Halloween 2020

We tried decorating the house, but the orange lights sparked and tried to electrocute us, and the cats ate the novelty spider webs. I know this because after disentangling two of them from the windows, they left the litter box trailing threads from their butts like the very worst kinds of spiders. Artificial webbing has officially been added to the banned decorations list, right under tinsel - and for the same reason. *

Nobody knew what was happening. The mayor didn’t cancel Halloween, but trick or treating was officially discouraged, so we arrived at my mother’s house with pie and jack o’ lantern, ready for a family dinner and spooky movie but half expecting hordes of candy-goers anyway. The neighborhood was dark and all the families with children were missing. 

My mother made a plague-safe candy delivery system out of a broom handle with a skeletal hand in a rubber glove wired to the end, and used it only three times throughout the evening to drop candy into optimistic buckets. “I’m a panda, but my costume was too hot,” said a teenager with black and white fur bunched around his waist, “So now I’m a skinned panda.” He got extra Milky Ways.

While we were watching the House with a Clock in its Walls, the next door neighbor called the fire department on our pumpkin. The fire truck pulled up, some tired-looking firemen climbed out, determined that the pumpkins were lit with batteries, asked if she was feeling okay, and then left. HA.

CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT 

The normally three-Costco-bags-of-candy neighborhood, eerily empty

Jello brains and the traditional Cat Foot Pie (pie that a cat has stepped in while we had our backs turned. That piece goes to the chickens.)

We were relieved the neighborhood played it safe, and a bit unnerved by the empty roads and dark windows. It added extra spoopiness to a strange year.

*No cats have been harmed - all decorations have been successfully pooped out with no bowel injury, and kids have been taught why it's not safe to pull on anything dangling out of an animal's bum.

Nothing in this Way of Use to Mankind

Showed up at work in full costume, and all my coworkers had forgotten it was Halloween. 

By now I have learned that it is more embarrassing being the only person wearing a sad novelty headband than it is to be the only person fully kitted out in a head-to-toe costume. I have commandeered the candy bucket, and everyone is going to have a happy Halloween or they’ll get the pointy end of my shoe.

 

Tulip

This flower kicked my butt. I wasted a lot of paint and wiped out hours of work before getting a halfway decent likeness of it. The highlights make me so mad, because I really dislike high-chroma color but it was there, and I couldn't make myself not paint it that way.

Should have asked for a different color when my mother texted me from the Safeway flower section after listening to me rant about the Dutch tulip mania over Sunday dinner. Yellow tulips wouldn't have tricked me into wasting so much $25/tube cadmium. A parrot tulip would be even better, but the pacific islands aren’t exactly a hotbed of bulb trading. Never going to be a 17th century Dutch master at this rate. 

Better stick to painting cheesecake.

stupid vital organs

In the middle of the night, a tea set and a metal food scale leaped off the fridge and smashed all over the floor, causing us to jump straight up out of bed and run into the kitchen. My heart DID NOT LIKE THIS. It took 4 tries to get back into bed and lay down, because I kept having to kneel and put my forehead on the floor to stop from fainting. It's a barfy, cold, muffle-eared feeling that I hate a lot. "If I wake up dead I'm going to be so pissed. Killed by a teacup." And whichever cat was exploring the top of the fridge at 12:30am.

 

probably this guy 

Ever since my doctor discovered my heart murmur a year ago- with the comprehensive advice to go to the ER if I start dying- I've been taking my heart-healthy vitamins and doing sad cardio workouts to defend against dropping dead when something jolts me awake in the middle of the night, and so far I WIN. Nice try, Droopy.

Still got sent to the hospital for an EKG and an echocardiogram, though.

It’s uncomfortable admitting to having an “underlying health issue”, because then if you die people act like you’re okay with being dead. Like if your brakes squeak, then nobody should feel bad when someone runs you off the road and your brakes fail and you crash into a tree and your car explodes. Ah, but she had those underlying brake issues, it was probably to be expected. Well, I do not expect to drop dead of a minor heart murmur, and I am not okay with it. I’m going to live to be 100 years old, powered by gristle and spite.

- - -

And because I don’t want that to be the last thing I talk about, here I am posing for reference pictures for an illustration I completely ruined.

Dressing up is fun but also depressing, because fancy clothes look so much better than work clothes, and you can't just walk around everywhere with steel undergarments and stage lighting. Unfair. 

