Doot-n-doo-doo...

Here comes the sun!  It's been dreary, folks, but MAN, was it sunny today!  I love it!  I didn't even want to put on my sunglasses, because I just wanted to take it all in!

I guess here in a couple of days, that fat ol' rat up in Pennsylvania will tell us what we're facing as far as more or less winter.  I think I've had enough already (and I know the folks down south have!), so I'm hereby ordering Punxatawny Phil to push the magic "no more winter" button, or else I may try out some of the marinade recipes I found online on him.

Well, that was kind of dark, so to make up for that, I gave you some sunshine on canvas!  I just really love bright colors!  It'll make my crocuses grow nicely, I think.  Oh, well, off to Cusanelli's!  Haven't been there in quite a while.  It's good eatin', lemme tell ya!

Oh, the weather outside is...

...well, it's not really that frightful.  We only got about 3/4" of snow.  Down south, though, I've got lots of family and friends who are under the better part of a foot!  The weather dudes once again blew it.  I swear one of these days I'm gonna put in for a job at Channel 4 - I'd love to have a job where I got paid all that money to only be right about 40% of the time!

Anyway, I started thinking about this particular stroke a few days ago when I put in the purple/yellow/white stroke based on the crocuses (croci?).  Jenny had told me that they can pop up out of snow if the conditions are right - they're early bloomers.  I figured that between that and the weather around the country yesterday I'd throw some "snow" on the canvas.  I didn't know exactly how it would look, being done with a knife and going over the resin sand medium I put down yesterday (it dried more clear than I thought it would, by the way).  So it did cover up a lot of the sand, but I got some nice "light snow" on there, where it didn't cover as much. 

I know sometime soon I'm gonna have to start thinking about where I wanna go with this piece, but right now I'm just having fun throwing different things down and seeing how they react, and getting some nice layers.  I do love layers.  Especially today.  The weather outside is - friggin' cold!

Sugar (dah-da-da-da-dah-dah) Ah, honey honey...

...you are my candy, girl, and I can't really have you anymore.

Yeah, I know those aren't the lyrics, but it's what's on my mind today.  Just found out that my blood sugar level is way too high, on the borderline of where people can get friggin' diabetes.  Great.  Do you have any idea how much I love ice cream, and my wife's awesome cookies (her chocolate chip cookies are possibly the best in the world)?  I guess it's better than finding out after I'd already come down with "the diabeetus", as Wilford Brimley says.  So now it's a stripped-down diet.  More rabbit foods, less sweets of any kind.  This will take some getting used to.  It's probably for the better, though.  I definitely need to get into shape.

Well, enough whining.  I figured if I can't have sugar anymore, I'd throw something that kinda looked like it down on the canvas.  This is a Liquitex medium called "Resin Sand".  It should clear up a bit, but for the most part it's relatively opaque.  I'll take another pic later to show you how it dried.  Or, you can just see tomorrow.  Until then, I'll let Archie, Reggie, Betty, Veronica and Jughead sing you a little tune.  Where's Hot Dog?  Did he steal my Oreos?  Man, I think I'll miss those the most!

For the fiery-headed folk...

Hey, good people, how are ya today?  I really don't have a lot going on today.  For some reason I was just thinking "red" all day.  And not "redheads", for a change (ask my lovely wife - she knows I've always had a thing for redheads!).  And definitely not Sammy Hagar.  I will never understand St. Louis' massive love affair with that man.  I mean he had some good stuff with Montrose, and some of his early solo work, but man, did he fall off something fierce!  I digress, however.  I started to link his song "Red" in honor of my 16th stroke here, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

What I guess I'm trying to say is that I wanted to throw a little more red into the mix here, but I didn't want to do the same bright red that I did the other day, then I remembered that I had a great alizarin crimson that I bought for a piece I'm gonna be doing for my sister, Katie (a hibiscus).  Perfect. 

So here we have our red.  And in honor of that red, I give you this red: Simply Red - Stars.  This is a minor hit they had a few years after "Holding Back The Years".  It's a nice little pop ditty.  Enjoy!

Screaming In The Night...

No, I wasn't having nightmares.  That's just the first thing I thought of when my wife suggested that I use this great "Brilliant Purple" color.  I was wondering where I wanted to go today - whether I wanted to do something random again, or just to go ahead and start trying to sculpt something. 

