Making things easier on myself is difficult for me.

A couple of months ago, Alisa and I went to the SFMOMA to take a look at The Steins Collection while it was in town, featuring works by Matisse, Picasso and Toulouse-Lautrec, a personal favorite of mine. The Impressionist masterpieces on display were amazing, of course, and I figured I'd write a super-fancy post about my visit. I'd get myself all cultured-up and I'd have some new content for the blog. It was going to be a two birds with one stone sort of thing.  Hooray for multi-tasking!

Somehow this did not happen and it can most likely be blamed on some one besides me, because I'm not ever lazy in any way. The exhibit is long over and I never managed to write my post. I did, however, do a couple of sketches about my visit that day in preparation for doing the writing portion and a couple of days ago I found them under a stack of crap on my desk. 

I was going to just post the sketches with no accompanying text to explain anything, but making things easier on myself is difficult for me. So here are the sketches with a tiny bit of explanation...

Alisa said that people were giving me strange looks because at certain paintings I would lean in to get a closer look at the artist's technique. Every painter does this. It's almost impossible to not do it if you are a student of the craft ...or if you think the impressionist paintings often look like they were painted with frosting!

I have no idea what this was originally supposed to be about, but it should seem rather apparent to everyone that Stick-Figure Andrew is a short-bus window-licker.

Always make sure to time your visit to avoid the museum's guided tour group. Wait all day if necessary because those tour groups are like a slow motion tsunami of irritating turnips that you can never escape.

This sketch is clearly a referencing a sculptural piece titled Doorstop by Tobias Wong that I'm fairly certain isn't all that terrific, much like my not-so-clever little drawing. Frankly though, who am I to criticize since his work is in the SFMOMA and mine is in my hallway.

After a day of viewing masterpieces and enlightening oneself, there's nothing like two sauce monkeys engaging in their ritual mating dance.

My extra-hot super-tasty explosion of creativity!

My feet stink.

Not my actual feet (though they probably do reek most of the time), I mean the feet I draw.  Mostly feet are difficult for me because I draw every little bone and tendon and knobby thing that I see in my reference photo and the feet end up looking like monster feet.  Also, for some reason, I think that feet are smaller than they actually are in real life so I have to concentrate on purposely drawing them larger, but if I go too large... BAM!  monster feet again.  This can be dangerous business.

I had decided that one of the feet needed a bit of a redesign so I taped some tracing paper to the canvas and set about getting a proper shape started.  The tracing paper is useful because I can safely screw around with the sketch while still seeing the painting underneath, while not actually fucking up the painting itself.  If you click on the picture, it will enlarge and you can see my first sketch of the new foot (below), the second sketch with much more foot showing that I ended up using (middle) and a crappy unused sketch for how the top of the couch might have looked (above).

I wrote those two paragraphs last night and as fascinating as all that is (and I know that it isn't), I couldn't really find a satisfactory way to make this post entertaining to my legions of 'normal' fans, not just the couple of artistic types who skulk around here late at night.  After all, not  everyone cares about my creative process.  Or do they?

This is a list of the steps my brain takes, over the course of an entire evening, trying to find a way to end this goddamn post:

1.   Think.  Think.  Thinkthinkthink.  Nothing.  Dammnit.

2.   Look around the room for a while.  Maybe admire the ceiling for a bit.

3.   THINK!

4.   Tell myself that having a glass of whiskey will help clear my head and give me some focus.

5.   Realize that I am fully an alcoholic and I better fucking get back to work writing something so one day I can afford to go rehab.

6.   It's time for Thinkasarus Rex, baby!  GRRRAAWR!

7.   Look at my own foot hoping that it's somehow funnier than usual.    It is not.  ...Hey, my toenails are really long!

8.   Arrange the Prismacolor markers on my desktop into a rainbow so I'll be super-efficient and not waste any more time if I do any amazing Stick-Figure Andrew drawings later.

9.   Stare at the Prismacolor rainbow for a few minutes.

10.  Remind myself that thinking is what separates you from your moron co-workers at the day job so GET TO IT RIGHT NOW!   ...hmmn, still nothing.  Truly, I am 'moron' personified.

11.  Scroll through the iTunes playlist I'm currently listening to thinking that Ben Folds released 117 songs this week and I can't even write a halfway decent paragraph.  To be fair, he's ridiculously talented and I am easily hypnotized by pen rainbows.

