St. Pierre et Miquelon, Vanuatu

 

A little over a week ago I attended the Louisville Coin Club's annual Fall Coin Show. I was only able to spend about an hour-and-a-half there.  There were about fifty dealers, I guess, and I visited three of them.  The one I spent the most time at was the last.  He had many boxes of inexpensive world coins, and I found some fines ones to fill some holes in my collection.

 

The coin from St. Pierre et Miquelon sent me to do research, for I didn't recall every hearing of those islands before.  I should have, for it's the only North American territory still held by France; a tiny bit of space, but interesting.

 

The other coin is from Vanuatu.

 

The scans of the coins aren't very good.  I might have to see if there is a better setting for the scanner.

 

I bought four other coins, of which I will post pictures later.

 

Orbit simulator

I mentioned this to Kevin a short time ago, and just found a link:
 

 

http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/applets/satellites.html

 

If you click, move the mouse, and release, you can launch a satellite.

 

I've seen other versions of this where you can do it without the moon.

 

I find it difficult or impossible to get a stable orbit unless I make the satellite go the opposite way the moon goes.

skull drawing

 

This is yet another recently found and touched-up drawing.  I drew this in late 2000, and it was tucked away since then until I pulled it out last week and cleaned it up a little.  I don't think it's a great drawing, but I sort of like it, and it could easily be used as the basis for another work.

 

The subject is a skull I found outside Saratoga, Wyoming.  I didn't know what kind of skull it was until a few days ago when I did some rummaging using Google's image search.  Looks to me like it's a dog skull.

 

This was done with charcoal and chalk.

 

Our rites have ensured a bountiful harvest, father.

 

 

Vedauwoo Snow

I found this old drawing in the back of a closet and thought it had some promise, so I worked on it a little more - mostly making some areas better defined, and filling in some holes in the sketchiness.

 

This is about 10 x 16 inches, charcoal, white chalk, a little graphite, and (I think) touches of acrylic gesso.
 

 

Waved Sphinx

 This big guy (gal?) was above our garage door.  I saw him as soon as I pulled into the driveway; he really stood out against the white, and he was pretty big (maybe not 2 inches, but close.)  I think he's a waved sphinx moth.

 

High School Art

I was cleaning out some old folders when I found this gem from my high school art class. The assignment was to create a collage from magazine pictures, and then turn that collage into a color pencil drawing.  What I think is great about this drawing is that it works on multiple levels (level 1: weird. Level 2: stupid. Level 3: cockamamy farce.)

 

I'm also impressed by my ability to handle colored pencils, which I find difficult and unforgiving.  There are problems, sure.  The faces are pretty screwy.  However, I quite like how the hands are rendered (last night when I looked at it I was struck by how many rings there are in the picture.)  I also like the shading on te lab coats. The aspirin bottle looks nice.
 

 

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Practical solution

Purple Haired Mermaid (Jill): Hi.

Boots (me): Hello- Oh my gosh! It's a mermaid! I can't believe it! I bet this isn't really happening. I must be dreaming!

Purple Haired Mermaid: Why don't you go check your bed and see if you're in it? If you're not there, then you know you're not dreaming.

astronomy

Tonight after dinner we took the girls over to E. P. Sawyer State Park. Members of the Louisville Astronomical Society had their telescopes set up for people to look through. We got to see some up-close-and-personals of the Moon, and some views of Jupiter and four of its moons (we could see Jupiter well enough to faintly make out one of its bands). Pretty cool.

Farmington prints for sale!

 

I had my Farmington drawing digitally scanned and printed.  I have prints I can sell!

 

I'm pleased with how they look.  Now comes the hardest part of all: selling them.

 

I'm also trying to figure out the best way to sign them.

 

Vidia

Today we were playing Never Fairies (you know, Tinkerbell and her lot) and I was assigned the juicy role of Vidia, the mean-spirited fairy who has no regard for anyone but herself. I like her and think she's just misunderstood, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, the older of my pixie daughters was trying to convince me to be nice. I was uncooperative, so she ran past and shoved a note in my pocket: "Be nise!"

Then, a minute later, she ran by and slipped me another note: "Or else."

Sometimes you have to be tough with Vidia.

Old paintings from way back in the '90s...

This is art from a simpler, more innocent, less sophisticated age.

