Blessed benefactors Joel posted today about the awesomeness of his readers. Now, I don’t know who his latest benefactor is, but I know that Joel and I share many readers — and benefactors. Like Joel, I can’t begin to number all the great people and their gifts. Honda generator, anyone? Funds toward re-roofing Ye Olde Wreck? Icon-painting class? Sometimes it’s $5 via the donation button. Other times, whoppingly more. Sometimes it’s “mere” moral support (there is nothing mere about moral support) or needed advice on tools or techniques. But it is all from good hearts and bright minds. Like Joel,…
Category: Arts and Aesthetics
All things creative. All things beautiful, profound, and moving.
Well, there she is, that black dog I’ve been going on about. Brandy. I’ve wanted to draw or paint a dog resting on colorful cushions. I have photos of Ava and the late, lamented Robbie to work from, but the project always daunted me. Then a friend took me up on a longstanding offer to do a portrait of his dog (in thanks for many favors over the years) and when he sent pix, among all the poses of her standing and sitting and roaming his yard, there was this: Not only complicated cushions, but (ulp!) a black dog. As…
The black dog I finished the black-dog art yesterday. Well, not finished. I’ll be putzing with it for the next week, darkening this color and refining that line. But I got through it. Now it’s just polishing. It was the hardest piece I’ve ever done. Took about as long to do as the icon from last month’s monastery workshop. But the icon was basically a sophisticated version of paint-by-numbers. The black dog was … whew. Flying by seat of pants. Plus I had to get myself out of a couple of self-caused scrapes. Until the last I was on edge:…
I sometimes do nothing useful. I rarely ever goof off. The perils of being self-employed and working at home. With nothing to distinguish on-duty hours from off-duty, work becomes a preoccupation even (and sometimes especially) when I’m not doing it. Thursday I mentioned a project I had been Not Doing but thinking about. A lot. It’s a portrait of a black dog. I don’t know of anything harder to portray than black fur, especially when using an inherently matte and thin medium like colored pencil. Thursday afternoon and Friday, I finally sat down to do it. As so often happens,…
My cover gets blown The other day I was depositing the house-loan money in my local bank with a teller I didn’t recognize, a vacation sub who travels from branch-to-branch. We got to chatting, then when I went to leave, she said, “May I ask you something?” “Sure.” “Are you a writer?” I keep my professional life and my town life separate and try to avoid letting locals know what I do. If somebody must know I tell them I’m a totally obscure blogger who does “political and lifestyle” content. Then I change the subject. “Um … yeah. Why do…
I promised (or for those of you uninterested in art, perhaps I threatened) to make a post on the details of painting a religious icon. So here goes. If you want to skip the longish intro, there are lots of pictures and short descriptions of the process below. In the beginning For those coming in late, I spent the first full week of June at an Eastern Catholic monastery, courtesy of a friend who dared my non-religious self to do it and courtesy of that friend and others who generously funded the expedition. Though I didn’t experience the leap of…
… I returned to discover that the hottest news during my absence was a peahen getting loose in a California liquor store and wrecking the place. Or maybe it was some story about one political liar lying about another political liar Comey and Trump. Or North Korea testing more missiles. But the peahen story was definitely more relevant. (Though will somebody please tell the “journalist” who covered that one that even in this day of trans-anything, “female peacock” is still not an actual thing?) In other vital news of the day, J.R.R. Tolkein has just come out with another new…
… is coming home. More over the weekend when I’m recovered. But for now, I’ll just say that at the monastery I was well-fed, well-accommodated, enchanted by beautiful (though incomprehensible) church services, in excellent company, and very well-satisfied with being a student iconographer. Thank you for making it possible.
This afternoon, or perhaps tomorrow morning depending, I head off to the long-awaited iconography workshop. I’ll be staying at a monastery for nearly a week. Though I will take the laptop, I have no idea whether there’s wifi in the vicinity. Under the circumstances this is a question I’d feel really off-point asking. So if I don’t blog until next weekend, don’t worry. I haven’t been kidnapped by agents of the Deep State or taken up into an alien spacecraft and subjected to anal probes (but I repeat myself). I’m just studying icons and enjoying away-time, courtesy of the retreat…