Avocado

The cat had his procedure, so I took a day off to make sure he didn't bust a stitch. Painted an avocado while listening to a crime-solving podcast, wondering if it's too late to quit my job and become a pathologist. Probably I'd have less time to paint produce if I had a job that didn't let me take a day off to babysit my cat's balls.

I painted a bunch of boards in different colors to use as backgrounds. A blue background looked good, but the kids went nuts for the shiny gold, so I went with it.

My ward, unbothered

I'd like to be a painter who gets the form down in thick, lovely stokes, but I am a terminal dabber. 

In other news

Got screamed at by a shirtless guy for closing the library. He came back a few days later and tried very hard to be charming, hoping I would not recognize him with a shirt on. Nice try, Ed.

Tried to have an inspirational Banned Books Week story time, but dropped a book truck on my foot at the outset and it went downhill from there. 

A few more cat procedures may be in order before I feel like going back to work.

hang on

My office-mate's 10 year-old grandson died this week. An honor guard of nurses and family lined the halls and walked him to surgery, where he was taken off life support and his organs were donated to save three people.

On the heels of this, one of my favorite author/illustrators (Ben Hatke) lost his 4 year-old daughter in a traumatic horse accident.

And a great aunt died. Then an online friend died.

Everyone - just make yourself very small and quiet for a little bit and stay alive, ok?


Drink and Draw

Kept it cheap and drank leftover Capri-suns and a homebrewed Guinness clone.

The girl went for wildcats.

The boy imprisoned some sailors.

I overworked a tarantula, because the great-aunt's funeral was in Arizona, and now there is active talk about buying a house outside Kingman to stash grandpa in so he can be closer to his remaining siblings.

My cabin-in-the-woods daydreams had more in the way of raccoons and squirrels than rattlesnakes and black widow spiders, but whatever. I'm rolling with it.

Alexa, play something catchy to cheer me up.

Alexa what the fuck, no.

Better, I'll take it.

bulbul

Some guy on a black motorcycle is on the loose in our town shooting people (ok, just one person. In the leg. But still) and the police haven't come by yet to interrogate the big black motorcycle sitting in our driveway. Or the big black motorcycle in the neighbor's driveway. Or... ok, it looks like the guy across the street has one in his driveway, too. It seems that everyone in Wahiawa has a motorcycle, actually. Sorry about that, detectives. Good luck.

Demotivational painting 

Have been feeling uninspired, painting sloppily and then wiping everything off with a rag. Got mad at a seed pod and a shriveled nut, threw them out the back door, and painted one of the rescue birds, instead.

Fidget the Red-Vented Bulbul

This is not a happy picture. This particular bulbul escaped the aviary, panicked, and drowned in the toilet. It was a bad way to go. My mother, the local Bird Witch who rehabilitates these guys, was very upset about the death, and so she opened up the flight cage and released her other young rehabbed birds - then worried that she had made a mistake and doomed them to die in the wild. She did not doom them. They have been returning every day for dinner, chasing her from her car to her front door when she gets home from work. It's good for her, and it's funny for me. We're still really sorry about Fidget, though. 

Currently in rehab: Spike the Red-Whiskered Bulbul, who has undersized wings and flies like a chicken. He smiles, which is weird for a bird. 

I need to take a break from plants and birds and paint some faces and bodies again. People with faces or bodies are encouraged to come sit for me. I have a kegerator and cookies. There's a cupcake in it for anyone with tattoos.

Wilted purple flowers

I love these aluminum panels, but the little bastards are hard to get an accurate picture of because the oil doesn't sink and there's a lot of glare. They look like candy when I varnish them, though.

One of our library patrons picked these flowers from her yard and left them like a little wilty offering on the reference desk. I don't know what they are. Spent the afternoon piling all kinds of crap up on the table, trying to make an interesting still-life that would trick people into thinking I was cool, but I just couldn't get into it. Ended up sweeping the table clean and just dropping the wilted flowers onto a blue piece of paper. DONE.

Glarey glare glare

Someone gave me shit for not signing my art, so THERE, it is signed. Am a real artist now.

Guavas

(note: lots of weather happening, bad news coming in - I'm watching with concern, Atlantic folks)

Very helpful 

So the library art show is going well, getting lots of feedback. Someone said, of my lychee branch, "Wow, I thought it was from Ross." (Ross is a discount home furnishing store.) Another person said, "OH MY GOD - what a nice frame.” (The frame actually is from Ross. We really love Ross around here, it seems.) Someone else looked very hard at me and said, "You're wasting yourself." So that's nice. Art critiques are fun.

I don't think I'm wasting anything, though, because I'm producing stuff. I kind of like having a salary with pension benefits, and the freelance work with New Zealand pays for art travels. Which leads me to:

ART TRAVELS 

There will be no art travels this year. It had been narrowed down to Whidbey Island or McMinnville, but in the end I went out of my head and bought a pork chop, instead. I have been thinking about this pork chop painting all year. It had to come live here.

THE BEST PORK CHOP

This supports an artist I would have been studying with, and I don't have to drive a rental car into an icy ditch in January. Everyone wins. Except my mom, who laughed and said it was a stupid painting and I should put it in the fridge. She and I are both in favor of stupid art, though, because this is the latest thing in her house:

6 of 16

This week's painting: Strawberry Guavas and Jumping Spider.

panicked spider was relocated to a nice safe bush once she was done posing for the painting

(screaming in spider)

The goal is to paint 16 sort-of-cohesive paintings with a mind to sell them. Maybe I'll ask around the galleries, or maybe I'll figure out Etsy. Gotta make the things, first. 

Do not want

The neighbor's dog got loose while they were out and I babysat him in our yard for three hours so he wouldn't get flattened by a truck. He is a nice young dog, but he rubbed his doggy ding-dong on my bare arm, and that is entirely more attention than I am interested in from anyone, let alone from someone who smells like they've been eating dirty diapers.

In the end, the neighbors came home and he dashed through the gate behind them without their noticing, so they never even realized what a goddamn hero I had been. See you next time, little dog. I'll be wearing longer sleeves.