Every time we would go into Joanne's, or Dick Blick, or wherever we would go for art supplies, Jenny always wanted me to buy that purple.  She just loved the color - said it was "fun".  So we had another coupon (that's when I get the majority of my paints!) and I picked up a tube.  She told me today that the painting was getting a little too dark - that I needed something bright in there.  It happens to be snowing outside right now, so it's pretty dreary looking, but she said that when the weather gets better, crocuses pop up out of the snow. 

I was a metalhead growing up - if it wasn't Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, etc. I didn't listen to it.  There was a band from Switzerland that had a few very minor hits over here in the states called Krokus.  Yes, named after the flower.  I guess the "c"s didn't rock enough, so they changed them to the much more metal "k", as in "Rawk".  Their wikipedia page states "that it was the perfect name, since it features "Rock" right in the middle."  Wow.  I can't believe I was once like that.  Anyway, I leave you this evening with Screaming In The Night. And if you're wondering, no, metal videos did not get any better than this.  No, really.   It ranks right up there with anything starring David Caruso for me.  I still rock out to the song, though.  \m/ \m/

Blue skies, smiling at me...

Folks, it's been pretty nasty outside lately!  We finally got some sun today, and boy, did I need that!  I don't know how many of you out there take any stock in the theory of "S.A.D." (seasonal affect disorder), but I tell you what, I do!  I can tell you if it's cloudy outside before I even look out the window!  Of course that could be me just getting old, though! :-)  I do, however,  get very depressed if it's cloudy too long!

Boy, do I know how to babble!   Anyway, I got this Light Blue the other day, and thought it was the perfect color for the day.  Not only has it been dreary outside, I've been in kind of a crappy mood lately.  Sorry for all that, by the way! :-)  Maybe I'll throw in some sunshine tomorrow.  Everyone needs some sunshine!

Trying to make Monsieurs Favre and Nelson feel better...

So the rumor going around (not seriously, of course - unless you're that die-hard/delusional of a Minnesota Vikings fan) is that the reason the Vikes lost is because of the song that Prince wrote for them this season.  I actually think that these tin-foil-hatters could be right.  The song "Purple and Gold" is one of the worst I've ever heard!  It's almost as if Prince has unearthed some horrible discarded piece from the Willy Wonka soundtrack and had a 9-year-old rewrite lyrics to praise the Vikings.  Yeah, it's that bad. 

Anyway, I thought I should try to rectify the situation at least a bit, so today we have some Viking Purple, mixed with some deep blue, just because I didn't think that purple deserved it's own day again, especially since they lost.  By the way, congrats to the New Orleans Saints.  They really did outplay Minnesota, who looked about as bad as Prince's song. 

Good/Bad

So today, I really don't have a whole lot to say.  I'm just kind of in a blah mood.  Started off really great, got to spend some time with my little cousin, which always ALWAYS makes me happy.  After that, I got some news that hurt me, made me sad, and made me feel very disappointed and  extremely angry all at the same time, hence the black. But being with my cousin will always trump any stupid crap, so that's why the pink wins out over the black.  I'm simple like that. 

I'll get back into the swing of things tomorrow.  I'm gonna go watch the Vikings/Saints game.  Later. :-/

Just sit right back...

So today I (along with the rest of the "Worship Team All-Stars) played at the wedding of Jackie Janovsky and Dan Gilligan (insert "little buddy" joke here :-D).  Jackie has been very active at Rooftop (my church) for a long time, and she loves the worship music, so they wanted to incorporate some into the ceremony - we literally rocked their wedding!

I was sitting off to the side during the actual ceremony part, and, while looking at her dress, got an idea for another painting - kind of an abstraction of a wedding dress.  We'll see if that one comes to fruition, but in the mean time, I figured I'd at least do a quick "one-stroke study" on this canvas.  I didn't want to do just white, so I threw a dab of this new green I got today in there ( I figure "Gilligan" is pretty Irish, so there ya go). 

I'm starting to see some different things now - I'll probably see different things throughout the year, I'm sure!  Congratulations, Gilligans on your wedding!  May you have a long, wonderful life ahead of you!  Oh, and by the way, yeah, we played the "Gilligan's Island" theme some while they walked out! :-)

Helpin' out with the Cloon-meister

So, earlier today I was in a giddy mood, it being Friday afternoon and all. Jenny and I went out to Blueberry Hill with her father for dinner - had one of the best burgers ever, as is par there.  Amazing burgers!  When we got back, I turned on the TeeVee, and figured I'd just slap down something on the canvas and call it a night. 

