#StickFigureAndrew

[andrewvanderkarr]

The Dark Knightmare Returns.

[andrewvanderkarr]

The Dark Knightmare.

I’ve spent the last few days trying to come up with a decent layout for a Batman piece I’ve been designing for a friend that I owed a very big favor and I’m becoming very frustrated because I can’t seem to figure out how to create something that is at least kind of original.  Anything that I draw that’s any good is because I’m blatantly ripping off some one else’s work.  On top of that, all the styles I’m stealing from are in conflict with each other so my designs are a mess.  Darwyn Cooke’s retro simplicity is directly at odds with Alex Ross’ complicated hyper realism.  Mike Mignola’s distant noir abstractions are the exact fucking opposite of Jim Lee’s gritty explosions of detail.

Goddamnit this is going to drive me INSANE!  It’s like Batman has become my arch enemy!

[andrewvanderkarr]

Everyone should have their own tiny Detective Pixie.

[andrewvanderkarr]

Don't make me come all the way over there and shut your mouth for you. I'm very busy over here.

Alright goddamnit.  Settle down you heathens.  I know it might be hard to believe, but I’ve got other things to do besides trying to entertain you fuckers.  Let’s see… I have to drink a lot and I… uh, I totally spend the rest of my time getting laid by super-hot library vixens!

Well, half of that statement is true.

There have been recent comments made making it clear that people are dissatisfied with my my current timeline for content output here at This Is Some Life You’ve Got.  Apparently, I haven’t been posting with enough frequency to satiate my legions of readers and the outcry of disappointment has been deafening.

Normally, this would be the point where I would be waving my arms around wildly and saying something loudly about how maybe you should shut the fuck up until you are the one working on a fairly time consuming painting while trying to tend to all the other responsibilities that  any other functioning adult has to deal with like commuting an hour to a shitty day job five days a week and drinking myself to sleep every night.

Also, I would probably mention how you should cram it until you have even tried to make up content that doesn’t embarrass you on a regular basis for a blog that you put on the Internet for every jackass on earth to read and comment on if they wish.

AND speaking of that,  I might mention of how almost NONE of you can be bothered to even write a SIMPLE FUCKING COMMENT unless it is to say that I should FUCKING WRITE MORE!

This is not going to be the case this time!  I’m don’t want it to sound like I’m complaining about the comments that were made, Enlightened Andrew is actually really glad to hear that some one besides me cares at all about this thing.  His tiny heart is warmed.

When I created this blog, it was not supposed to be work.  I was supposed to be able do my stupid little drawings and write snarky comments about things and have some fun.  As it turns out, I found that while most of the time I really enjoyed the posts, some of the time it was incredibly frustrating and time consuming.  It was work.  It was time spent writing that I could’ve spent painting.  I know it seems ridiculous, but I’m trying to make something I can be proud of and some posts take five or six or ten hours to do with all the photos and stick-figures and Photoshop and figuring out what to write about and the deciding the best way to say it and the constant re-reading and editing and re-writing and, of course, all the run-on sentences. Those sentences don’t just go on and on forever on their own you know, some one has to spend time making that happen.  So I just stopped for a while because it wasn’t fun anymore.

Luckily, while I was busy not updating my blog, I was busy painting like a motherfucker.

I finally started on the coat and was very happy with how things began.  Frankly, I did a bang-up job on the outer white portion.  I managed to give the material a thickness and a softness that I was hoping for and the looseness (for me at least) of the paint application gave it a kind of fuzzy feeling.  Later as the painting nears completion, I’ll go back and give the white part of the coat another layer of fuzziness to hopefully enhance the effect.  Well done, young man.

The inner pink lining did not work out as well. I always have trouble with the pink parts.

I had designed the folds of the fabric to help give the illusion that her hip was sinking into the couch cushion.  It did this, but unfortunately the shape of the folds gave our girl a misshapen figure and that was majorly uncool so I re-shot the coat photo reference and reshaped everything in that area the next day.

A much more graceful, streamlined shape (and a nipple for a portion of the time!) was what resulted from my second attempt at the lining.  I used the directional lines from the folds in the fabric to show the point of contact for the hip and increase the sense of grounding the figure on the couch. As her ribcage reclined partially up the back of the couch I used less directional folds to indicate less pressure from her body.

