, I hope there's enough time in the quarter... I've been working in the art room for increasingly long periods of time, and then get paint all over the piano keys in my music class!

` Next quarter I'm going to take a painting class, that's all I have to say. What will I accomplish there? Perhaps I'll paint my fuzzy aliens - who have increased in size 700%! One thing I was really planning on is making a much better version of the only watercolor I ever did, which was when I was sixteen.
` I was actually working with watercolor pencils, and they were very hard to mix, so my color palette was very limited. As a result, the scene has no depth, and instead of looking like it's during a sunny day, it looks like a cloudy day with bizarre, dull-looking sparkles.
` Then, when I paint that, I'll show you the difference between the two.

The last of the Twisted 'sketch' trend...

2007-10-25T14:45:00.000-07:00

` That's right... these are the end of the sketches here... though there's a few more 'legitimate' drawings after that.
` The first one is a picture of ingenias and an airplane that was being worked on at BeDe Corp... and a cup of Soy Yogurt I was amazed at enough to buy at the Columbus, Ohio Co-Op.

` Then I started to draw Fuze bottles... and those notorious Goya cans!

` This is the last drawing I did before moving to the Pacific Northwest. I lived in a ghetto apartment on 130th St. S.W., from where you could hear gunshots. Of course, you could also see rainbows just about every time it rained, too!

` I lived there for six months, and the day we started packing up to move was the day my Katie cat died. I remember telling everyone, "she'll love the seagulls flying by the windows!"
` Nope.
` She became listless and I took her to the vet... her liver had failed and she'd neglected to tell me. So I had to have her put down - which was somewhat surreal the way the vet's assistant was... never mind that.
` I miss my Kiggy. Of course, I'd moved a couple times since then - and I am probably going to again at the end of the month. Wish me luck!

Drawrings of my mountainside Slaverian experience!

2007-10-07T19:43:00.001-07:00

` There was a lot of funny stuff I never really did write about here. (Mostly because I had trouble remembering.) I also now have actual photos of myself dressed like this, that I can actually show! (Tomorrow - Harry is making copies that have copyright permission thingies on 'em so my Imageshack account doesn't delete everything.)

` I gotta say, Michael was cute, but his character (Yohan the gay cook) was ten times cuter!

[PHOTO DELETED]

` This is the kind of stuff that one could expect just before the shooting begins. In this scene, Yohan is reaching towards the head guard's sidearm....

` I had nothing to do with corrupting them into doing that. I swear!!

I'm back with a new drawring!

2007-09-29T11:48:00.001-07:00

` My internet has reappeared once again! I'm glad it didn't take long, because now I can show you the drawring I did of Alex, the cat who owns Sometimes Saintly Nick - who had just got it when my internet was down!

` I'm glad Alex liked it. (Incidentally, he has a better image of it than I do.) It took me a whole week... and only three hours of work. I've been sick, starting school, and running around on a mountain wearing nothing but skivvies and heels!

I was just winding up for the punch...

2007-09-28T12:19:00.001-07:00

` ...When my internet went out.

` I'll put up a new post when it comes back.

Back with more Twisted Little World!

2007-09-10T13:16:00.000-07:00

` I was around twenty years of age during this time of tremendous... um... healing from horrible pain. And what better thing for me to draw at this time than....

` Isn't it uncanny? (I'm going to pretend there is no potential for puns.)

` And that is but a detail of what is to come. And what is to come? First, we have a blurry (and thus drastically-shrunken) sketch of some Peeing Pumpkins on the Historic Medina Square! (Warning: The website doesn't seem to make much sense.)

` Oh yes, and tables from the evil Cool Beans, which had just taken over the Arabica coffee house.
` Not long after that, I sketched the nearby 57 millimeter cannon from World War II (which I always used to play on as a small child) and then I sat down to a meal at Dan's Dogs with a friend of mine.
` Unfortunately, it's also blurry, but not quite as bad as the last one.

` Oh, and I added some Yoplait Nouriche bottles later on because there just wasn't enough interesting stuff on the square.
` Though they used to give me 'allergic reactions' as it says at the bottom, I later found out that my 'milk allergy' was actually a panic attack that used to strike me after consuming dairy products. I got over it, too!
` But, at the time, I was so into yogurt smoothies that I made a Dannon Frusion pyramid... of DOOM! (I frankly have no idea what the Japanese writing is all about, but trust me, it's quite out of place.)

