Smore paintings and stuff

I'm heading back to the fatherland in a few days so I wanted to pinch off one last post before climbing on board a plane to Detroit.
I gave my four year old daughter the kiddie equivilant to blue balls this past Sunday. Allow me to explain. In preparation for this trip back up North of the border, I had to hit a shop in Downtown Disney to pick up a gift for my brand new neice (the Pearn breeding program is going quite well). So I had Emma with me as we parked at Disneyland...brought her into the shopping area... made our requisite purchase... and left her hanging. You see, Disneyland is RIGHT THERE!!! In previous years I had taken out a mortgage to invest the family in a year membership (blacked out on weekends, summer, Christmas and any other shitty day you might want to go), so this occurance of popping into the house of mouse for a little wham bam thank you mam play session is not uncommon in Emma's young four year old life. She was ratcheted. She was salivating for a zip ta do on the good ol mary go round, followed up with a touch of small world and maybe cap the whole thing off with a spin on the dandy choo choo train...but NO. T'was not to be so. Poor Emma, standing there at the threshold to the happiest place on earth, emotionally erect to the possibilies of whimzy and bliss, only to be dashed by the chubby white retard who drove her there standing over her yelling "we can't afford it! Daddy is poor and hasn't got the self esteem to go out and earn more money so you'll have to take those tiny dreams you've been chewing on and supress them until you're older so you can pass this disappointment on to your own children, and maybe then, in the glow of their sadness, feel somewhat better about your own pathetic life."

The kid has to learn, right?
Anyhooo...probably didn't make the whole thing any better by walking her into the entrance kiosk only to show her a glimpse behind the gate into the park, and then remark at the blissfully happy people inside and tell her that these people were better loved than the both of us. I even bought a churro and ate it in front of her. I'm a bastard, but its better she know now than carry this illusion of Daddy worship to an unhealthy age.

On a side note, I'm loving my Tablet PC and thanks to a suggestion from my friend Bobby, I've been taking it with me to coffee shops and doing a ton of drawing. I am rusty, but having a ton of fun.

Unlike Emma.








Bye.

Here's some new paintings from my book...this is keeping me pretty busy. I'm really loving the work flow of digital painting. It is like having a studio worth of paint and brushes in a tiny box that I can bring everywhere with me...what a country! I find that many of the same techniques I like to use for acrylic painting on Masonite translate well to the digital medium...dark base coat, build up the volume, and lots of glazing to keep the color alive.

On a side note, my dog last week was involved in a gastric event of unpleasant circumstance. Difficulty in masticating the refuse from a wasteful bin of offal left from an over fed bi-pedal familiar clan (she got into our garbage and ate chicken goo), her insides rebelled processing the feast not in its usual solid, convenient packaging of brown sausage shaped pills waiting for collection by host and man servant (me), but instead erupted in a volcanic spilling of viscous liquid, random in its need for evacuation.
And so it went, that in intervals of quiet revelation before the flat paneled god of commerce and the dogmatic cult of distraction (TV), the lounging wolf kin would suddenly leap to her paws and urgently motion in request for an exit to the outside world, a convenient toilet for her still undomesticated needs. Following my charge out into the warm LA sun, I watched as she wobbled and hopped, bow legged like a irritable cowboy, hot off the saddle and needing to lay an egg, not wanting to crack or damage such a frail vessel, shuffling to find a soft spot for the precious boweletic gift from the heavens. Finding safe purchase, a well surveyed track of turf, she allowed her biology to release that which was her torment and alleviate the building pressure...right directly on top of an ant hill.
And here is the point and reason of this digression. A thought that has been haunting me and keeping me awake at night. Those ants! Those unsuspecting ants! a complete society functioning and thriving in the soft Southern Californian sand, suddenly contaminated and assaulted by a torrent of squirty dog pooh. If these ants, being living organisms habituating upon this earth, were like us in even the smallest of fashion, capable of consciousness, then I ask: WHAT KIND OF RELIGION WOULD THEY HAVE TO INVENT TO EXPLAIN THE EVENT OF TORNADIC DOG SHIT FROM THE SKY? Is this the apocalypse for a cosmopolitan race of insect, turning survivors into rogue agents, hunting and organizing as possible in an ant sized Mad Max of an epic? Or is this manna from heaven, a delicious gift from the gods, brown gold, food food, a boom? I'll never know for sure, as alas, I am not an ant. I am a grunt holding a plastic bag of liquidy dog pooh. So be it.