I confess, I was sporting a bit of a chubby as I finished the shadows and highlights on the wavy fabric because all the  bunching and folding of the coat fabric was going to really help emphasize the smoothness of her figure.

I had happily spent most of both days of my weekend painting the coat and I couldn’t wait for the next day of painting.  Too bad I have a real job that I have to go to so I can pay my bills and it would be five more days before I picked up a brush to paint again.  It’s no wonder it seems like it takes me forever to get anything done.

By the way, I spent almost five hours of one of my days off writing this post instead of painting.

[andrewvanderkarr]

False accusations.

[andrewvanderkarr]

This post was approved by the FQCM.

…um, painting the couch… let’s see… well, there’s always… no, that’s super-boring…  hmmn.  Oh!  Oh Yeah!  I almost forgot!  People LOVE that thing about couches!  You know THE THING!  I’M YELLING AND EXCITED ABOUT IT SO YOU SHOULD BE TOO!  …Alright.  I admit there is nothing inherently exciting about a couch and I don’t really have much to say of any interest about painting one either…  hmmn.  It’s a couch… with cushions?  Fascinating stuff indeed!

This may surprise you… I  don’t really care all that much about painting couches.  Unfortunately, sometimes girls in paintings need to recline semi-naked on things..  I don’t actively seek out these sorts of situations, they just happen to me.

In fact, if I had my preference I wouldn’t even have a couch in the painting.  It’s way too dangerous for a gentle soul such a myself!

It is well documented that if I don’t do a top notch job of rendering every little detail, the Furniture Quality Control Monster sends one of his goons over and I may find myself on the business end of a talking-to about why I can’t wait to spend three more hours painting the piping on the couch cushions and how said piping had better move people to tears when they see it.

The FQCM means business and he gets the tears he wants, one way or another.  

As you might imagine, the possibility of having the FQCM show up for one of his surprise inspections puts a great deal of pressure on a painter.  In order to prevent any kind of FQCM confrontation, I have a certain procedure that I go through EVERY time I’m working on the supporting elements of a painting.

First, I gather up loads of reference photos.  If I’m painting a lamp, I usually like to have pictures of four or five or fifteen different kinds of lamps.  Sometimes I even have a picture or two of lamps that I just like and couldn’t pass-up in the magazine I was looking through, even though they have nothing at all to do with with what I’m painting.

Second, I like to really step back from the canvas and try to decide which of my reference lamps will best fit the piece.  After flipping through the stack of reference pictures, I step back even further to consider shape, texture and perspective of all the possible lamps. By now I’ve stepped back a couple of times and since my studio isn’t huge, I’m now probably standing next to my couch so I might as well sit down.  It is well known that sitting is MUCH more conducive to thinking than standing.  This way I can focus all my brain-powers on the important task at hand!

Third, I usually close my eyes so I can imagine each lamp as it would fit into the layout of the painting.  Careful consideration must be given to every detail so as not to provoke scrutinizing from the authorities. Combined with moving into a horizontal position on the couch, this often results in a zen-like mental state known as Maximum Focus.  I have been known to maintain this kind of concentration for a couple of hours on a sunny afternoon.

Also, as every one knows, it is virtually impossible for any of the FQCM’s goons to smash your head in during Maximum Focus.  It’s like a protective barrier against things that are trying to ruin your day.

Sometimes I enact this routine even when there aren’t any supporting elements in my painting because it’s that important for my personal safety.

   Easily my favorite part of the rendering the surface of the couch is the shadow under her right knee.  Normally, obsessing over every little detail leads to my work having a stilted, overworked quality, but this area somehow managed to escape that fate.  Just a couple of strokes around the knee with a half paint-half waterlogged brush leaving some of the darker orange area underneath showing through and BAM! we have a terrific grounding shadow.

As you can see in the above Official Super-Useful Diagram, a grounding shadow is the trick that makes one object appear to be touching the surface of another object.  The Fig.A Stick-Figure Andrew is clearly pathetic and lost, floating in a indeterminate space while the Fig.B Stick-Figure Andrew is much happier and well-adjusted because he has a grounding shadow that shows that he belongs somewhere and gives his life meaning. 

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Regular Andrew needs to get a grounding shadow ASAP.