` There's also one of the last packages from a now-extinct design of Reese's Pieces (rest in pieces!) and a limited edition InsideOut Reese's Peanut Butter Cup (peanut butter on the outside, chocolate on the inside).
` And yes, they do kill Tom... with their rich peanutiness! Tom would be my mom's boyfriend. They live on a boat together in the Atlantic Ocean.

` I don't know what I was thinking, but I was really loving my crackers and my creativity. (Note: This was back when Nabisco Vegetable Thins were shaped like little vegetables!)

` I think the others submitted to the Vegetable Thins' ways after the Chicken in a Biskit cracker couldn't find any eyes to peck out.

` And here we have the page from which the Arizona Green Tea can was derived....

` The Cool Guacamole chips were Lays, which I've just determined from this picture. Well, at least that packaging design is still going!

` Ah, more Tom-killers! The M&Ms of Death! But these are not ordinary M&Ms of Death... they are black and white! (A major news event/marketing ploy!)

` Oh yes, and a Fuze bottle - though not as pretty as the original. (There are a few even more mutated Fuze bottles in this sketchbook.)

` My fav... Starbucks is an evil trickster! That's why I refer to it as 'Starfbucks' - yeah, sure, that's how you pronounce it!

` It made my dinosaur run away!

` Aaaand, now what? It's Figgy the Kiggy, found at the Lafayette Greenhouse! A cute little boy, but hard to draw because he was incapable of refraining from his constant meowing and climbing things.
` His tail was most likely severed in the womb by his umbilical cord, and as a consequence he sees other cats' tails as profoundly interesting. Figgy is also known for sucking his toes, probably because he never got to know his mommy.

` As you can see, he had thought my pencil was also astonishing.

` Now, this was around Christmas, at which I received three boxes of chocolates, I don't remember who they were from.
` I at least made a point to draw them all before I ate them. Wasn't too fond of the white chocolates, though, because they're white and I am a chocolate racist. (As well as a white grapefruit supremacist! I can be so contrary at times....)

` As I recall, it was the wrong gift entirely, as I was struggling with some runaway weight - which went from a lean 120 to a chubby 150 pounds! It was the medication I was on at the time (one that treated an illness I never had) - but at least I switched to this other (also inappropriate) medication that made me throw up constantly for two weeks (thus, preventing me from even taking it any more) and I lost all that weight!

` As you may know, I've long been off the ridiculous medication rollercoaster and am now getting buff - moreso even since my last absurd update on the subject. Oh yeah, baby!

Vada and Violet, take two

2007-08-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

` UPDATE: September 7 - I finally did it! Now back to the regularly-scheduled art posts I had in store all this time....

` I have no idea why this image is blue, but here ya go.

` Contrast and compare with the previous post!

` I was originally going to link this to my next 'poor little lost aliens' post, but I keep putting other things in its place. First, I documented my experience as a necrophilia victim, then has an almost-Slaverian guard!
` I promise the next Science and Wackmobiles post will have more 'kittans' - it's been pretty much finished and waiting for an opening!

My New Kittens!

2007-08-10T21:50:00.001-07:00

` Since Monday, I have had two space aliens living in my apartment! I drew a small sketch of them - here's an enlargement: Hmmmm. Still looks deformed. I'll have to work on it....

` Go here to read all about how the intoxicated feloids have wound up crash-landing in my home!

The Cleveland Art Museum - Sept 1, 2001

2007-07-31T13:42:00.000-07:00

` After busying myself with stealing lakes, inventing the iBooger and destabilizing that Steve Ballmer guy... not to mention spending hours doing homework and making solid gold material for my new 'professional science writer' blog, Bethink Avenue, etc, I'm finally back!

` ...With my promised post!

` So here it is; that time I took my sketchbook to the Cleveland Art Museum in Little Italy! ...Though the museum may appear to be crawling with Goya drinks, those were added later to help fill in all the blank spaces.
` We have here various sculptures: There's Varani, a Minqi funerary object (which may or may not look like a dog), a Chinese woman (with PMS, I mused) and a piggybank from ancient Java.

` Yes, it's really a piggybank! It had a slot and everything! Fantastic old things, aren't they? But even more interesting is an ancient Hindu statue that had lost its limbs, around which I drew the statues of the Chinese Zodiac animals... which gave me an idea for a sitcom! (You can click this one for a larger image.)