On every channel (at least network - we ain't got no fancy cables) was the benefit concert for Haiti, put on by that sexy good-ol'-boy George Clooney (he's so dreamy!).  I'd been thinking about the whole situation in Haiti all week - ever since the first earthquake occured - but I hadn't really thought seriously about doing anything until this evening.  Maybe it was the potential to actually speak to my teenage (and, let's be honest, current) crush, Alyssa Milano, but I finally made the decision to donate to the cause.  I actually chickened out about calling up the celeb-a-thon line, so I had no chance whatsoever to talk to Samantha Micelli (or Jack Nicholson, for that matter), but I did, however, log onto the American Red Cross Donation Site to donate there. 

Yeah, so, as Bill Cosby said, "I told you that story to tell you this one":  As soon as I turned the telethon on, my mind immediately went to what I could do  to incorporate what I was thinking about into this piece, so here we have it - a multi-colored stroke, based on the colors of the Haitian flag. I figured as long as it's one swipe with the knife, no matter if it is several different squirts of paint, it's still one stroke, so there ya have it! 

Well, I've babbled enough for this evening - please think about donating to the Haiti Relief Fund!  I'm going to now focus on Conan O'Brien's last show as host of the Tonight Show - another horrific happening, albeit nowhere near as tragic! 

It's not a Sonic Youth album title...

...but maybe "Unbleached Titanium" should be.  In the mean time, it's merely the color I chose to use today.  I wasn't quite ready to go back to any bright colors, so I figured I'd keep it in the brown family.

When I squirted this little blotch of paint on just now, it didn't land exactly where I thought it would, and I didn't get to make the exact stroke I thought I would, but that reminded me of a paragraph from the liner notes to Miles Davis' classic album "Kind Of Blue" (which everyone should own, by the way).  In the notes, pianist Bill Evans said this:

"There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment. Erasures or changes are impossible. These artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea to express itself in communication with their hands in such a direct way that deliberation cannot interfere.

The resulting pictures lack the complex composition and textures of ordinary painting, but it is said that those who see well find something captured that escapes explanation."

 The first time I read that, many years ago, it made a profound impact on me.  I just thought that was absolutely brilliant, the way he went on to compare that to the improvisation the musicians did on that album.  I always wanted to attempt some project in which I could incorporate improvisation (at least to an extent), and I think that this is that project - maybe the first of many. 

Today's stroke wasn't exactly what I had planned, but like the Japanese painting, and, well, life in general, you've just gotta roll with it and see where it takes ya!  Toodeloo!

What can brown do for you?

So here it is - the non-bright color I promised you!  It's actually a burnt umber, not a brown-brown, but whatever. I guess I was just feeling the brown.  Now I turn on the boob-tube and ol' Helmet-Head (Cindy Preszler, the weather gal for the St. Louis NBC affiliate) is wearing brown from head to toe! I guess it's meant to be.

Now I do want to point out that this was in fact one stroke - I guess just how I was twisting and turning the knife it ended up looking like multiple strokes.  No, really!

I'm hoping that this will make me find something new in the picture!  Of course I guess it could just look like a bad haircut on the Japanamation dude I was talking about yesterday.  This is not what I'm going for.  Actually, I can't even say that - I don't even know what I'm going for!  Well, until next time, ta ta!

And on the seventh day...

...there was YELLOW!  Man, it was such a nasty, dreary, grey day outside I just had to do something about it.  I haven't yet developed the technology to actually change the weather (my minions are on it, though), but I can at least throw down some yellow to compensate.  So, here we have it. 

Ya know what's scary?  I'm seeing some sort of Japanamation here.  I really don't mean to, I just do.  Maybe I should switch to some different colors.  I'm doing all bright, shiny colors - primary colors, for the most part.  Yeah, I need to expand.  What colors should I go for from here?  I'm also thinking about different mediums.  I may incorporate a few here and there - but only ones I can put on in one "stroke".  This may get interesting.  Ha!  I'm all giddy now!  Can it be tomorrow now, so's I can do some more?  No?  Okay, I'll just work on something else, then.  See you tomorrow, suckers! :-)

6...is a serious numba. And this particular day in my blog.