Even though they are important and make you feel really good about yourself, grounding shadows are just a fraction of the details that come under the jurisdiction of the FQCM.  Details like piping on the cushions and the tufting buttons on the backrest of the couch are the kind of thing that gives an object a solidity and believability. Without them, the object just seems unfinished and might get you kneed in the balls by one of the FQCM’s henchmen. 

Without sprinkles on top, a cupcake still looks like cupcake, but it’s much more cupcake-y with the right delicious supporting details in place.

The point of all of this is that as an artist, you need to be ever vigilant about every tiny aspect of everything you ever do or you will suffer the FQCM’s tortures in excruciating and undignified ways. 

hmmn… So I guess all the fussing I did about ruining the painting in the previous post with the blue was just a shitload of overreacting since apparently I painted over every bit of that mess this week.

I’m a professional!

[andrewvanderkarr]

Self-help from the helpless.

When I woke up this morning I found a confusing, poorly constructed message and this tiny drawing of Stick Figure Andrew scribbled upside down on a piece of notepaper that I had been using the previous day. Apparently I had a bit to drink last night and for an unknown reason thought I needed to remember this:

’I have jokes in my head that don’t get to come out, opposite the way I bring my feelings into the heart huddle’

Well, that completely makes sense and totally sounds like something I would say.

[andrewvanderkarr]

Beginning Painting For Complete Morons 101

Maybe I could teach art classes to make more money.  I would be an excellent teacher if the premise of my class prospectus was that I would show all of my students what NOT to do while attempting to create a quality painting.  It is quite possible that I have made every mistake possible over the course of my career and it could be an invaluable experience to novice painters to witness my ineptitude as a preventative measure in service of their future careers as successful artists.

Of course, It’s more likely that I will just give away all my valuable insights on this goddamn blog for fucking free.

For example, after I have the composition suitably sorted in charcoal, I like to tone my canvas with a couple of layers of transparent yellow oxides and oranges so that I don’t have to start the painting with a glaring white canvas.  Plus, I like the way the orange looks when it peeks out between the brush strokes of the completed painting.

The next step is washing on some violets, crimsons and blacks to start determining the relative lightness and darkness of things.  Jesus Christ this is boring.  If you already know anything about painting please skip off to read another blog with my full apologies and blessings as I don’t blame you at all for abandoning this sinking ship.  Please come back another day though because my happiness depends on validation.  I swear I’ll try to write something about Elvis Costello or some other celebrity that you care about for the next post.

For those of you that remain, I love this part of the process because it is so filled with the potential for greatness.  Oh the genius that will surely accompany the future of this painting for the rest of eternity with never a mistake to be made!  The paint washes on all loose and fun and it never matters if I get sloppy because every single thing I do at this stage will inevitably be covered up at some later point.  The only thing I’m really trying to do is establish how dark the dark areas are going to be so it’s almost impossible to fuck it up.

So I just got done reading a book about the artist  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and apparently I was so excited and full of myself after reading a couple of paragraphs about a genius’ technique that I thought I should attempt to apply this to my work.  If I understood my book correctly, what Toulouse-Lautrec would do is dilute his paints and apply thin washes of color quickly over each other and then go back in with opaque paints and solidify the areas that needed it.  This transparency would let his gestural drawing style show through and capture the energy of the moment. I’ve always admired painters who can work fluidly and quickly because it’s the exact opposite of my usual overwrought process that sucks out whatever life there was in my original sketch.  This time, with my borrowed new technique was going to be different though!  

Sure, any thinking person would’ve realized that he and I were using different media on different surfaces and that he was a genius and on my best day I’m mostly mediocre, but thinking has never been my thing so I headed over to the easel.

I had decided that my couch was going to be blue so what better place to start with a technique that I’ve never tried before than on the component with biggest surface area of the whole painting.  Smart.

Trying to think ahead and seeing how large the surface area was going to be, I decided to use the BIGGEST brush I had so I could cover more ground before the acrylic paint started drying.  Super-smart!

So without doing any kind of a test on a small discreet portion of the canvas, I loaded up the biggest brush I had with blue and slopped it on my painting.  As you can probably guess,  things did not go as well as expected.  The paint was not nearly thin enough and it completely obscured all my under-painting.  As I desperately tried to scrub off that fucking blue, it started to take off the other colors that were below it and I was loosing the tooth of the canvas.  Fuck.  I decided to just let it dry instead of risking damage to the canvas itself .  I would just have to try to cover the blue at a later point.

