Good Morning

Almost done my painting! So close. I just have to do the umbrella and touch up a few spots, which hould take about maybe three hours or less. Then I shall start on my next painting immediately afterward and hopefully it turns out as nice as this one has. And then another and then another and another. On and on.

Last night was a really giantic thunderstorm, so gigantic, in fact, that it actually woke me up briefly. This is big news because I am an incredibly deep sleeper and I can sleep through almost anything. Not this time though. So the point is not my sleeping, it is Clara, my dog. She freaks out in thunderstorms as I've probably mentioned on here and last night I guess she somehow managed to escape. Fortunately, some girl was walking home last night and Clara followed her and this girl just happened to work at a dog sitting place that is associated with Clara's vet. So they looked at her tag and called us up this morning and said to come and get her. So I had to wake up early on my sleeping in day to go fetch my psycho dog from the most random location for a dog place which was across town (I'm still wondering how she got all the way over there without dying).

I tried to get back to sleep but I couldn't and it sucked. So I laid in bed for about half an hour then I got up, read the comics and here I am, telling you ghosts about my lame morning and how much lamer it is going to become: I'm writing a thing on Othello. Woo. I'm going to do that today, paint if I have time and then go to work at four (I think?). When I get home I'll probably just do nothing until I go to bed. Tomorrow I don't know exactly what I'm doing other than church but I'm relatively sure it won't be much of an improvement on my weekend so far.

Gah! I really don't want to start writing. I somehow managed to hunker down and crank out my huge essay on the influence of technology on art in a few hours (mind you, I didn't even really revise it because I'm a slacker) but this stupid little one page thing I don't even want to think about. It doesn't make sense! Ugh. I guess I'd better stop wasting the internet's already overcrowded space and get to work. Sorry this post sucked so much. I just wanted to share with you how stupid my Clara situation was. I know I should be happy she was well taken care of, and I am, but I'm bitter about my sleep.

Noodle Hair

I had an interesting day today.

I have been unusually tired this week, which doesn't really make sense since I haven't been doing anything too out of the ordinary, but I have been simply aching for Saturday to come around so I could sleep in and feel good again. This morning however, I decided I couldn't push myself through one more tired day and after I got up, took a shower and walked the dog I went back to bed and slept until 12:30. It was awesome to say the least. So when I got up I had toast and delicious yogurt and tea for breakfast after walking the dog again, which was also awesome. I then read a magazine for a while and decided it was painting time.

I started painting at around three and took two breaks to walk the dog and eat a quesadilla, and I stopped painting at nine. That makes, including time lost in breaks, about five and a half-ish hours of painting today. Phew. Hard work indeed! At least I had an interesting adventure in the mix.

As I was walking Clara on my first painting break I saw this guy in plaid shorts with a clipboard going from house-to-house and I assumed he was doing some sort of municipal check up or something and went on with my walk indifferently. Only about ten minutes later, who should show up at my door but plaid shorts and clipboard guy. He asked if the homeowner was in and I said nope and asked when a better time would be and I said I don't know, because I really don't, and he said thanks and left. The whole time he was talking he kept glancing up at my hair which was curious. He seemed to find it fascinating.

I went back to painting and then about five minutes later I heard a knock at the door again, so I got up and there is plaid short clipboard guy again! I'm thinking what in the world does he want? I answered the door and he said, "Sorry to bother you, but could I have a glass of water? It's really hot out there." Really. Hm. I invited him into the doorway and gave him some water and it turns out he tries selling people water furnaces or something else random like that and he usually sells about three a day. One time he had a day where he sold six. Big news in the door-to-door water furnace business. As he stood there I won't deny I checked him over, because despite his ridiculous job he was rather good-looking. He had nice grey eyes and black hair. He kept mentioning that he "went to school" and I think he was trying to get me to ask about it/prove this was just a job, not a career, but I really could have cared less and decided not to pursue it. Then he left and I went back to painting. It was really very strange and random that he should come back to me instead of just asking the house he was at, but nonetheless, it made for a blog. Perhaps he just wanted to stare at my hair some more.

I end today with a long, long sigh, filled with satisfaction and exhaustion and contentedness and silliness.

In Kentucky

Thought this was interesting. Makes it look like the cardboard itself is free.

A girl I sketched while in the waiting room at the doctor's today.

Didn't get to the extremities, as usual. That requires a pencil. Her head is just slightly large, which was unintentional, but it seems childish, which gives a reason for her discomfort about being nude.

Aghast

Alright ghosts. It has been days and days and days and days since I've posted. I am genuinely sorry about this. There are so many things I want to blog about, I simply have to write them down and organise my thoughts elsewhere. At this point I am simply going to post a very select few of my many pictures taken over the last little while. While they may seem like a lot, believe me, these are just previews. It was my birthday on the fifth! Yay! Birthday girl hat! It was a lot of fun. Mugs had his birthday on the third, so it was birthday cake and Easter feast mania. I really have to work out to burn that stuff off. Here I am making popcorn.

Birthday picture . From left: Dave (Chloé's boyfriend), Chloé (sister), Katelyn (best friend/soul mate) and Court (brother). Of course my bra is sticking out.

Chloé, for some reason, took pictures of me washing Clara at the Pet Wash.

Colour co-ordination not planned. Chloé and Dave, Mugs and I on the Bruce Trail on my birthday. The shirts Chloé and I are wearing kind of define us (mine has Mario character names, hers is the batman symbol and it says Arkham Asylum underneath).

Trees.

More tree.

Three out of four siblings. Lots of fun, but still, we miss Clint.

Sultry. Doesn't she have rad glasses?

Childhood art. This is the "C" of my name; it's my signature.

This was randomly on one of the woodworking shops' windows at OCAD.

The building beside OCAD. So cool.