Spacesuits, Ben Franklin, police reports

My spacesuit was lost in the mail, and it wasn't even coming from space. It was coming from Texas. This is why we haven't colonized Mars yet, folks.

My thumbnail for the book cover that is not to be

While browsing a replacement, I discovered I had already been outmaneuvered by a costume designer channeling Frank Frazetta. 

Moon Man

I can’t compete with that kind of romance. Accepted the refund and gave up. Sat at work feeling bummed about no longer having a shiny silver illustration prop/pandemic-appropriate workplace costume to look forward to, and then noticed that the book I was processing had a portrait of my very own face on the cover.

Damn it, Ben, not again.

A few years ago, I tried one of those popular apps that pairs you with your celebrity twin, and it gave me Benjamin Franklin.

Later, I tried the gender-swapping app to see what I would look like as a man, and it turned me into an alcoholic Ben Franklin, with bloodshot eyes and stubble.

I tried the historical painting app. BEN FRANKLIN.

Accurate, though 

So I ordered a Benjamin Franklin costume.

All the classic Ben Franklin poses: strike me, lightning; I can’t see that far without my spectacles; I forgot my cravat and knickers

(It should be said that I am not a descendant of Benjamin Franklin, whatever our foreheads and noses say. While Ben was busy doing "Nothing in this Way of Use to Mankind", my 22 year-old ancestor was sitting in a British prison cell for stealing books. 250 years and 3 generations of librarians later, we are still working off that blood debt. Thanks, Willie.)

 

Rescuer to the rescue

Driving home after work, boss called me to rescue an injured bird behind his car. Turned around and drove back to the library. There was, indeed, a bird on the ground. It was dead. Pretended to try to rescue it anyway, and hid the body in the bushes.

The next day, I rescued a puppy locked in a hot car, using the "LADY, YOU LOCKED YOUR PUPPY IN THE CAR, OPEN IT UP RIGHT NOW AND NEVER DO THAT AGAIN" rescue method. So she opened the door and left her kid in the car with the puppy. I was giving the puppy a bowl of water and talking to the kid about how not to murder his dog when the lady finished printing her restraining order paperwork and came running out of the library, just in time for her abusive husband to arrive on foot, screaming. The guy’s friend suddenly drove up and boxed her car in with his truck so she couldn’t escape, then thought better of it when he saw me calling the police. He sulkily moved his truck, she sped away with the screaming man chasing her car, and I got to spend the rest of the afternoon writing incident reports.

After all that, I went home, made dinner, heard a noise, and walked out the back door to find myself face-to-face with a stranger sneaking through the enclosed yard. The man tried to wave casually and stroll along to the exit, but I stopped him for an explanation. Turns out I am the kind of person who will confront a prowler/ax murderer armed only with a taco NOTHING. I thought I was holding a taco, but review of the security footage shows I left it in the kitchen. I had the higher ground, though, and could have leaped on him like a wolverine.

 

Sadly not dressed as Benjamin Franklin

The prowler was just a neighbor who knocked something off his chicken coop into our yard and then couldn't climb back over the fence. While I was using mom-voice on the poor guy, Mike was hiding in the basement with a beer, waiting for me to finish dealing with whatever was happening upstairs. 

“If you were in trouble, I would have run up and hit him with something." 

"Your beer?" 

"No.” (He collects nice beer glasses.) “With, like, a free weight." 

I would have enjoyed seeing that.

Next time.

Dept of Bad Ideas

Today I took a break from faces and painted a flower. I am almost certain it is a chrysanthemum. On the packet it just said “produce”. 

Chrysanthemums are my birth flower, so I have always felt sympathy for them. They're a bit weird looking and unpopular, as flowers go. They have lovely leaves, though. 

Naked Came the Chupacabra 

I am still painting romance novels on my lunch breaks. 

I enjoy these enough that I've decided to have a stab at doing a few of my own and building a portfolio. I am not particularly interested in romance, but I am interested in dramatic poses and costumes and good lighting. Maybe I could help chivvy more cryptozoological creatures into the genre, they are woefully underrepresented. Why are vampires sexier than moth men? Come on now.

This means I have an excuse to buy props. 

I browsed gowns and corsets and historic reenactment sites, but what I bought was a pair of werewolf hands and a space suit. 

The glue immediately separated from the gloves and they don't bend for shit, but I think they can still be useable.

For my new resume photo, if nothing else.

The space suit arrives tomorrow. Who thinks romance and does not immediately think space werewolves, I ask you? 

Exactly. Nobody.