12.  Begin to make a chronological Ben Folds 'best of' playlist in iTunes.

13.  Realize that a glass of whiskey would really help me collect and understand my thoughts about the true destination of Ben Folds' creative journey as I organize the single greatest playlist ever.  Ben will probably be fairly impressed with my effort.  Maybe he will help pay for my rehab stay!

14.  Maybe I'll look out the window for a while.

15.   Think-a dink-think-a-dink-think-a-dink (This is the sound my brain makes as it tries to do it's thing.) Think-a dink-think-a-dink-think-a-dink CLUNK!  (Well, that doesn't sound good at all!)  ...think-a-dink-think-a CLUNK! CLUNK! CLUNK!  (Goddamnit.)

16.  (sigh)

17.  Look through iPhoto again to see if somehow I missed a really spectacular photo of this stage of the painting that I could use for the post instead of the one I'm struggling with currently.  Most likely, this is all the photo's fault!  Remember that I started trying to write this fucking post because I thought this was the interesting photo and people would be fascinated with all the intricacies of my process.  Just look at that motherfucker up there at the top of the post, mocking me with it's blandness.  I am wasting my life.

18.  Tell myself that it has been scientifically proven that a glass of wine a day is good for you and whiskey has got to be twice as strong as wine, so theoretically it should be twice as good for me.  Especially if I drink twice as much of it!

19.  Notice that somehow, through absolutely no fault of my own, my brain has become slow and sticky, rendering me unable to form a cohesive thought.  It's like my brain is submerged in marshmallow fluff.

20.  Make a little drawing about the only way that you can think of to get that sticky goo out of your head...

21.  Chuckle to myself about how I'm a sophisticated adult.

22.  Give up on my dreams and go to bed.

Four score and hundreds of idiots ago...

Recently, I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for their annual Otter Days event.  Along with all the usual fantastic exhibits that the aquarium has, they also had a new baby otter that was certainly going to be the star of Otter Days.  Everyone one knows that I am mostly a heartless jackass, but even I cannot resist the gravitational pull of the center of the Cutie-verse that is a baby otter.  And, being that the event was called Otter Days, I was under the impression that there would be so many of those cute little bastards all over that the aquarium employees would have to spend most of their day piling up extra otters in the corners just to clear a path for the visitors to get through the exhibit.

This was not the case.  As far as I could tell, there were just two female otters floating in the back corner of their tank picking bugs off each other most of the day.  They would occasionally do a somersault in the water, but definitely the most entertaining thing they did was when both of the otters climbed on shore and started 69ing each other.  I'm assuming they were actually still just picking bugs off each other, but the position they chose to do it was super hot!

Also, there was NO BABY OTTER anywhere to be seen.  Goddamnit. That is some bullshit!

By the way, if you go to next year's Otter Days and are reading the aquarium's schedule of the day's activities and there is an event called Otter Dress-Up or something similar, DO NOT BE FOOLED.  Unlike what one would expect, it does not in any way involve dressing up otters in costumes!  Personally, I was hoping for an Abraham Lincoln otter.  You can't tell me that wouldn't be stupefyingly awesome and if you tried I would never ever believe you.

Instead, it is some sort of embarrassing crowd participation abomination in which goddamn kids are dressed up like otters!  That is in no way awesome. In truth, I don't even know if that actually happened because we left promptly as soon as a the MC asked for a child volunteer from the audience that liked to dress-up.  Maybe they were going to have the child try to wrestle the costume on to the otter and we totally missed out, but I doubt it.

That would have put the event back into the awesome category for sure because that otter is still a wild animal an probably would've torn that kid's head off if it meant not having to wear a fucking Harry Potter costume.

I do not want this post to sound like I am complaining about the aquarium itself.  The staff seemed very knowledgeable and was incredibly patient with the crowds of morons.  A special kind of appreciation goes out to the young lady that had to endure being the MC at the Otter Dress-Up fiasco because she kind of managed to sound half-way believably excited while performing even though doing that ridiculous show everyday must absolutely destroy her soul.

The exhibits, other than the otter-less Otter Days, were excellent even though there were nine million goddamn kids running around screaming everywhere.  A quick note for parents, if the aquarium is kind enough to let visitors handle some of it's wildlife, please do not let your retarded monkey-child bang the starfish repeatedly against the edge of the display.  How would you like it if I came into your house and started slamming your kids into the fucking wall?

Well, if your kids are the type of useless brat that beats up defenseless sea creatures, you should thank me.

