Christmas decorations at my house take five minutes to put up. Outside: plug in the robot reindeer on the porch, put the wreath on the mailbox. Inside: put the non-robot reindeer by the window, hang the tree. Last year it looked like this. (For a moment, anyway.)
This year the inside is just too cluttered for me to pull off last year's deception, when I tidied things up for just for the photo. The clutter has won.
So, I got creative. The one non-robot reindeer is now perched over the stairwell, standing on the leaf of my dining table that just happens to fit the span of the basement steps.
He likes it. I like it. He peeks at me from his platform like a go-go dancer.
He might not look as good with the tree hung in front of him, or perhaps he’ll look even more festive.
Every Christmas we both buy an ornament to memorialize the past year. Toilets and raccoons, alpacas and armadillos, tornadoes, cheetahs, Eiffel towers and poodles for the year we went to Paris, a guitar for the year I took up the guitar, wine bottles for the year we took up wine.
This year's only memorable activity? We replaced our driveway. I considered just drilling a hole in a chunk of concrete and slinging it up the tree, but it turns out there's a person in England who makes personalized Christmas ornaments out of cement.
Gary's going to be hard pressed to find an ornament more perfect than that.
This week the dog and Pitcher went from this:
to this:
It only has brown, white and black in it (even the 'pink' pitcher is brown and white). I was pleased with the dog, so I stopped. I need to stop looking at the real-life pitcher and tyring to interpret it. Instead I need to just paint the simple sphere I know it should be.
I recently got around to framing a souvenier print we picked up in New Orleans.
The framer asked if we'd been to Mardi Gras in 2018, as the print says, and I said, "Oh no, it's been years and years since we've been on vacation." I researched it, and it has been years and years in that it has been one year plus one year. We were there in February 2018, so it's coming up on two years once winter is over. It feels like five years since we've left the house.
On the other hand, the Trump presidency has just flown by. I can remember election night like it was yesterday.
I need to change my attitude. I think so rarely about enjoyable things that they seem an eternity away; yet I think so often about the negative that it feels like yesterday.
I was on eBay, scouting out olive pants, and I saw these.
In the past I would have given these pants a wide berth, because I don’t need any horizontal lines accentuating my already-wide ankles, but then I remembered how much I enjoyed wearing my unusual linen pants this summer. So even though I can’t pair them with 4-inch peach stilettos, I bought the pants.
Once I unpacked them I discovered that photo above is as phony as an ad for soup that’s been doctored with marbles and Vaseline. The ankle button straps took an evening of running a gather stitch, fusing, and ironing to get the pants to look as they do above.
The first time I wore them, I felt they had a little Nazi vibe. Just a little, with the army green, and how they puff up above the ankles like they’re tucked in to jack boots. I was worrying about that when two ladies made a point of saying they liked my pants.
“Are you sure? They don’t look too much like Nazi pants?”
“No, just kind of military. That’s what makes them cute.”
And yes, just as the linen pants were only popular with one demographic, this pair of ladies were not white, and once again all my white friends stayed silent. Now I feel compelled to keep pushing the pants envelope. Palazzo parachute pants? Do they make pants with a bustle? Ooo, pants with a train, like you’d see at the Grammys. I’ll keep following this experiment until all the demographics are horrified by my pants.
I couldn't do it. I couldn't just paint the pitcher. Now it’s a pitcher and a toy dog bank.
This is the drawing:
That head is way too small. That's a chihuahua head on a bulldog body.
And I have to change the values that are there in real life. All too dark on one side and light on the other. You can’t even tell that the slope of the dog's back mimics the slope of the pitcher.
This week, the gourds went from this:
To this ...
When they were originally this:
To be fair, the photo was taken from a slightly different angle.
I had wanted it to be loose and Fauvist, and the left gourd is at least pretty loose, but the nodules were just too picky and challenging on the right gourd. Next time I am regressing even further and I think I am going to paint my pink pitcher. Nothing else. Pink pitcher, round, arcs, one color pink, highlights. Big brush, loose.
I am pleased with the left gourd. I might go back and black out some of the bottom. And the top highlights around the gourd stem should be lighter than the ones on the bottom, obviously. Still, that left ground jumps right out at you, doesn’t it?
Here is the shirt with the embroidery covering up the bacon grease:
(Not every flower is covering up bacon grease: about half of them were to balance out the other side.)
I worked on it so much that the neural track of embroidery just kept spinning even when I was done. My brain kept embroidering as we went to the movie theater and watched The Current War. I saw a thread on the floor of the theater: it looked like embroidery thread. The color of a jacket made me want to thread a needle with the yellow thread. I saw things on screen and pictured how they would look embroidered. I kept getting triggered by Michael Shannon’s mustache. Couldn't you embroider that face?
This week,the gourds:
Went from this:
To this:
So, about half done. I only spent an hour on it. Of course, it all needs to be a lot more vibrant. More orange, and then if that doesn't work then the opaque orange instead of the transparent.
The bad thing about that is that I mixed up two hours worth of paint and I only painted an hour.
I am sure every oil painter tries what I tried next: covering the pallette with Saran Wrap.