I know it doesn’t look that bad in the picture, but seemed entirely wrong at the time.  Also, I may have panicked a little bit.  The shadow areas of paintings are supposed to be translucent and dark, not fluorescent opaque light blue.  I was DONE with washes of color FOR FUCKING EVER!

So after some lunch, I loaded up the biggest brush I had with a much thinner blue and washed it all over that goddamn couch.  I have been known to be a bit stubborn at times.

In retrospect the blue fiasco wasn’t all that terrible, but for a person who’s used to working a certain way it kind of frightened me that I’d ruined my brand new painting before I even really got started.  The new thinner wash came out much more the way I had originally hoped by really muting that yellow/orange while still letting the warmth show through. When I did the wash of white on the body, it obscured the under-drawing of her face so she had to get a quick indication of eyes and a mouth before I stopped working for the day. I couldn’t have her sitting there all week looking like an oddly suggestive oyster on the giant half shell.

[andrewvanderkarr]

Well, at least someone's finally drawing something around here besides flies.

I’m sure that I’ll soon find all my free time once again consumed by the tedium of trying to be a responsible adult, but all of last weekend was happily wasted on my own selfish pursuits.

There would be no going to the bank and there would be no paying of bills.  There would be no house cleaning.  No handy-man bullshit for my friend’s parents.  No business cards or logo murals.  No car fucking fixing.  And no taking of dad to the DMV or the doctor.  And I’m not saying that I don’t LOVE hearing every goddamn detail of my dad’s struggle to learn how to insert his own catheter while I try to eat lunch, but goddamnit!

There was only going to be one activity done and one activity only.  I was going to draw a semi-naked girl!  And if it came down to choosing between finally drawing something for myself or caring about some one else’s needs, I wouldn’t hesitate to beat every person on earth to death with their own pet to ensure my uninterrupted selfishness.  Though my killing rampage would have likely taken up most of my immediate painting time, it would’ve practically guaranteed me free time the next weekend!

After a fairly productive day of drawing I was beginning to see something interesting taking shape on the canvas.  I had screwed around with different variations on the pose from the previous painting and had come up with what I thought was the winner.   The new girl had lost a lot of the slouchy aggression in her pose and traded her cigarette for a long coat.  It seemed like another layer of open invitation that went well with her new reclining position on the sofa.

I had found a fancy new couch for her to lounge around on and everything seemed to be going fairly well except for one area.  Her goddamn left arm had loads of problems.  It directed the viewer’s eye straight off the canvas which is not usually what a painter wants to happen.  Also, it covered up the curve of her hip, which I felt was throwing off the rhythm of the rest of the figure and not really helping the illusion of the other hip sinking into the cushion.  It was making our lovely, slender young lady look like a lumpy stick.

Furthermore (and I know this is a major problem because I’m a professional), her left shoulder looked like it had been broken and the adjoining dead arm was enjoying it’s retirement from usefulness in a full state of rigor mortis.  Sadly, zombie arm was not really going to work with my concept for this painting.

A couple of days later, Alisa texted me to tell me that she had been thinking about the dead arm and thought she had solved the problem with the positioning.  This is exactly the opposite what every person that thinks of themselves as a creative type wants to hear.  She probably said something like…

"Hey! I thought of idea that might work for your painting."

but I usually hear something like this…

"Hey!  Since you are beyond all hope thinking of anything interesting or clever, I’ve taken the liberty of simply proving how talentless and dim you are by easily solving your pedestrian little design issue.  It all seems so easy!  I don’t know why you’re always making such a fuss about how this is so difficult."

Worse than hearing that though is the part of the conversation where the person has told you their magnificently stupendous idea that almost always sucks ass (be it donkey or rectum, your choice) and you, as a well mannered member of society, have to agree that it truly was the best idea that you’ve ever heard.  The inside of my brain goes all static-y and my teeth scream at each other, but usually I try to say nice things about their suggestion because I know that’s what somebody who wasn’t dead inside would do.

Usually it turns out that these people with such creative ideas used to draw in high school and they were really good, but don’t remember why they ever stopped doing it.  I have a fairly good idea why…   It might be because THEY WERE TERRIBLE!  If their current helpful idea is any indication, it may have been that every thought they had was crushed by a giant cliche, forever extinguishing any hope of creating something that was not entirely awful.