This first painting, the naked lady leaning on a ladder --a common scene at U of L-- isn't very refined, but it's luscious and energetic! There are some minor drawing and compositional problems that sort of throw it out of whack, but I love the paint application. For the most part. The way it's mounted on wooden braces is fittingly (and intentionally) crude, with screws and nails driven though the surface of the painting. I think this dates to about 1992 or 1993. This downtown Louisville scene was painted a couple of years later. I don't think it's too bad, and it was actually a part of my BFA show; it's still pretty far removed from how I'd like my paintings to look now. Whaddya think?

Labor Day with the family

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Teacups

at the fair.
 

 

Detecting finds

I finally cleaned out my box of things I dug up while metal detecting. There wasn't a whole lot of stuff, because I haven't done much hunting this year. However, it was the first time I'd cleaned it out since I-don't-know-when (last winter sometime, probably) so there was a little.

I had about five dollars in coins. The coin at the top left is a Sacagawea dollar, the second I've found. I can't remember where I found it, or even whether I already knew I had it. I might have thought it was a quarter when I threw it in the box I carry with me.

The other stuff is just junk. The toy plane tail and the aluminum glasses frame were found near one another on the grounds of a children's home/former orphanage. The plane tail is still streaked with tears. I don't know what kind of frames those are—perhaps some kind of sports safety glasses? The rifle casings are from the grounds of an old church (from those uncompromising olden days when they used to shoot sinners). The ring-shaped thing is actually a pipe fitting or pipe cutting. Mickey the dog must have taken up a new life under an assumed identity. It's all worthless.

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meeting doodle2

(all digital)
 

 

meeting doodle

(all-digital)
 

 

 

 

More garden stuff

 

Regarding the swallowtail caterpillars:  Just at a glance, I saw five or six of them on the fennel, so I'm sure there are more I didn't see.  Ever since I saw a butterfly laying eggs on it, each time I've walked past the fennel I've looked for caterpillars, but this is the first time I've found them.

 

This morning from our window I watched a bright red, chirping cardinal hopping around the top of one of my tomato plants.  He was pulling at stems and leaves, and I thought he was eating flowers or small green tomatoes, but wasn't sure.  Finally, I saw him grab something and pull and gobble it down.  It looked like a green caterpillar, which had been eating the plant. Go cardinal!

 

I picked my first two red cayenne peppers today

 

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This is one of the reasons I wanted to grow fennel: swallowtail butterfly caterpillars live on it. So far, I've not found the fennel to be particularly edible, but these guys seem to be enjoying it.
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The Mythical Origins of Alyssa

Yesterday, my youngest child was pretending to be someone named Alyssa, and she eagerly told me the story of how she "got borned":

 

"For some reason, just before I got borned, my mother died.  Then, all of a sudden [dramatic hand wave] in a big flash of lightning, I came out of my dad's tummy.  We were living in Chicago.  At that time, there weren't many people or things in Chicago, so we moved to Kentucky where there were more people."

 

 

We had corn from the garden with our dinner.  Some of it was a little under-ripe, but I picked it before the varmints could beat me to it, which they frequently do.  The ears were less buggy and better developed than any I've grown and picked before, but there wee still some "ear-fill" problems.

 

I am now markedly out-paced in my tomato consumption.  For a little while, I was eating enough to almost keep up with what was coming in, but no more.  I have even become pretty good at frying some adequately delicious green tomatoes, and I'll make another batch of salsa in the next day or two, but there are too many tomatoes on my counter.  Not enough to bother with canning, though.  Perhaps I should oven- or dashboard-dry some.

 

Last night I had the idea that I should sautee some of the onions from my garden with some garlic, then use that in bread dough.  Perhaps I could even use some pureed tomatoes; that could be a fantastic pizza crust.

 

 

Perseids

I incorrectly set my alarm for 2:20, resulting in it not awakening me.  Fortunately, I woke up on my own at 2:40 and checked the clock, got dressed, and set out.

 

I decided to take a faster route out to Long Run Park, but got lost when I couldn't find the back end of Flat Rock Road.  For the first time, I turned on my new phone's GPS, which allowed me to realize I was close to Shelbyville Road.

 

It was supposed to take about 20 minutes to get to the park, but it ended up taking almost twice that.  Along the way I saw more deer (six or seven) than cars (three).  The deer and I weren't much of a danger to one another, since I was slowly feeling my way along unfamiliar roads.

 

This is one of the latest times I've been out to watch the Perseids.  Usually I've gone out anywhere from 10:00 to 2:00, and been home well before sunrise.  At those hours, I'm more likely to run into other people at the park (some I've seen have obviously been sky watchers like me; but others I've not been so sure about and might be better off not knowing.)  Arriving at the park this morning at 3:30, I only saw on other car.  I didn't see whoever came in it, but they left before I did.