` Here we have a Fu-dog... having a dialogue with a milkshake that actually caused me to throw up! (Sugar overdose!)

` This, unfortunately, came out a little blurry, but it's a very miserable-looking camel and a Native American on a horse, though I'm not sure who. (The strange-looking object at the top is a bird-infested chair I saw in the courtyard.)

` The second page, which is also out of focus, shows a very comedic interpretation of Jonah and the Non-Whale-Like Whale, where something I'd more call a 'water pig' decides that Jonah needs hot sauce and spits him out (to Jonah's surprise).
` The thing in the upper right corner, if you have not guessed, is the same sort of pig-like creature, saying; "I'm a WHALE? Cool!" (which you prob'ly can't read).

` Then, I have a nectarine, which I drew because it was awesome-looking, and a griffin protecting a lamb. (Past the blurriness, it's thinking 'must... look... fierce!' while the lamb is loving on it.)
` Next post, I think I'm going to dig a few things out of my small notebook, then go back to this one. Ta for now!

Ominous Sketches...

2007-07-13T11:09:00.000-07:00

` Ominous because they're leading up to my trip to the Art Museum ...which took place just before the 9/11 attacks - double-ominous!
` And yet, they are kinda mundane and dull. For example, this legion of evil rabbits on their way to laying waste to some kingdom or other....

` ...Too bad I didn't finish that idea, instead preferring to draw this:

` It sure is easier to work on things that are in front of you instead of trying to hold an idea in your mind. At least when you have severe attention deficit disorder.
` Now, I actually tried out SlimFast, partly because I was too damn fat and partly because I was too lazy to eat. As paradoxical as that seems.
` I know it's hard to believe I was once fat (especially after seeing this), but at the time I'm telling you, I was constantly 'outgrowing' all my pants!

` On the next page, we find another one of those animal puzzles, TV cameras from my Tri-C acting class (in which the only acting instruction was 'just do it' with no critique or anything!) and this guy named Phil's insane and scary relatives 'John Baron' and PsychoGrandma.

` To make this post more interesting, I might as well tell you some of the reasons I would call someone PsychoGrandma. One is that, when Phil was a baby, she took all his clothes off and brought him out in the snow after a blizzard and refused to bring him back inside!
` Even more creepy, when Phil was learning to walk, she broke the lock off the knife drawer, bent some kitchen knives at a right angle, and then opened the bottom drawer and put the knives in so they stuck straight up in the air! Apparently she was hoping baby would impale himself!
` She's done tons of other things like putting a string of paper towels right up to the burner of the gas stove while it was on 'high', and it had almost caught on fire before anyone noticed! She also had the malice to scare the hell out of one unfortunate soul while they were holding a huge pot of boiling water, resulting in severe burns!
` ...And of course there was that one time as a child when she allegedly burned down her own home, killing her sister and parents.

` As you can plainly tell, I do not call people psychos without good reason!

` Poor Hoochie! The dog had been found tied to a pole after a severe thunderstorm, so he's always had an extreme fear of them. While I was trying to draw him (in vain, it seems) the rain was lashing down, the thunder was roaring and the power was going on and off. Needless to say he was a bit scared, and I think he eventually hid under the bed.
` Really, though, his main enemy turned out to be 'John Baron' (PsychoGrandma's son), whom I thought needed a little adornment.

` This is actually a sketch of the inside of Tri-C (or Cuyahoga Community College). In a large part of the building, the roof is one huge skylight and there are also small lions occasionally lounging about.
` Or not.

` Aaaand the last page before the art museum; see, there's a foreshadowing arrow on the right....
` So we have this guy named Ron. He had a cool sword and dragony stuff (I even made him a dragon sculpture) and if you'll notice, a gift from Phil's PsychoGrandma.

` Yes, though she had tons of money, she would simply give Phil and his family the crappiest little gifts and make such a big deal out of them as if she was giving them all Ferraris. I'm serious.
` This woman is insane. Of course, this is mostly due to the fact that her husband always refused to let her take her medication. So glad I'll never see them again. And so is Phil's mom, who was the victim of the boiling water spillage and a whole lot more!
` Well, I had better go. The Omininity is driving me insane. That, and I have tons of homework.

My Writing Skills Really Are Worth Something!

2007-07-10T22:44:00.000-07:00

` Apparently, an actual scholar wants to take me under his wing for the start of my science writing career. HOLY CHOKEBERRIES!
` Look here for details!