Okay - the control is on the left. The right side is after seven days of smearing some Lancome lard on half my face. And neck. My right, your left. Doesn't matter. There is no difference.
I confess, I am very skeptical about before and after photos, especially ones where the lighting is different. I am much more forgiving now that I know that even in a controlled environment it is hard to get the lighting the same.
On the plus side, I think I'm plenty moist, and now I have all the money that other people spend on moisturizer.
What can be done, though? Toner? Cheery thoughts? Age with grace?
We interrupt the Big Box O' Jerry for the Thursday Weekly Paint Progress, because if I don't hold myself to this I will not progress.
Here's the subject.
I'm indeed scaling it down. No ambition for this one, not trying anything new. I'm not even devoting a canvas to this, just canvas-covered board. It already bothers me that the proportions aren't right.
I hope it's going to be alla prima, done in a day, that's why I'm going to mix all the paints before I start.
So I said to the Lancome saleswoman when she popped the 7-day moisturizer samples in my bag, "You know I'm going to put this on half my face for seven days and see if it makes a difference."
"Do it!" she challenged me.
This is Day 1. I’m following the rules and using the Day 1 packet on Day 1, just in case they fill the Day 1 packet with extra-strong Crisco. (I hate moisturizing: it always feels like I’m slathering on Crisco.)
This is my face utterly bare and unmoisturized. (I also have a high-def full size copy for research, which is even more frightening.) I don’t know why I look so worried. (It’s not the polyp, which is small.)
I'm moisturizing my right side of my face and my neck (Jesus!). Check back in seven days from now and marvel at either the restorative powers of moisturizer or at the wonder of the scientific method.
Okay, I guess this is the end of the line for Gary and the Stone Face. I've never framed an oil painting before.
I think the next painting will be decorative gourds and fruit, because no one will know if the gourds are proprtionate, much less if I have captured the character of the gourd.
No oil painting this week. I'm all about the embroidery now.
If you recall, I have to embroider over all the bacon grease spots on my silk shirt. The embroidery is taking up all my relaxation time. It's nice. It's kind of like doodling on your clothing.
The work around the neck was done on machines staffed by what I assume were Chinese children. The chalk marks indicate Bacon. The variously clunky hand embroidery on the torso was done by me.
This week the teacups went from this ...
To this ...
And the bowl in back is still not right, but I can't even see what's wrong. I actually stopped looking at what was there and started painting what I thought should be there, and it's only marginally better.
So, after picking over each little reflection and ending up with the same thing, essentially, I decided it was time to get loose and modern instead of picky and backward and tedious.
So I did this in an hour with a palette knife ...
... which STILL does not capture the beauty of Spunky Labia, International Toe Porn Superstar, but it is certainly better than my first attempt a year ago, and that's progress.
Putting away the teacups. Don't know what's next. Perhaps a Monet-like series of Spunky in various lights and styles. No more exact representation, at least for a while.
I brought some cut lilies home from the supermarket, snipped off the ends, and popped them in a vase of water.
By the next morning they had gone from lily buds to huge, blooming lilies. I was quite pleased.
In the process they sucked up the entire vase of water. While I carried the vase to the sink, I buried my face in the bouquet and whispered, "You were thirsty, weren't you? Here's some more water."
Then I did other things for three hours.
Then I went to the bathroom, glanced in the mirror, and saw this:
It had been so long since I nuzzled the lilies that it took me a full minute to diagnose myself with Facial Lily Pollen.
It only took half a minute when it happened again with the next bunch of lilies.
Lynn at Turtlehead was writing about cursive, and I worried that I may be losing my cursive skills. Once out of grade school, I began to customize my cursive. I never went for the round, loopy cursive favored by teenage girls, but I wasn't the stickler that Mom wanted me to be. I remember the cursive uppercase F was an issue.
About ten years ago I heard of a job application form that required a sample of cursive writing, which I suppose was to weed out teenage applicants who had never learned to write in cursive. I was in part pleased to know I could get that job, and in part dismayed that people are using cursive as a literacy test reminiscent of Jim Crow laws.
So, today, I confirmed that my notes and scribbles can still be considered cursive (in preparation for the impending Age Wars in which I will be asked to write in cursive to prove I am not a spy). I wrote out all the letters, upper and lower case, and then compared them to what I remember as cursive.
Official Cursive:
My cursive:
(We're just going to ignore those extra girly loops in the top left of each uppercase letter. I call that "style". Style, or "Trying way too hard" (see the uppercase X).)
I did well on the lowercase, but not so well on the upper. Clearly the F is still an issue. That backward tangent never made sense to me, so I merged it with the cross mark.
The most shameful error is of course the S, given that it's the initial of my last name. Oddly, I make a proper S when I forge Gary's signature.
I call that 86%, and that passes. Still, Mom would not be pleased.
Teacups have gone from this:
... to this:
I don't know why the reflections are so hard. I see colors, I paint them, and they are wrong. At the very least, the middle of the bowl will need to be painted over and tried again.