The highlight of my visit was getting to see the giant octopus.  As you might already know, I love tentacles.

It must have been my lucky day because when we got to the octopus tank, he was moving all around the tank.  His tentacles were swirling around in the water as he repeatedly slid across the viewing glass of the tank.  It was amazing.  It was like he was putting on a show for me.  He would swim for a bit, then climb some rocks and then slide across the glass again ten inches from my face.  I was hypnotized and stood there in awe for quite some time.

Obviously, other people were just as impressed and thought they should take some photos to record this amazing performance for posterity.  The problem was that there were signs everywhere informing us that flash photography was NOT allowed.  An octopus is used to living in darkness and the bright camera flashes are unpleasant for him.

And of course, these assholes did it anyway because they're assholes. 

After all who would care about an animal's comfort when some all-important tourists have their precious pictures to take?  It's not like there's a giant gift shop full of professionally shot photos of these amazing creatures that you could purchase for your memories.  And there's probably no photos at all of this giant octopus on the Internet that you could possibly view to help you remember this fine specimen. Or you could just actually REMEMBER it!

Instead you've decided to torture this poor animal with bright flashes in a dark room so you can have your own personal, poorly composed, barely in focus, washed out memory that looks NOTHING like the natural beauty before you.

The octopus would use it's natural camouflage defenses to turn from orange to white when a flash went off because it was AFRAID.  Then everybody would say "ooooooh!" and start snapping more pictures because it was so incredible looking.  Fucking selfish pieces of shit.

I really hate people and I have a feeling that the giant octopus does as well.  Luckily for me, when I get annoyed I can just leave.  When he gets annoyed there's nothing he can do about it. If only the glass on his tank wasn't so thick...

(arm candy)

(I've decided to write this entire post in parenthesis because it seems like a convenient way to make a rather lackluster effort seem much less official.  And as you know, if your post is really boring, you always want to take any necessary steps to make sure it isn't officially really boring.)

(Normally when I write, I imagine my regular, nasally, probably slightly indignant, speaking voice saying the words.  This way it's kind of like I'm whispering to you instead!)

(Shhh!  Today's progress photo of the painting features the arm and leg of the couch.  Also, if you're in a generous mood, you could say that the fancy wood floor counts as well since I think it looks pretty swell as well.  I'm fairly happy with the way things came out even though it looks vaguely like the arm rails are carved from chocolate instead of wood. And as much as I may want to make a comment about how the highlights look delicious and try to start a run of semi-sweet puns, I think I may have run out of interesting things to say about painting couches a few posts ago.  So I'm just going to post my little picture and quickly write a couple of non-official sentences in parenthesis and quietly call it a day.)

Benicia is not just the best place around to dump a dead body anymore!

Anthony Riggs

I never sell any of my paintings and nobody seems to be volunteering to give me fist fulls of cash because I'm sooo handsome, so I work in a really crappy picture frame store to pay my bills.  Almost everything that we frame at the store is complete garbage. Just really awful.

This is not the case with the artwork of Anthony Riggs.  When he brings his pieces in to frame, it is one of the few bright spots in my work day avalanche of terrible, dull, housewife artwork.  His work is incredibly layered and detailed while still remaining immediate and loose.  Also, he looks damn fine in a western cowboy shirt.

His show, The Tangible Objects of Dreams, is currently hanging at The Rellik Tavern in Benicia and if you find yourself in that vicinity,  you should check it out.

Happy Birthday Old Man!

Alden Vanderkarr

Today is my dad's 75th birthday, though he claims that he is only 29.

Hmmn.

Every Wednesday afternoon he comes down to take me to lunch at Hubcaps, the local diner down the street from my day job.  We come here under the pretense of eating and catching-up on what's been happening with our lives, but I'm pretty sure the real reason Dad visits me every week is to look at girls.

He recently got the lens in one of his eyes replaced and he can see better than he's been able to in years.  He takes full advantage of this miracle of modern technology to enjoy the parade of girls in skimpy outfits that is downtown Walnut Creek on a summer afternoon and say things like "Her legs go all the way up and make an ass of themselves".

Maybe Dad is actually closer to 16 than 29.

He's the best.

Though some of the parts looked as they should, the sum of the parts did not look as it should.

I've been waiting a long time for this.  It's finally figure painting day!

