Smarties Bar & Grill #77

Going to do this soon of a human heart. Here is the stencil as it is drawn and here it is as it will be applied..... It will be divided in half with some color between and around it. Half will be full color as though healthy and living and half will be black and gray and possibly some blues as though cold and dead.... Symbolic of the way the world tears your heart in half and kills half of it.

I'm going to be covering up this black piece on my thigh with it.... I was never happy with the way it turned out 20 years ago. It is a rather ambitious cover up but I think it will be done nicely when I'm finished. Probably going to take me 5 hours but that is my Pace working on myself taking frequent breaks.

I don't do as many brakes when working on a customer as it tends to hurt worse when you get back on it. But the sensation means very little to me and my breaks are for beer ! You can see the green Oni I did last Monday is now fully healed.

 

Making progress piece by piece and week by week..

 

Have you ever tried oils?

 

It is hot here. When Texas gets tired of their weather they ship it over to us. I usually look at the weather in Texas and look at which direction it's moving. Hoping it moves more northeast than due east.. Not wishing anyone any bad weather. We did get a burst of cold air yesterday afternoon and that was so nice.
I hope everyone in Texas is staying safe and heeding the tornado warnings.

 

Got bored yesterday couldn't sleep when I got off from work and did this.... Did the outline of the flames with green ink. Those light greens were giving me the devil of the time. The other colors took very well. It's kind of hard to do your own arm.

 

I wish - I like the idea of working with a paint that doesn't dry right away. Back then I was literally a poor starving artist, so acrylics were about the most expensive paints I could afford. Fortunately, while I was in art school, I got to like the works of artists like Robert Rauschenberg who used to do multi-media installations and sometimes he would work in enamel paints that you can buy at a hardware store, so I figured I could do the same thing (and did):



He kinda liberated me from having to use oils, but oils have wonderful properties that you just can't get in other paints.

By the way, this year I accidentally got to experiment with growing tomato plants from cuttings - I seem to recall you had one last year (?). I had a few plants that got damaged at planting and later during a strong thunderstorm, so I stuck the tops of the plants in water and eureka! - they all survived. You just have to get them in water right away. It took a couple weeks for them to start producing roots along the stem but now (three weeks) they're at the point where they're ready to pot in soil (with or without rooting hormone). I'll probably baby them for about a week and then stick 'em back in the garden when it's not too hot outside. About a week ago I changed their water and put a little Miracle Gro in there and it really seemed to have helped. From now on I think I'll probably do that after about a week instead of waiting two weeks. I was worried I might mess them up, but I played it safe with a weak solution that is well below what you would normally use to feed plants (the water was barely blue) so it didn't do any harm. All in all, it seemed to take a month to get from a cutting to a viable plant. I'm going to stick the four I got in their own little area so I can monitor how they compare to the other plants, but it looks like Joe Lamp'l's suggestion about making a free succession tomato crop from sucker cuttings works like a champ, and it's certainly quicker than growing them from seed.

 

finally....... a proper temperature for here, over 100 degrees, and should be that way until sometime in Sept.

(water colors evaporate too fast there)

 

My son dropped a tomato plant it broke at the soil line, I picked it up and stuck it in a pot that we had mixed manure and soil in. I checked today and
it is still living. Plants are funny sometimes they work for you and sometimes not so much. It will be interesting to see if it lives.

I knew an. artist that used oil based paints from the hardware store when he was doing a large painting like a mural. He bought the primary colors and mixed his own tints and shades.

 

If you use a bit more water maybe not. Oils would be the best for painting out in the desert.

We were on our way to Santa Elena Canyon Overlook and out in the middle of nowhere an artist had her easel up painting away. That would have been a great photo shot but at the time it didn't occur to us. There are so many neat spots to visit when you are out that way.

 

Tomatoes can be finicky - I'm amazed at how tough these cuttings have been. Which is a good thing, because it's been Keystone Cops in our vegetable garden this year. I had a top-heavy tomato snap in half on me when I went to plant it, and then I managed to behead one when I put the wires up for the row coverings. A week later another broke in a storm and then some critter chewed the tops off of four more tomatoes (I think they're going to recover) and then yesterday our pooch decided to take a nap in the pepper bed and flattened two Cayennes. Thank God I planted a few extras in containers...

