Hello dear readers, for once I don’t feel that I have to begin a post with an apology for not writing sooner.  This is the third post this month.  This is the best I’ve done in over a year.  My topic tonight is a bit of a departure.  Instead of writing about my art, which I have to admit is endlessly fascinating, I’m going to discuss something that is very pertinent to us all at this time of year.  The perfect Halloween costume.

First, we have to consider how we wish to spend our Halloween.  In my case, it will be carousing.  Therefore we need a costume that can be worn to any number of social occasions.  Currently, zombies are very in vogue with the popular zeitgeist.  There are a number of zombie themed events happening in town.  I can think of two off the top of my head.  One at the Beauty Bar and one at the Seaholm Power Plant.  Therefore, if we choose a zombie costume, we have full access to events around town.  I don’t believe there are any events where zombie costumes will be prohibited.

Ok, so zombie then.  Great.  Boring.  We can’t just get some white grease paint and fake blood and go as a generic vanilla zombie.  The great thing about a zombie costume is the versatility.  Any costume can also be a zombie costume.  Slutty nurse?  How about zombie slutty nurse.  Sharktopus?  Zombie sharktopus.  So we have to do zombie / something.  Now, since the Beauty Bar is in our list of zombie events, we need something topical, pop cultural, and irreverent to impress the hipsters who will definitely be there.  We could go political, like Zombie Gulf Coast, or Zombie Public Health Care, but we’re not preachy assholes.

What is the defining characteristic of a zombie?  That it is dead.  So who died this year?  There’s been a few;  JD Salinger, Corey Haim, Dennis Hopper.  All valid choices.  If you have access to a nitrous tank, a zombie Frank Booth character may be the winner.  However, I’m not sure if they are legal, nor how expensive they are.  The clear winner to me this year, and therefore the best costume of 2010 is Ronnie James Dio.

RJD has got it all.  He has the most distinct look of anybody who died this year.  Bedazzled crosses, crushed velvet capes, fluffy pirate shirts, curly 80′s metal hair. I’m afraid that JD Salinger just can’t compete with the level of triumph that RJD wore on an every day basis.  Plus, RJD had the voice of a valkyrie, and the battle instincts of one as we can see in his video for Holy Diver.

So, how do we create a RJD outfit?  It looks like it can get pretty elaborate.  Crushed velvet, floppy pirate shirts, swords, a wig.  We need to distill this down to the basics.  I’ve decided that this can be done with tight long sleeved black t-shirt with a bedazzled cross, tight black jeans, a medallion, an 80′s metal wig, and of course zombie makeup.  Depending on how many of these items you already have, this can be a very cheap costume.  And we all have an 80′s metal wig and zombie makeup somewhere in our closets.  Of course, if you already have a pirate shirt, all the better.  Leather pants, you’re golden.

Don’t scrimp on the zombie makeup either.  Get some good stuff. No grease paint.  You’ll want spirit gum, some decent makeup, powder to seal it with, and fake blood.  The image on the right is my zombie makeup from last year.  As you can see, I got pretty good results from some basic supplies.  First you apply the spirit gum.  Wait for it to dry a bit and then pull at it to create the textury peeling skin effect.  Then you do the makeup.  A lot of people just seem to cover their face with a color, green or white, and then call it a day.  But since you’re reading my website, obviously you’re a person of great taste and class and this just wouldn’t do.  Pay attention to the creases of the face.  Accentuate folds in the skin and shadows under the eyes.  Just make yourself look real haggard.

Wounds are made with spirit gum, toilet paper, and fake blood.  Step 1, put down some spirit gum.  Step 2, put some torn and wadded up toilet paper in the spirit gum.  Step 3, Put some fake blood on the toilet paper.  Step 4, after everything is dry, put some more spirit gum over the top to seal it all.  This is how I made the wounds you see on my face.

So there you go.  Use my advise to have the greatest Halloween ever.  If you’re in Austin, I’ll be the Zombie James Dio belligerently insisting to any homeless person who will stop and listen that Revenge of the Nerds is a great allegory for the Civil Rights Movement.

Excelsior!

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.