As I'm sure I've mentioned in previous posts,  but I am not hugely interested in painting supporting elements.  I do however understand that on most occasions they help get an idea across much better than just a figure on some lame gradated tonal background.  When I paint a portrait I feel that if all of the collateral elements that support the figure are convincing, they will in turn make the main figure more convincing.  They're called supporting elements for a fucking reason.

That being said, I love painting the figure so much that every time a painting is started I have to force myself to work on the background and all of the supporting elements in first because I don't give a crap about those things and would never even bother painting them if I had already finished the figure.  It's like painting foreplay for me!

Why bother taking care of the background's needs when I've already shot my load all over the figure.

You ladies know what I'm talkin' about!

So I've always imagined our girl to have milky white skin, not dead pale, but really pale.  It's just a thing for me.

I wish achieving the desired effect was as simple for me as painting some shadows and highlights and kicking back with a glass of The Kraken on the rocks to bask in my gloriousness, but nothing is ever that simple for me.  Ever.   ...um, except the part about The Kraken.  I seem to be able to achieve that with virtually no effort almost every night.

Painting flat white skin has no subtlety so usually I start with a traditional orange-y base and start layering yellows and blues and pinks over the top.  Hopefully this will allow small parts of all of those colors to show through the top coat of white, giving the skin a thin translucent feel.  This rarely ever happens for me, but I always give it my best fucking shot anyway because I'm a champion.

Fig.1

On the first try at the skin (Fig.1), in my excitement at finally getting to the figure, I completely skipped the all-important building-up of the colors and got right to painting the white because I'm a moron that can't follow his own goddamn rules.  As her body gradually took shape I came to realize that the shape it was taking was all wrong.  I had tried to take a short-cut and progress more quickly and somewhere along the way I had evidently lost my grasp of her anatomy's structure.  Her parts were not fitting together quite right. Things were askew...

It was as if a fence had blown down in the tornado last night at the Anatomical Ranch and all the rib cages, breasts and abdominal muscles had gotten free and were running around loose. Nothing was where it was supposed to be!

Her right boob had disappeared completely and I had absolutely no idea where it had gone.

Fig.2

So in an effort to not totally suck ass, I decided to start over and painted out everything.  This time I was going do a professional job and pay attention to my reference photos.  This time I was going to build up the shapes slowly to give her figure a convincing solidity (Fig.2).  This time I was going to give her the correct number of boobs even if it killed me!

The first attempt at the neck area (Fig.1) could be quite possibly the worst thing I'd ever painted so I made sure to get rid of that fucker first.  If you're doing this kind of caricature based Pop-Surrealism, it can be difficult to connect a regular sized body to a giant size head in a convincing way, but it's very important that things look solid.

Good solid head is difficult to achieve if you don't understand the importance of the neck.

You fellas known what I'm talkin' about!

The problem with the neck was that I was making that area too complicated by painting all the little bones and tendons and shit that I know make up a neck.  The parts of the picture that surround that area contain much more important information for the story and they were being dominated because so much was visually invested in the neck.  I should've been letting all that whole mess drift off into shadow (Fig.3).

Fig.3

I had a terrific model and, Jebus bless her, she has a lovely super-flat stomach.  Not a muscular, gym-rat stomach, but the stomach of a genetically gifted, naturally thin person who will never have to worry about what she eats.  At this point, the viewer should be able to tell she looks like that from my painting.

Unfortunately, this was still impossible (Fig.3).

Things had gone terribly askew during my previous attempt, but this time I was determined to not lose my way.  This time I clung desperately to EVERY scrap of information that those reference photos held for me.  Every tiny shadow darkened into the valley of a crease.  Every highlight was the wild peak of a mountain.  Everything was everything!  There was nothing that I was not going to notice and immediately increase it's value exponentially.  Fuck Subtlety Gently!

That weird crease on her left side is actually in the reference.  Sort of. Her ribcage is twisting back towards the couch and compressing with the hip at the same time. So as her torso twists, her oblique externals (those are that set of muscles) are flexing to make that movement happen.  They are in no way that severe looking, but I was caught up in trying to make everything exactly as it was in the picture and in doing so I managed to over-amplify everything.  Well done.

I seem to have a dimly lit recollection that this girl was originally supposed to have a lithe, suggestive body, not a monster stomach.

I guess it's time to paint out more crap and start over ...again (Fig.4).

Fig.4

EDITOR'S NOTE:  Enlightened Andrew would like to end on a more positive note by saying that he is very pleased that the correct number of boobs have been firmly established.