Saying mean things on a blog and saying them somewhere that matters are two completely different things!  Usually I am the sweetest, but I think I got off on a tangent…

So anyway, Alisa thought that she had this great idea for me, but I’d come up with a new policy for just such an occasion.  I told her that if she wanted me to even consider her idea she was going to have to draw it out for me.  The drawing didn’t have to BE good, she just had to TRY for good.  Just put in some kind of effort and it would be fine.  I think this is fair.  If you’re willing to do the criticizing you should be willing to take some criticism.  I put my crappy paintings (partially completed no less!) up on the fucking internet for the whole world to judge, the only person that she had to show it to was me.

Well maybe not just me. 

As you can see from her drawing, Alisa thought the formerly dead arm should be bent up to be pulling the coat open.  Well actually, it may not be readily apparent to the novice what this drawing is try to convey, however I am fairly fluent in most known forms of stick-figure gibberish and I understood it right away.  Annoyingly, she seemed to have accidentally stumbled in some miraculous fashion onto a good idea. Goddamnit.  I suppose I should’ve been happy but I like to be the one who knows everything and usually my art-related nonsense is the only time that gets to happen for me.

She told me that she worked on multiple versions of this for over an hour and how frustrating it was trying to get the leg crossing over to come out right.  Imagine my complete shock to learn that drawing isn’t always super-easy and super-fun!  I should write an blog post about it and tell the people!

I know the idea of bending an arm isn’t exactly revolutionary, but sometimes I get so stuck on trying to figure out how to make my existing preconception of the piece work, that I entirely miss a simple, logical solution.  Scroll up there and click on the top picture and look at how much erasing went into trying to force that arm/hand into something usable when it should’ve been clear that it really wasn’t working at all. Alisa’s little drawing was enough to get me thinking about the solution in a different way.

After the arm was fixed things came together nicely.  I’d gotten her hip back as well as the figure’s grounding and rhythm.  Besides some adjustments to the coat and the legs, the only thing that remained was drawing the pointy tines on the body.  Flush from her valuable artistic contribution, Alisa must’ve been positively brimming with know-it-all-ness.  This is the conversation that followed…

Andrew:   I wanted to figure out a way to glue some tines on you to get all the little shadows right, but I guessed that you probably wouldn’t go for hot glue directly on your skin…

Alisa:   Eyelash glue!  See, you should bring these things up.  I’m very useful. (a few seconds pass) …but we don’t have anything to use for the tines.

Andrew:   How about toothpicks?

Alisa:   See, I was going more realistic.  I was going to shave a cactus!

[andrewvanderkarr]

Maybe tomorrow, if I really concentrate, I can learn to microwave some pizza rolls.

I might be the biggest idiot on the face of the planet.

I should probably start at the beginning.

Yesterday I woke up to find that my post about The Elvis Costello Spinning Songbook show had been linked to/from the official Elvis Costello website!  You can  imagine how excited I was about this.  They had used large portion of my text (though strangely not the part about how fantastic I am) and several of my photos.  This was shaping up to be the best day ever!

They had included a link to the full post at the bottom of the page so some of the people who saw it on his site came here to visit my site.  I’m sure they thought something else interesting might be here and they were thoroughly mistaken, but they were here none the less.  So I checked my stat counter and it was at 322 page views for the day at 8:45 in the morning.  I know this isn’t a really impressive number for most people, but it’s approximately 318 more hits than I get for an entire day. I don’t have many friends.

Unfortunately I had to go to work instead of basking all day in the glow of being an internet messiah.  Goddamnit. I know an opportunity for greatness if it is willing to hit me over the head and this one was!  So instead of doing a good job at work, all day long I schemed about how I could capitalize on my good fortune and keep some of my special new friends coming back.

One of my new friends that had originally alerted me to the fact that I was a part of the looming Elvis Costello Empire was, as it turns out, the husband of my favorite amateur go-go dancer from the concert.  He had found the blog, like a good husband would, by searching the internet for photos of his wife.  He saw that I had surreptitiously taken some photos at the show and was hoping that I might have one of her on stage that didn’t get posted.  I did and would certainly contact him when I got home from work that night.