 

I set up my lawn chair by the road.  I used a little bug repellent, but they mosquitoes weren't too bad.  Occasionally, geese or ducks on the lake would make a racket; distant dogs barked; a barred owl was repeating, "Who-cooks-for-you?" in the trees downhill; once, I heard a very far-off donkey braying loudly.  It had a pleasantly pastoral feel.

 

The light pollution out at Long Run Park now truly sucks, though.  It is darker than the street on which I live, but not by much.  I had considered going farther out, either looking for a place way out Highway 22, or going with an astronomy group out to a viewing site in Crawford County, Indiana.  I'd be much more inclined to go farther if I were actually doing it as an outing with family or friends, but since it was just me, I settled on Long Run, knowing in advance that much of the sky would be washed out.

 

Over the course of the first hour, I saw twenty meteors.  Once I hit twenty, I almost decided to call it quits, but hung on for another fifteen or twenty minutes until I hit a tally of twenty five.  The best one I saw wasn't a Perseid meteor; it came from another direction, and I only saw the end of it as it came from behind me, flaring bright yellow.

 

The drive home was much smoother.

 

 

Meteor shower

I intend to go out to watch the Perseid meteor shower tonight.  It will be reaching its peak tonight after midnight.  This is something I've done many years since I was sixteen (there were quite a few years in which the weather was uncooperative, and a few years I just forgot.)

 

Very rarely has anyone gone with me, and I don't really blame them.  It's tough being out at that hour, even for a great fireworks display.

 

And the Perseids are NOT a great fireworks display.  However, each year on the news shows or news Web sites or in other popular media, I see the Perseids billed as something spectacular.  Yesterday on CNN there was a short story which told people to go ahead and stay up late to watch the vivid meteors and to take their cameras with them and to submit their amazing shooting star photos and videos.  This struck me as idiotic.  Yes, there are great photographers and amateur astronomers who can get wonderful shots of meteors; but it takes the right equipment, patience, and skill.  And the photos all look pretty much alike and aren't that amazing, just grainy streaks of light across a dark screen.

 

Streaks of light across a dark screen (the sky) is exactly what a shooting star looks like.  I think the media, in what little attention they give this sort of thing, play it up all wrong.

 

Here is what I find wonderful about watching meteors.  I love knowing that there are little specks of rock, most of them the size of a grain of sand, some perhaps as big as a pea, that have broken free from a comet.  This speck has been drifting through our solar system in one form or another ever since the Earth was a young churning mass of goo.  It has probably ranged far out past the orbit of Pluto. Now you can see it hit the atmosphere above you, vaporizing in a flash of light; it may be faint, or it may be bright enough to cast a shadow and leave a train of glowing gas that will hang there for second.

 

I can watch this someplace very dark, with crickets singing and scores of ancient stars shining, and with few other people around.  It all seems supremely huge and, at the same time, secret and quiet.

 

 

English to Italian, Italian to Swedish, Swedish to English

--that's how I ran translations for my post from last week (a few posts below this one), using the Google translator feature.  I can only say that the translation methods seem to have become more sophisticated in the past few years; how else to explain some of the weird things that popped up?

 

 Small Tomatoes at the beginning of pictures from the Super Sweet 100 bush I planted, the larger, which can be understood from the picture is still small, fruit size, not only Caddyshack "is a hybrid of volunteers approached the edge of the Garden. This plant grows every tomato is better in my garden, and the mass outside the UN much fruit. They're pretty good, but too small for sandwich UN and solo too big to run across the mouth.

Tonight I have a small cut "of green onions from the garden and a (non-spicy, for some reason) that the banana pepper Len gave me. I sauteed them in olive oil, one of the employees of Mary and me to the Top noodles, along with some tomato slices. A piece of fish and homemade bread are also images.

 

Enceladus

 I thought this was a cool picture.  It's Saturn's moon Enceladus, taken by the Cassini space probe. You can see water plumes being ejected into space from the bottom, the result of eruptions at the surface.

 

fennel and poblano peppers

The whispy frond stuff is fennel.  The stalks have a great flavor, but they are too tough to eat raw.  I've heard that they can be steamed or microwaved to make them tender, and I might have to try it.

 

I'm going to try uprooting a whole plant so that I can eat on of the bulbs at the plant base this weekend.  That's the part most people eat.  The seeds are also used in lots of Asian cooking; some of these plants are flowering, so seeds won't be too far behind.