That's the ticket. I just got through reading that Pablo Picasso did some paintings in enamel, too.

 

The fuzzy part on the stems of tomatoes are basically immature roots. As long as you keep them moist, they'll mature into proper roots pretty quick.

The bigger tomatoes are the ones that I struggle more with. I have some cherry tomatoes that have been self seeding all over my garden for going on 5 years at least LOL. They are tasty ones. When people ask me what variety they are I tell them Dunno's because I do not know at this point..

 

Give them a name...no one will know the difference. I shopped at a veggie stand that everyone called the tomatoes he grew by his name with special added. You could call them Chrizton's special. The man I bought the tomatoes from was really a neat person. I am glad he had a tomato named after him even if it wasn't his idea.

 

I'll say they are an heirloom tomato from Latvia whose name I can't pronounce to throw them off the scent

 

It's well into the 90s here with sky high humidity.

And we are basically entering hurricane season which will last until sometime in November.

I hope I never go through another one like Ian in 2023...... Sustained winds of well over 100 mph parked over the top of us for 5 hours

I believe there were gusts of up to 150

 

Got this nice case for my inks. Got some more ink on the way and I'm almost Happy with the amount that I have for now.

 

No I haven't really followed painting, but I did see a few paintings like you described- Impasto and I wondered why they were done that way.. I am more interested in being able to learn at this point. Funny you should mention that because I have never been interested in painting the way I was in music or mathematics or writers and even physics. But I look forward to learning and practicing and building my skills. I will share some of what I learn with you as I go along.

 

Is that your cat and kitten, James?

 

I never really thought about creating like I do in writing. I made a video for YouTube about Control on the internet a long time ago. I could do that with videos I make with my camera equipment, I may try something like that it sounds interesting. I mainly planned on doing cooking videos and to record family dinners.

 

Great - I look forward to it, and I'll be glad to share my own feedback, experiences, etc., with you. FWIW, I got an interdisciplinary BfA in Media Arts, primarily computer graphics, video, film and photography, but I dabbled in just about everything, and I studied under some incredible artists.

Not that you need my advice, but as I mentioned earlier, my first bit of advice would be to have fun with it. If you don't, you'll never be able to unleash your own creative potential. My second piece of advice is to paint what you like and how you like. Third, be patient with yourself. Like everything else, it takes time and practice and experimentation. Finally, check out other painters and peruse through some art history - other painters can help you come up with ideas, styles, techniques, etc., you might not have considered yourself. You can start here, and I'll bump the threads up for you - there's some really nice art in these threads, and feel free to post in either one of them:

Painters and Visual Artists
http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/painters-and-visual-artists.610164/

Visual Arts II: Sculpture, Film, Architecture & More
http://www.politicalforum.com/index...s-ii-sculpture-film-architecture-more.611514/

 

Deathray weather... thankfully there is a fulll moon so I can water the trees.

 

The dry air sucks the water out of the ground even when it does rain. We had a decent rain earlier in the week yet when I went to dig a hole to plant one of those red hot poker plants today it was dry as a bone.

Getting my first red tomato though. The first ones are always tougher skinned because they take so long to ripen, but I'll take em anyway I can get em.

 

We have had over 10 inches of rain at my property during June alone. I'm tired of all of this mud.

 

That is a lot of water and probably a lot of mud. We could use some rain we get a little dab here and there. I was on my way home and went through some heavy rain. I thought we would get some because it was a short distance from home.. Think again, we were bone dry no rain. So close but not one drop.

 

111 degrees projected for today.... death ray! Dry heat is real, meaning this temperature with humidity would be much worse, as it is, it is comfortable enough in the shade. The heat here burns the color read out of everything, adhesives fail, glues and cements lose adhesion when stored, I buy new tubes for every new project. cover yourself from head to foot, long sleeves, hat, bandanna over ears, gloves. shorts andt-shirts are for indoors only. Do not visit anyone after they've gone into thier house, they are in their underwear, sitting under the A/C , watching the tube. Carports, if you value the finish on your vehicle, gloves so you can touch anything that has been in direct sunlight. Severe sunburns in a matter of minutes, Look for shady swimming holes! The municipal pool has a system to cool the water!