When I got home and eagerly logged in to the site my hopes of internet domination were crushed.  The goddamn Blogger system had gone all haywire and was offline!  OFF-FUCKING -LINE!  Apparently the folks at Blogger didn’t care in any way that this was supposed to be my big day.  Goddamnit.  When I was finally able to check my stat counter the next morning, I had amassed a grand total of 327 page views.  For those of you that are mathematically challenged like myself, I’ve gotten out a calculator and done the math for you.  That’s five more hits in twenty four hours.  FUCKING FIVE!  That is no where near nine katrillion! While still more than my usual daily total, it was more than a little disappointing.

Also, there would be no new flood of readers either.  By now Elvis had played a show in Los Angeles and there were all new posts on his website in the spot where mine used to be at the top of the page.  It was official, I was moldy old news.

And on top of that, all the comments that had been left previously that glorious day had been deleted by Blogger for some reason.  How am I supposed to feel loved without my comments section?

I still wanted to send the husband his photo, but I no longer had his comment to contact him. Luckily, this giant head of mine sometimes retains things besides alcohol.  I remembered a YouTube clip he had posted that I could use to contact him.  Or so I thought before I found out I was a moron.  I was at the goddamn YouTube site trying to leave him a message for more time than I care to admit.

First, I tried using my Blogger account and  they wanted me to activate my Google account, which I thought was the same fucking thing, but I did it anyway because I just want to be helpful.  After I did that, I was informed that I had to open a YouTube account or my head would be chopped off.  I’m not sure they actually said that, but they seemed fairly adamant.  I did that too, I think.

I seemed ready to leave my message so I typed it in to the comment box and hit post.  I got some ‘pending approval’ message, so I waited.  Nothing.  Maybe this is how they do it.  Maybe not.  I refreshed the page and my comment had disappeared, so I re-wrote it and published it again.  My browser window is still open and my ‘pending approval’ message is still there three hours later.

UPDATE: I refreshed the page and there are still NO comments from me.  Such an idiot.

I know that goddamn teenagers can use this motherfucker.  Why can’t I figure out something that millions of dope smoking morons can manipulate with minimal effort?  My stupidity knows no bounds.  I just wanted to say thanks to the husband-guy for his comment and get him his picture.  Everyone would be happy!  That is apparently never going to happen.

Well if you’ve come back Husband-Guy, this is the photo that I have been trying in vain to get to you.  It’s kind of blurry, but it’s the best one that I have.

Now that this post is completed, I’m off to label everything in my apartment because in my fog of dismal stupidity I could quite possibly forget the intended use of common household items.

[andrewvanderkarr]

I'm no Diego Rivera, that's for fucking sure.

Last month my friend Saul asked me if I would paint the Dan’s Bar logo on the wall behind where the bands play.  For some reason I agreed to do this even though I have ZERO experience with this kind of thing.  I was most likely drunk.  Or I was hoping to be drunk in the very near future.  I’ll agree to almost any retarded scheme for the promise of booze.

I finally got some time in my schedule, so one day last week I got up bright and early and hustled down to the bar so I could get to work.  The black parts on the sides of the tan area had already been painted previously by Jose so all I had to do was super-size the world’s most poorly designed logo so it would horrify people with taste for miles around.  I’ve tried for years to get Saul to redesign the logo, but he prefers the ‘if it ain’t broke’ theory.  And who am I to argue?  I don’t have my shit together enough to own a car of the non-death trap variety let alone a successful business.

So like a good little worker bee I got right to work.  And if my pants are any indicator, I’m VERY excited about painting the top of that D!

After I finished the second coat of white I painted some of the black around the letters, leaving a one inch-ish border of the wall color around everything to be painted silver later.  Saul said that Jose would come in later that night and use a roller to finish painting the tan parts black so I didn’t have to do everything.

Five minutes later I was painting the fucking tan parts black.  I don’t know how he does it, but if Saul’s involved I always find myself doing things that I didn’t think I was going to be doing. Luckily, he didn’t really have anything else to do at that moment so he found himself painting the black areas too! All of his other lackeys must’ve been busy or something.

The next day I came back and spent most of the day painting the silver around the edges of the logo.  There aren’t really any ‘in-progress’ painting pictures of this day because Saul was busy elsewhere and I had snapped at one of the grizzled old daytime regulars so none of them were talking to me anymore. Tim, one of the daytime bartenders, was odd and funny as usual, but he was working hard on getting the patrons riled up about dumb crap like royal weddings and hats so I didn’t want to bother him by asking him to take pictures of me painting a comparatively uninteresting silver line.