Our group for visiting OCAD and the AGO. It was awesome. We saw original Group of Seven paintings! I was SO STOKED. I was just blown away! I could have stared at them all day. I once had to paint imitating a member of the Group of Seven's style, and I chose Lauren Harris. His art is my most favourite, and there were two of his works there, including this one, which I had to be torn away from. Amazing, amazing, amazing. I also took an illegal picture of a sculpture I really enjoyed, but I got Katelyn's arm in there because stealth photos are difficult. Also, it didn't capture the use of negative space particularly well, so that was a bummer. As a plus side, we were with our Australian exchange teacher, and he is really, really awesome.

Katelyn and I went out for lunch at this nice place but we didn't find out until after our meal that they didn't take debit so I had to venture three blocks down the road to the Scotiabank (which isn't even my bank!) and take out the money plus 1.50$ charge. Annoying.

Artistic Bodies

Don't you just love the people in the change room who, after taking a shower/hot tub/swim, dry their crotch endlessly? I don't really know what the protocol is for guys, what with the dimensions and all, but for women all you need is a quick sweep or two and it's done. If the towel is down there for longer than fifteen seconds, chances are the natural juices are getting dried up too, and that is never very comfortable, or normal. If you're unaware, change room-crotch-drying-ladies, it's supposed to be moist. Perhaps you should educate yourself.


Also, I have no problem with other people being naked. After all, that's what happens in a change room, but please, if you're naked, don't stroll around the change room, go to the washroom, blow dry your hair or come and talk to me while I'm also naked and act like we're both wearing clothes. Naked is a transition and the change room is not the sauna.

Then there's the guy in the gym who manages to do everything except work out. There is always someone for him to talk to, wander toward and then pass by or a very long break at the water fountain he can take. If all of these options seem to be used, he'll concede to using his mat for a few ab exercises and then stop again once he finds a reason to not work out again. He doesn't just talk to everybody, he forces them to have to say something back other than a simple nod and smile. You have to slowly rotate so that you're more in the open than he is so you can sidle off to the other side of the gym. It's a temporary fix, though, until he's really finished talking to you.

Oh and those awful people who don't know how to share the cardio machines. HELLO. If all the machines are full, you are on there politely for no more than twenty minutes, thirty maximum. We can't wander around the gym forever while we wait for you to run three marathons over there.

Anyway, I won't go on. It's only the gym.

In other news, I have been doing stylized pencil drawings of women a lot lately, as women are my most favourite subject for art as is so often the case. The style I've come up with has led them all to have really, really huge, nice boobs. I mean, I've always drawn chicks with huge, nice boobs--they're the kind I grew up around--but these ones are especially huge and nice. Well, they aren't that huge, like Pamela Anderson huge, but they're still huge. The niceness has increased. Maybe I'll ink one of them and show you what I mean. At any rate, hot chicks are what I like to draw, and I haven't been drawing much else for about the last month.

Know what I really struggle with drawing? The hind legs of four-legged animals. I have real troubles with them. Dogs and horses look awesome until I get to the hind legs, then I think hm...and I use a whole eraser on a picture I don't finish. I don't know what it is, but I can never get them right! It's only when they're straight, like, standing. I like drawing seated hind legs, particularly cartoon cats and big cats. My inspiration for that is in the Lion King when Mufasa is lecturing Simba on going to the Elephant Graveyard and there is a really great shot of his hind leg. I have been drawing seated big cats a lot more since, as well as toads and frogs.

But yes. Does anyone out there have ideas? Of course I need to practice more, but I don't know what else to say. Animals have never been a strong point for me.

Life and Beauty

Watercolour painting requires great patience, even a studiousness. If darkness is what you seek, you must first paint in a lighter, thinner version of that colour and allow it to dry before you add yet another thin layer, and layer upon layer until the proper shades and gradience and depth are achieved. One can't simply jump into it, for if one falters it can be very difficult to hide, particularly if it is a dark colour. All watercolour paintings require strategic thought, logic and planning, all while maintaining colour theory, which is of utmost importance when your medium is so very translucent--almost absent, even. And yet, so often, after this tedious, sometimes exhausting and usually frustrating quest your labour proves to be fruitless. Countless times does an artist begin with good intentions and stunning ideas, only to find themselves in a block, or a rut, or a loss of interest--another unfinished potential masterpiece.
Perhaps that is what it's all about. Perhaps an artist's life isn't based on the masterpiece that "makes" them, but the many incompletes that led to it. Perhaps the great series of inconclusive creative ambitions define the artist, moulding and shaping the mind and body and spirit of the person until the culmination of these ambitions and maybe even the actualisation of self are presented in the form of the magnum opus. An artist's soul is made up of pages half-empty, songs unwritten, brush strokes undefined. They say that all great art comes from suffering. Maybe it is this hopeless emptiness that makes up the artful human, that inspires work, that places audiences in awe.
This begs the question: is the satisfaction, the admiration, the accomplishment, the oneness and the peace that art embeds in us worth the deep and true pain experienced on the artist's behalf?
The answer is yes. It is worth it to see your work admired by others, be it to the whole of the world or in the poverty of your makeshift studio. It is worth it to know that others will look upon your work and feel the flames ignite within themselves to create works of their own. It is worth it to witness the universal nature of art, and how it unites even the most contrary of peoples. Most of all it is worth it to finally see all of your tragedy and hardship turn into something beautiful, to feel the sense of direction and reason it gives you and to see a part of yourself, your most tortured self, in a new light--as something noble and worthwhile--as art. To know that despite all the sorrow it may have taken to reach this point, you know you endured it with purpose and your endurance provided you with the gift of knowing yourself deeply.
A musician wrote that if life isn't beautiful without pain then he would rather never see beauty again, but I beg to differ.