So I went to the AVAA for the first time in quite a while today.  It’s a consistently good drawing session.  Good models.  However there is one caveat; bring an iPod and headphones.  Noise canceling headphones if at all possible.  They play the most horrible music during the drawing sessions at the AVAA.  The Full Monty excluded, of course, because Leslie Pierce knows what’s up.

You never know what horrors will assail your ears when you settle in to draw.  Will it be world music?  Will it be classical B-sides?  Will it be some local reggae band?  If you’re really lucky it’ll be an electro/traditional Native American fusion band.

So with my iPhone and headphones in hand I braved the AVAA once more.  I found it enjoyable in again now that my sonic fate rested in my own hands.  I could listen to Clutch, David Bowie, and Blackalicious as I drew.  At a moments notice I could start playing Tom Waits.  The power was mine.  All was well in the basement that blistering Sunday afternoon.  They must have gotten a new A/C as well, because it was a very comfortable temperature in the room, despite the milieu of artists and their instruments.

Monday I did pencil drawings at the AFG as well.  This was because I got in my car and completely forgot to bring a surface to paint on.  But I did have the sketchbook.  It was the 2-hour pose, so I did a couple of drawing of the same pose from different angles.  The second one is much better.

I’ve been doing some portraits lately and I think I’m getting a much better resemblance nowadays than what I used to.  I’m still using acrylic because most of my painting is done on the go.  But I recently set myself up with a desk and a table-top easel at home and plan to get reacquainted with oil.  I have a couple of tutorials, one by Shawn Barber and another by Coro Kaufman that have given me some pointers, so I plan to put them to use.

Yeah, so I spend a lot of time looking around conceptart.org.

Here’s some of my recent paintings.  I’m a little behind.  I have some more to photograph, but my 8 year old digital camera just broke.  I need to get a new one, but I haven’t gotten around to researching it yet.

And Here’s a couple of drawings from the AFG.

Hey all,

This is the stuff that I’ve done over the past few weeks.  The figure stuff anyway.  I tend to keep the drawings of monsters and decapitations to myself in the confines of my sketchbook.  So today I went to the AVAA for the first time in a long while.  I guess I’ve had stuff to do on Sundays recently.  Or been hungover.  Maybe I’ve been praying.  Whatever the reason, it was nice to have an hour for the paintings, rather than the usual fifteen minutes. I did the sharpie underdrawing again because I was curious to see what it would look like with more time to develop the painting on top. I rather like how these two came out. Jamie, who is always excellent, was the model.

Unfortunately my iPod shuffle died ten minutes into the painting session.  For the first part of the painting session I was subjected to some kinda Native American flute music.  For the second half I listened to half a dozen sixty year old women sing and hum along to the Forrest Gump soundtrack.  One of them would recount a memory of a song after each one.  They didn’t seem to grasp that’s why they were chosen for the soundtrack.  Maybe that’s why I haven’t been to the Sunday session there in a while.  It’s full of people who have unironic memories of the music from their youth.

I have a few weeks worth of stuff to post.  So I’m gonna just dump it all here.

I almost forgot about another bit of art I’m kinda proud of, my Halloween zombie makeup.  Wendy Sanders, a professional make up artist was kind enough to show me around a costume shop and make sure I got the good stuff.  So I put my paintings skills to the test and tried to make a realistic zombie costume this year.  I think it turned out well.  Nobody wanted to talk to me that night, so I guess it was effective.  Definitely gets the award for costume least likely to get laid in.

I found a toned sketchbook like I was talking about in my last post. I found it at Bookpeople, a big bookstore in Austin. Strange that I couldn’t find anything like this in an art store, but it was at a bookstore. It’s a bit too nice. It’s bound and has a nice cover. It’s a lot of pressure when I have a nice sketchbook not to put any shitty drawings in it. I should probably just do everything on a pad of legal paper. These are the first drawings in it.

I hadn’t really intended to write so much on this website, but the images look so unbalanced without text. Please forgive my self-indulgence.

I voted on Thursday. Straight Democratic ticket, except for one where there was just a Republican and a Libertarian running. I went for the Libertarian. I think it was for a judge and I definitely want Libertarian judges. Anything goes! Hell, you could smoke in the courtroom of a Libertarian judge.

It was not without event. For some reason, I had to do a paper ballot. This was evidently very rare because they had no idea what to do. The poor woman who had to help me spend fifteen minutes dialing a phone number repeatedly to get directions. There was no call waiting and no redial button. Quite a line developed behind me.

I finally went to a booth to fill out the ballots while the woman stayed on the phone to sort out the paperwork and whatnot. The election judge was a bit of a dick. While she was on the phone still trying to sort out the mess I’d caused by arriving to vote, he told her to help the line that had formed behind me. She informed him that she still had to take care of the “paper ballot.” This is how I was now known. “NO” he actually yelled at the woman, “I’ll take care of the paper ballot.” I don’t know if this guy was a real judge or just some retiree volunteer when it’s not election time. I’m guessing he was a real judge. A normal person would know it’s just not right to yell at somebody when they volunteer their time to do some odious job like work an election. I guess he could’ve been a cop.

I filled out the ballot, put it in a orange bag and was assured that it would be counted. As long as any votes are actually counted, I believe that mine will be. I assume that I had to do the paper ballot because I’ve moved around so much recently. Obviously, drifters are up to no good.

I also saw a big snake while I was running this weekend on the trail behind my apartment. I don’t know what type it was. It was the color of dirt. I wouldn’t have seen it if it hadn’t started slithering away from me. Even though I’d been running for 25 minutes already, I still managed to jump three feet in the air. Why’s it always have to be snakes?

I’m working on a painting that should be done this week. I’ll post it when I get it done.