Gary and the Stone Face went from this:
to this:
It's horribly dark now, and I hate it, but what's left are the frames of his glasses. Hopefully that will lighten it all up and pull everything together. Maybe some highlights on the cheeks and chin, for Gary and for the Stone Face, not because I see them but because they should be there.
This is what happens when you are committed to taking in a daily dose of the old TV show The West Wing. Something happened on the show [SPOILERS!] that shook me to my core.
I'm not talking about the plot point in which the Leo McGarry character above, played by John Spencer, dies suddenly of a heart attack, because I did remember that from the original series. I remember it as very jarring, but the actor died suddenly from a heart attack while they were wrapping up the series.
The really shocking thing that struck me his time around was that someone remarked during the TV funeral that John Spencer's character, above, was 57.
I am 57. I thought, come on, I'm supposed to believe that the guy above is 57? He's in his seventies. He is old and wise. Then I started thinking, well, they must have had a man in his seventies play a man in his fifties so he'd have sufficient gravitas.
Nope. That actor had a massive heart attack and died at 58. I thought, selfishly, as you do when confronted with mortality, "I am too young to worry about heart attacks." Simultaneously, I also thought, "Wait, people my age are expected to be White House Chief of Staff? Am I supposed to have shaped world events by now?"
President Obama's 58 right now. Real people my age actually have stepped up and changed history. I feel very inadequate.
Gary and the Stone Face went from this:
to this ...
The things on his face are the shadows from his 1980's aviator glasses.
Now I want to put the blue back in the sweatshirt.
Friend Tiffany rented a pet farm and had it brought to a nearby park. Llamas! Alpacas! Goats! Friends! This was going to be epic! I prepared. I put it in my calendar. I brought along four ponchos, because as we know, alpacas spit.
I wanted Gary to be there, and Gary wanted to be there, but Gary's bowels wanted us to be late. I was understanding. We still had time. We were about fifteen minutes late out of the gate.
I had already plugged in the address, so I clicked on the address in Calendar (See figure A) and got the directions in Maps (See figure B).
Figure A! Highway K!
But notice, Figure B! Highway D!
Yessss. I clicked on the right address on the right highway and lying Apple Maps took me to the right address on the wrong highway.
I even said to Gary, "This is so odd, I was sure that we were supposed to go to the end of 367, but I guess this is some better way."
After a long time we arrived at 3589 Highway D (which is a turnoff that leads to a locked gate), investigated, found the problem, and headed back to the right location. Where we found our friends... leaving. No llamas. Llamas all gone.
They told us how wonderful the llamas were, and that did not make me feel any better.
Gary said, "But at least it makes for a good story, right? It was an adventure."
This also did not make me feel any better, but at least he tried.
I made some progress on the Gary Stone Face Mashup.
From this:
to this:
Of course now it's in two different styles so I'll have to get around that somehow, and the illicit carbon-paper tracing technique throws one into a paint-by-numbers mentality. It'll work out. Gary's sweatshirt will almost certainly turn into a cousin of the stone face, with the palette knife and the pinky-grey color. I'm keeping it loose, though, and that was my goal with this one.
Huh. Gary’s head should cast a shadow on the stone face.
I'm keeping myself accountable. Expect one day a week to be Paint Progress day here.
Remember these pants? I bought them to wear to the opera, the same day I bought the long vest and the duster and the colorful kimono.
I loved wearing them to the opera, because they dance and move as I trudge along. I hadn't worn them since the opera, but last month I wore them to work.
You know how friends will compliment you when you try something new? You wear your hair curly, then the one day you straighten it people like your hair? Then you wear it straight until the one day you let it curl and then it's all compliments, and you think, "pick a lane, people."
I was expecting compliments on the unique pants, because they are different, and I heard nothing all day. But then I was walking away from the receptionist and she called out "Cute Pants!" so I had to whirl around and come back to tell her the story of how I essentially bought them off the body of the Dillards' saleswoman.
That made me bold enough to wear them a few weeks later. This time the cashier at lunch and a stranger in the elevator liked them.
I wore again them last week, and perhaps I'm more confident, but the pants got compliments from another elevator stranger, and the new hiree.
When I walked off the elevator after compliment number one, and then new hiree said she liked the pants, I thought, "You have good taste, new hiree, and also I should learn your name, and why is it that every person who likes these pants is African-American?"
All black women: the receptionist on the first day I wore them, the cashier and the stranger the next time, and now another stranger, and the hiree. "That is weird," I thought, "But maybe my Caucasian friends are just too uptight to compliment these pants."
I performed demographic research the rest of the day. I encountered three more black friends: two liked the pants. I encountered at least five white women, none of them liked the pants, even when I swiveled my hips to make the pants dance and looked at them expectantly.
This of course made me love the pants more. I continued the experiment the next day. I theorized that perhaps white women just freak out if someone wears something non-conformist, so I wore my colorful kimono to work. One white man joked they wouldn't let him wear his robe to work, but then five white women, some strangers, said they liked it.
I wish I could say that I kept this to myself as it was happening, but I truly did quiz the last two black friends who liked the pants. They had no answers other than to indicate that I shouldn't get a complex about it.
I cannot wait to wear these pants again.
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