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Painting
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2338
"I don't need a grid" I say to myself, "I'll just paint it freehand, like Leonardo Da Vinci or Van Gogh or Picasso..." .
I mean, really, why would I need a grid? How tough can it be?
4 hours into it and I'm looking to MOBA for inspiration, or at least some reassurance, there's none.
It's a tricky thing, this capturing a resemblance. I look at the reference photo. Back to my painting. In pose they're somewhat the same. I'm painting a child, 2 years old. And she has an ear (visible), a nose, 2 eyes, a mouth, all the things that my painting has. But my painting isn't her. Not by a long shot. Not even slightly, not even in the dark. And I try and discover what's gone so terribly wrong.
All the major visible organs. Check. Position. Check. Colors? I'll worry about those later.
There was a moment when I was painting her when she looked exactly like her mother. Well, not exactly, but I could see her. From there she became uglier and uglier, until now, when she resembles no one so much as Doug McKenzie (on the right) or an acid-induced Michael Jackson.
So it's back upstairs, into the photoshop to create the grid, copy it to some graph paper (and verify there's a resemblance...) then go downstairs and see where things went sideways.
"I just need practice" I reassure myself, although there's no reassurance standing in front of this monster I've created...
Living with Agatha Christie
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1761
I'm living with a young Agatha Christie in the Southern US. It's not a romantic thing, I'm a lodger, I'm never home anyways because I'm working in this big restaurant, a Texas-styled bar and grill, I'm there all the time, day and night, all the waiters are older like me and it's got the vague feel of an ongoing nightmare from which there's no escape ....
When finally I do get home Agatha tells me she wants to move. The paint has blistered on the walls into curses and demonic sayings, blood leeches from the walls and the rooms are filled with an evil presence. The house is possessed. I go upstairs and in the hall on the way to my bedroom I find myself - for a moment - floating, before I land next to my room.
I can't blame her for wanting to move and so I say goodbye and she leaves. Now I have no place to live and find my way to the outskirts of town to hitchhike on to another town. There are other, older drifters like myself there trying to catch a ride as well. And then I'm talking to someone who's explaining to me how the house wasn't really haunted, how the place where I floated through the air is a geophysical anomoly, and remember, when I was flying there in the plane, how I floated up in my seat when we flew over the house? And I hadn't remembered at all but now I do and it all makes sense...
Incident.net
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 1684
www.incident.net - A curious, experimental "art" website. I rather liked this exhibition by Reynald Drouhin, although I was a little disappointed there wasn't an "Add to cart" or bid button. Maybe I'm doing a little too much online shopping...
The Secret
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 2107
With tongue in cheek I make the boy watch "The Secret". It's an exercise in critical thinking. I've seen it, laughed through it, but I want him to see it as well and note the many pitfalls of pop-spirituality.
Now on the very slight chance you haven't heard of it (where have you been?) it's a completely ridiculous "self help" film that promotes gross materialism through wishful thinking.
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