Quality nursing care

My medical training consists of a handful of summer camp lessons in splinting compound fractures and cinching belts above gushing wounds. At the age of 10, I imagined there would be a lot more need for hydrating with cactus water and building lean-tos in life, and less in the way of blunt-force brain trauma. But hey, the thing you do is the thing you are, so I am now a brain trauma recovery specialist.

There's been insurance and impound fuckery to deal with, but my mother was really very lucky and she seems to be nearly normal again for someone who has been wadded up in a car. On the day she was sent home with orders not to read or watch tv or use her brain at all, her boss dropped by with a paper lunch sack filled with orphaned chicks. It turns out that staring at baby chickens is pretty good for concussion recovery, in the way that watching a tank of fish lowers your blood pressure. If the fish are all alive. Which these chickens are, so far.

They’re good models, too.

Incidentally, I have determined that vitamin D does not actually cure heart murmurs, no matter how elaborately your doctor shrugs while prescribing it. Doctors are good at figuring things out while you’re actively dying - or just afterwards - but not so good at catching your heart hammering out a John Bonham drum solo on your morning commute, and they feel like they need to prescribe something, so, really, vitamins are better than lithium or bloodletting.

solution: paint more chickens

In other news, the teenager has taken up blacksmithing. The blacksmith who has been training him is a burly veteran/ex-cop who tells stories about getting flakes of metal embedded in his scrotum and not realizing it until the middle of an MRI, and he sent the boy home with "Giant Meteor 2020" election bumper stickers. He's ok.

Noodle Arms and father 

Except now there are schemes to build a forge in the back yard. The blacksmith's tip for avoiding neighborhood complaints was to put sugar and soy sauce in the fire. So we're going to be making fancy bbq-flavored fence post caps in no time.

Easter - totaled

My mother was rear-ended and smashed between two trucks yesterday. She's shaken and bit battered, and the car is totaled. Very upsetting.

The day before that was Easter, which was fine. Except toward the end, when I got pissed at my cousin and flipped him off with both hands. Not sorry.

Walked to the botanical gardens and picked up some java plums to paint. These things are hated here in the islands, because they drop from a great height and splat bright purple stains all over your car/head. They're nice to paint, though.

After my mother clears all her checkups, I'm going to go car shopping with her and pressure her into buying an armored vehicle. Maybe something with 3-point harness seat belts. At the very least, a car with air bags that actually deploy when they're supposed to. Horrifying.

non-art content

My kids laughed about this picture for a solid 5 minutes. Happy Easter.

The fence is done! Except for the paint and post caps and gargoyles! It's enough to keep the across-the-street's new puppy from pooping on our precious neglected yard, anyway. I only want to step in chicken crap, thank you very much.

Ok, I see Plucky there in the background, undermining my get-off-my-lawn-ness by clucking around the neighbor's yard, but those guys put rice out for her, so she's cool.

I didn't get a "before" shot, so imagine a rusty, collapsing chain-link fence that would make you quicken your pace as you walked by. But at least it was not a saggy tarp tied up across the driveway like SOME people across the street. 

An ex-ginger

Well, it turns out when you freeze ginger and then thaw it out, it turns into a slopping wet dead thing.

I tried to paint it anyway, but wrinkles appeared as it slowly oozed, deflated, and collapsed in on itself.

(These are actually about the same size, my model is just shoved back a bit. It looks ok here because I fluffed it back up a bit and pinched its mush into shape.)

Seashells hold their shit together, at least.

I need better inspiration. Have been looking into bats and raptors, but the bats  go everywhere by night and the hawks are on a totally different island. Lazy hawks. I set up a bird feeder in my yard to attract cool birds, but it was immediately overwhelmed by a horde of doves, and the neighbor’s chickens tried to swing from it like a trapeze. Maybe I am using the wrong kind of bird food. Looking up what kinds of feed to use to attract good-looking birds only.

African tulip

My model this week fell out of a tree in front of me.

This ACM panel wasn’t pebbly, it was nice to work on. I ordered one primed with gesso and one primed with oil, and I can’t remember which was which. Damn it. I am thinking they apply the gesso with a roller, which is why it pebbled. So it’s the oil ground panel that’s the good one.

I love these colors. The winsor blues and reds are nearly $30 a tube, or course.

Brush strokes.

dept of good news/bad news

The good news is that it looks like a seashell this time.

The bad news is that I spent another 5 hours staring at a seashell. And I'm not loving the aluminum composite panel; it is pebbly and absorbs your brush strokes.

But my chicken is coming along on the birch panel. 

I don't know. I haven't found the surface that works for me as well as regular paper, and I feel stupid painting seashells and chickens when other people are painting snakes and dragons and skulls and cool stuff. Chickens are kind of like dragons, maybe. If you ask them, anyway. 

Need inspiration. Went for a limp around the block with my taped-up knee and eyeballed the neighbors' fruit trees, wondering if I'd look too suspicious hopping around with a pair of garden shears stuck down the back of my yoga pants. Considered getting a sword cane, which would help with everything - the limping, attacker-thumping, and fruit poaching - but it turns out they are kind of hard to get just because they are a little bit illegal. If I get a big enough machete and just use it as a walking stick I'll be good to go, though. Or a rifle.   

Ffs

I have been cussing under my breath about not being able to find any goddamn seashells for the last two weeks, and today I realized that I have been sitting three feet from this for the last FIVE YEARS.

well, it’s settled

Seashells are stupid and I can't paint. Am a fraud and impostor. Trying to decide if this is a thing I need to persevere in and win, or if I'm engaging in a battle of wits against a piece of sea garbage. Bought an antler of ginger to console myself.

Also tried out my new respirator and varnished some chickens. This is a look that works for me because it distracts from my leg, which is held together with tape. It has been one of those kinds of weeks.