The daytimers had been muttering all morning about how they didn’t like the silver, because with the black it was the colors of the Oakland Raiders. Holy shit! You mean that black and silver NEVER coexisted in each other’s vicinity before the Oakland Fucking Raiders INVENTED this color combination? They are geniuses! You know who are NOT geniuses? Daytime drunks.

One of those jackasses decided to tell me how much he didn’t like the color that had been chosen for this part of the project that he had absolutely NOTHING to do with, so I said…

Sometimes I get crabby. I didn’t really yell at him, but I did say those exact words and they were loud enough to make it clear to the entire bar that I was no longer seeking consultation of the retarded variety.

Later that night Saul took this picture of Zoo Station, an excellent U2 tribute band, getting things started at Dan’s in front of my shiny new logo mural thing. I think it’s cool the way it looks like it really glows when the spotlights hit the white and the silver.

 I guess silver was the right color after all, motherfucker.

[andrewvanderkarr]

A new useful tip from Mandy, enjoy yourself!

Last night at the bar, Mandy was telling me that sound travels in direct lines from the speakers at a concert and how she uses this information to determine her sweet spot for maximum enjoyment. She knows exactly where her’s is at, but it’s a secret so you’re going to have to figure out where your own sweet spot is for yourself. Unless you have REALLY helpful friends…

[andrewvanderkarr]

She chose not to become a flower in the sunlight, but instead to remain a rock in a puddle.

Last night at the bar, it came to my attention that one of the two readers of this blog doesn’t believe that I am now upbeat and positive about life.  Despite my pleas for understanding of my new sunny disposition, she would not listen.  I believe she may have even screeched “That is such bullshit!” at me.  Clearly not everyone has made the choice to be a nicer person.

I understand that niceness is not an easy path to choose.  A lesser person might elect to hide their own insecurities behind snarky remarks and elaborately messy hair.  That’s what Regular Andrew would’ve done.  He was weak.  He would’ve told the person that doubted his sincerity to fuck off, most likely prefaced with a heartfelt “why don’t you just” and finished with a convincing “then” because Regular Andrew was that much of a jerk.  He might’ve even made a comment about how her shoes made her look like Frankenwhore.

However, the new Enlightened Andrew calmly tried to explain to this overly judgemental person that if she would just stop being such an awful human being that people might actually like her. Probably not, but there was a chance.  She was NOT going to be having any of that and stomped out of the bar screeching terrible things at me like “Have fun tonight!” and “It was good seeing you!”  Pathetic.  I don’t know how her surprisingly cool boyfriend puts up with that name calling bitch.

Oh wait, He’s probably enlightened and positive!  That would explain why he’s so cool.

There are also other good things that result from a more positive approach to life besides being so much better than everyone else.

I think have super-powers now!

Recently at the frame shop, I was attaching some artwork to a mat for a customer and when I picked up the mat to make sure that everything was on straight, the artwork fell off.  I thought I had ACTUALLY used some tape and evidently this was NOT the case.  Not wanting the customer to doubt my skills a veteran picture framer, I explained to her that the artwork should have stayed in place because I had been using my super willpower to keep them together.  The customer and Manager Mark, who was lurking nearby, seemed dubious and this conversation followed…

Enlightened Andrew:   Well, it would’ve worked but I’ve been using my willpowers on all the other pieces that I already completed before this one.  It’s so late in the day that most of my willpower reserves are drained.

(in my head this statement continued with “It takes a lot out of me to do everyone else’s goddamn job all day long around this dump, for fuck’s sake.  I can’t do every fucking thing ever and not ever make a fucking mistake.  Fuck.” but a customer was standing right there AND this is the new Enlightened Andrew so in my head it stayed)

Manager Mark:   Yeah Right. I don’t think she’s going to believe you. (chuckles uncomfortably hoping the customer thinks I’m kidding about this whole expensive custom framing using my brain powers thing)

Customer:   (grinning) I don’t know. I believe he could do it.

Enlightened Andrew:   (triumphantly) I KNOW!  Because I WILLED you to think that with my amazing Super-Willpowers!  Obviously, I cannot be defeated because I am the BEST!

Next time I will handle goddamn Sindeee with my super-awesome brain powers instead of being so sweet.