Just for the record, I have never been number-curious, either, by the way (you out-of-towners won't get that reference, but you're not missing much - don't worry about it.)

Today I realized that I was doing something I do with just about any project I do, whether it's painting, or writing music, or whatever.  I've been overthinking this.  I had to tell myself, "Dave" (yes, I do refer to myself by name in my thoughts.  Thanks for asking.) "Quit overthinking this crap!  It's only day 6 - you've got 359 more to go!  You will, in fact, cover the whole canvas in that time, probably many times over.  Quit trying to make something happen in the first week!"

So I just came home, grabbed my Hooker's Green (which has nothing to do with either the world's oldest profession or golf), squeezed out a little drop, ran my knife across it, and here we go.  No more overthinking.  Until the next time.

Day 5 - is anyone out there?

Okay, so I wasn't sure what color to use today.  I thought about purple, in honor of Favre and the boys (or Prince, who was at the game, too), but I didn't want to do the same color twice in one week.  Jenny suggested orange.  I then had to decide where to place it, because I was looking at all the bright colors, and I didn't want the picture to resemble a late-80s Swatch watch.  Come on, you know you had one - you know what I mean!  I had a couple.  I actually looked at a couple on ebay recently.  I may end up buying one yet, who knows.  

I think I might have to stick to doing some more knife work here in the beginning stages, just to take up some space.  I may end up regretting it later, but that's part of the process.  It also may make it look that much deeper, if I have more layers!  I love layers and texture!

Dia numero cuatro...

So today my father-in-law and I changed out our downstairs toilet to a much taller one.  This did not really inspire me a whole lot.  After we got through, we turned on the NFL playoffs.  This did inspire me - a lot moreso than terlet work, at least!  The Arizona Cardinals were taking on the New Orleans Saints, in New Orleans.  I like both teams, but I figured the Saints would win (which they did).  I wanted to do a stroke in black and gold, for the Saints' colors, but I didn't have the right kinda gold, so I went with a nice, wide red knife swipe for my man Kurt Warner, who may have just played his last game.  Boy, did he get his bell rung!

Anyway, I'm starting to get some more ideas about what this could turn into, but then again, it's only day 4 of 365, so I'm sure it will mutate more than once in that time!  In the mean time, GO COLTS!  Maybe there'll be another blue stroke tomorrow!

Hey, kids, it's day 3 and I'm already starting to see something - and it's not just because the drugs have kicked in! :-)

I got home from work and saw my long knife laying across the canvas diagonally, and I just saw someone dancing, so I decided to use a knife for my third stroke.  Hey, I never laid down any rules against that or anything! :-)  So, anyway, here it is - Dioxazine Purple.  Sounds like a disease.  It sho is purty, though, hence the bonus close-up pic!  I know, I'm just too generous! :-)  I'm using entirely too many darned emoticons, too!  If you would have told me 5 years ago that I'd even use *any* emoticons I would have laughed in your face.  IN YOUR FACE!  But, here I am using them too many times in one post.

Well, I've babbled entirely too long about nothing today, so I'll just close by saying:  If you, or anyone you love, think you might have Dioxazine Purple, please consult your physician.  Thank you, and good night. :-D  Wait, what?

So here we are, day 2 and I haven't given up yet, so I've got that going for me.  I picked blue today.  I was just feeling it.  The day started off pretty nice, then towards the end of the day, for some reason I just started getting melancholy.  Then a couple of things happened that upset me, so I was just pretty, um, blue.  I was originally gonna go with a darker blue, because I was in a darker mood, but then I took care of some things and my day got better.  Brighter.  So, we ended up with Cobalt Blue.  What a gorgeous color!  I really need to get some better lighting for this project! :-)

I present...DAY 1

So here we are, folks, a new year, and so I'm gonna try a new project.  I'm going to make one single stroke a day for the next year, and we'll see what happens with this painting.  I'll simply pick a color that kind of goes with how I'm feeling any particular day, throw something down, and we'll see where it takes us.  It may start as one picture and end up something completely different.  It all depends on how I'm feeling on any given day.  Hopefully it turns out well!   I welcome your feedback - good or bad!  I really want to use this to create something nice and to grow as an artist!  Here's the first day's stroke.  My lovely wife suggested this beautiful Medium Magenta.  Here we go!