From the lunch room

Well, the 3rd story on this week’s This American Life podcast, the Perils of Intimacy, just wrecked me. Thanks for the kick in the face during my morning commute, NPR.

Here is a man with an owl instead of underpants.

We have all had this classic dream of showing up to class with only an owl on. Relatable.

The opposite of masonry

The man has been getting weird about demolishing the fish pond in the back yard for the last few months, and the disappointment of not finding any dead bodies in the dirt-filled walls is outweighed by the horror of the growing rock pile we have no way of bringing to the dump. 

Went outside and realized he had bashed away the concrete pillars holding the roof up and replaced them with a couple of 2x4s.

Turned around and went right back into the house. He can yell when it’s time to call an ambulance and a backhoe.

- - -

I’m trying a very old painting method that is the art equivalent of steeking. 

Steeking is when you knit a complicated colorwork sweater in the round like a tube and then cut it in half with scissors to make a cardigan. 

Glazing a grisaille is when you thinly paint the figure in brown, then thickly paint in white where the light is, let that dry for a week, and then paint the entire thing black before carefully wiping it away to reveal the lights and darks underneath. If you can do this without panicking and ruining it, you can paint as you normally would after it’s dry, and your painting will have a lovely translucent quality. This is how to built up layers without having to oil in; you only do the color in the last sitting.

So far the white-smeared paintings look really weird and I’m going through the “I’m a fraud who sucks at this thing I have no business trying to be a part of” phase of learning. 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire was the movie I needed this year

I’ll take a video when I paint them black. Maybe it’ll be amazing, why not.

In the meantime, I’m still painting in the break room over lunch.

 - - -

My editor wants me to illustrate another book in 2021, which feels like magical thinking right now. 

The cat is still dying. He's comfortable right now, but the tumor is growing back and has spread to his neck.

The case numbers are going down. Visitor quarantine ends on October 15th, if anybody wants to do their remote schooling on the beach.

 

September has been long.

Ah ha

Breakthrough: I have figured out how to oil in.

What is oiling in? Gross.

As paint dries it sinks into the surface and becomes dull, making it impossible to match colors the next time you sit down to work on it. You have to wait for it to dry completely and then rub oil back into it to bring out the color. This sounds easy - because it is - but I got weirdly defensive about finding out why it wasn’t working for me. The oil beaded up, my colors were all wrong, the painting dried weird, it was awful.

So here it is:

Slow down, use less oil, rub for longer. 

I’m sorry to pair that information with this image, but that is what you have to do, and I finally did it correctly, and it is just a terrible coincidence that I was painting romance paperbacks in the break room when it happened.

Nothing says “romance” like a headless man hiking up his pants

And now suddenly my “in progress” pile is out of control,  because I am ready to fix everything with my improved skill set.

Most of them aren’t dry yet, though, so I painted a D20 for Gavin, instead. 

1 = fail

 

Sarah and I have embarked on a knit-along. She chose Astragal, a cropped oversized sweater with a ladygarden motif knitted around the neck. I went rogue and knitted leaves and bobbles, instead.

left the camera on "live" and caught an attempted murder

This pattern features German short rows; the short rows you accidentally make when don’t know how to do short rows. Like when you’re learning to tie your shoes and just get mad and do it however the hell, then somehow end up with a tied shoe and feel proud even though you don’t know what you did. If anyone notices it looks a bit funny, you say, “those are German short rows” and they will be very impressed. That is called “heirloom quality”.

I get to pick the next pattern. I’m going to pick Radmere and Sarah is going to strangle me with her circular needles. 

 

 

No art content

Tests are all negative, we win.

Lockdown extended another 2 weeks. Case numbers dropping slightly. 

My friend’s house in Talent, OR burned down in the wildfires this week. Here is some current satellite imagery of the west coast fires to worry over (more at https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/satellite.php).

Ruined some paintings over the long weekend. Thinking about it, working out where I went wrong and how to fix it. Staring hard at everyone’s shadow shapes and facial planes.

Stay still, I’m painting you with my brain

Haven’t done a yearly self portrait yet, and the months are getting on. I don’t see how I can get away from this year without including the mask, but I just don’t want to. I already spend ten hours a day in it, I don’t want to sit in it for the next hundred years. Tried posing in it anyway.

Nope. I can just print these and my progeny will know what grandma looked like during the Lost Year. DONE. 

And today I got a new phone. 

Going well so far.

Check in, smoky people.