[andrewvanderkarr]

The return of the practice cactus girl.

Recently I’ve been kind of busy with things not related to painting pictures of naked girls. I got as far as painting part of the tines on the cactus girl and then got distracted by the rest of my life. I get so into working on a piece that I often let major parts of my regular person life slide out of control and then inevitably they all come crashing back down on me at the same time. Money problems, goddamn car problems, Dad falling over problems, Stick Figure Andrew problems.

That’s right. He’s a problem. He was so awesome in the last post that I can’t stop thinking about how terrific he is, often to the point that I stop being able to do even the simplest of things. Like get out of the shower. I was in there for an extra twenty minutes this morning thinking about him. It made me tingly. He’s really the best.

Focus! Okay, the cactus tines look alright at best, but I’m incredibly bored with this piece. I got to see if there was any reason to do a full size painting on canvas so this practice piece did what it was supposed to do. The good news is that I think there is enough promise of something interesting here to warrant proceeding ahead with the real deal. I’m going to need a model so I don’t end up with more problems than just not actually knowing what I’m doing with a paint brush most of the time.

I think I know the perfect person to be the model, with just right combination of cautionary glamour and sexual ferocity…

Don’t act like you weren’t hoping it was him, because it’s obvious that you totally were.  Now you can have the tingly feeling in the shower too!

[andrewvanderkarr]

It seems possible that my brain does not actually like the rest of me. Well, that makes two of us then.

Some people who see my work like to tell me how great it must be to have my imagination and be able to create these ideas for paintings. I suppose for the average person, it could seem a little mysterious where these somewhat odd concepts might come from. Sometimes one of the people might say something about how they wish they could be inside my head to see how it works.  You DO NOT want this. Just take my word for it. I’ve been in there and it’s ALL kinds of messed up. As an example, this a what I can remember of a dream I just recently had…

On a football field through grainy file footage, Joe Theismann is having his leg sawed off just above the knee. It seems that a ten inch spike has been driven through his knee cap and deep into the ground during one of the plays and there is no way to get it out. So as the medics grind through the last of the bone and tissue, Joe suddenly stops his horrible, agonized screaming. Joe is a professional. He knows he doesn’t want to let his team down so as the two guys grab him under the arms and begin to drag his mangled body away, he raises his crooked, bloody arm and gives the ‘thumbs-up’ to the crowd.

It’s at this time that we notice how bad his injuries are. He’s covered in blood with huge gaping wounds across his abdomen. His intestines are spilling out and dragging behind him on the field. More of the spikes poke out from his back and from between his ribs. His left eye dangles out of it’s socket from the optic nerve. His shoulder looks so crushed that his skin might be the only thing holding his arm on. It looks as if he’s been attacked and fed on by a pack of wild animals.

Cut to modern day HD footage of Joe running out on to the field in a blazer. He jogs over and kneels down in the exact spot where the spike went through. As the footage of the old chopped up knee gets superimposed over the new current knee on the ground, we see Joe smiling wide and giving the goddamn ‘thumbs-up’ again.

Cut to a parade in Joe’s honor. He’s on a float with the waving crowds all around and turns directly to us (as if we were the camera) and smiles again while a voice over says how Joe never REALLY valued his Rabbit Phone until after the injury… He’s holding a tiny live rabbit with an antenna sticking out of it’s head, poking at this creature with his giant mangled football fingers, dialing I assume, because apparently he’s going to make a fucking phone call with this rabbit!

So at this point in the dream I wake up all tense and sweating. It’s too early to get up so I just lay there trying not to think about anything because  if my mind gets going it can be nearly impossible for me to get back to sleep.  Hopefully I’ll drift off if I can think about something that is simple and pleasant so my brain will relax. Instead of that happening, this is the progression of thoughts that my oh so fantastic brain came up with as I rolled over and closed my eyes…

My bed is so great. So firm. I love my bed…

I remember I bought this bed at that place down the street from my old apartment…

I loved my bed so much that when Mom needed a bed I told her that she should go to the same place…

She hated her new bed.

That was the bed she died in.

She spent her last weeks on earth miserable in a bed she hated that I convinced her to buy.

So as you can imagine, there would be no going back to sleep this day. Instead, I decided to get up and write all this down so I could put it on the fucking internet. Good lord, what is wrong with me?