 

The other photo is of my poblano peppers.  We might be having some stuffed peppers sometime soon.
 

 

Produce

The small tomatoes in the first photo are from the Super Sweet 100 bush I planted; the larger ones, which as you can tell from the photo are still petite, not-quite-golf ball sized fruits, are from a volunteer hybrid the came up at the ede of the garden. That plant is growing better than any other tomato in my yard, and putting out lots of fruit. They're pretty good, though too small for a sandwich and too large just to pop in one's mouth whole.

Tonight I cut up some green onions from the garden and a (non-spicy, for some reason) banana pepper that Len gave me. I sauteed them in olive oil, and served it to myself atop noodles, along with some of the sliced up tomatoes. A peach slice and homemade bread are also pictured.

If you are Better Homes & Garden or Chef Today Web Magazine, feel free to link to my blog.

Future art

I was thinking today: In the future, all art will be made by machines and for machines.  It just seems like the highly likely outcome.

 

What will be the role of humans, you ask?

 

I respond: Humans?

 

 

Mythical Hogan

I've just ridded myself of a misconception.  For years (I don't know how many years, because I don't know when I acquired this error; 5 years, or 30 years, it beats me) I thought Hogan was another name for Pan.

 

 

Farmington details

 

 

Finished Farmington pen & ink

 

 

I just finished the Farmington drawing.

Trunk man

I took this photo a month ago, but forgot to post it.  We passed this fellow while we were looking for yard sales not far from where Kim's mom lives, and we all thought he was pretty cool.

 

 

a few updates

 

Misc:

 

A couple of night ago I made salsa out of tomatoes and banana peppers from Kim's dad, crushed pineapple, green onions, lime juice, black pepper, and red pepper.  It came out pretty good, and I want to eat some more as soon as I can.

 

Garden:

 

Something uprooted a couple of my corn stalks (including the biggest, healthiest one) and ate the little ears off of them. It seems like squirrels would be too small to pull over the biggest plants, and I've never seen deer in our neighborhood, so I'm guessing a raccoon or a possum did it.

 

We're finally getting some big ripe tomatoes. We also have lots of basil, which I used a few days ago for some focaccia, which turned out pretty good, too.

 

Art:

 

I'm almost done with Farmington.  I am now deciding whether I should put a title along the bottom.  I think I will, on the left, inside the grass border, with my signature in the bottom left corner.  I'll have to put it in with graphite and see how it looks.

 

work-in-progress update

Here's how it was two days ago. Since then I've done a little bit of darkening on the left, and put in a little grass.
 

 

Tom Cruise is Sitting in a Chair

Pam made this at some point in the past, and gave me a copy because I really liked it. I don't think I've put a photo of this on here before.
 

 

Art, Garden, Coin

Art:

 

Here's another photo of my work-in-progress. It's slow going, but I'm making noticeable progress each day.  I'm happy with it.

 

A couple of months ago I discovered that I wasn't as low on my homemade walnut ink as I had thought, for I found some forgotten jars of it stashed beneath my dresser.  Last weekend I took them outside and re-strained them (they had become moldy) and added denatured alcohol as a preservative.  There was enough of it that I felt comfortable giving a couple of little jars to interested friends.

 

Garden:

 

Last night I picked four ears of yellow sweet corn from our garden.  I fear that will be all we're going to get.  Only one ear was well-developed, the other three being small and missing many kernels.  There are other ears growing, but they look puny and unhealthy.  I think that inconsistent watering has played a role, but that most of the blame falls on insects.  Japanese beetles and earwigs just love the corn, and eat the silk, which results in poor fertilization and therefore poor "ear-fill."

 

Fortunately, I hope, I also have another clump of corn growing quickly.  This is a different type, and it's planted in a better location.  Maybe the rainier weather will help this, too.

 

Anyway, the little corn we had last night tasted really good, even if it wasn't pretty.

 

The basil is growing very well, and I must make some pesto with it this weekend.  I picked a grocery bag full of it last week and have had it in the refrigerator since then.  I hope it's still usable, but it grows so fast that it probably doesn't matter if it's not.

 

The tomatoes are growing pretty well, but I've only had one large ripe one so far.  There are many green ones that are starting to turn.  There have also been a lot of red cherry tomatoes that have split in half from inconsistent watering (I try to hold off from watering as long as possible, so things get dry, then we get a huge rainfall, and the next day the tomatoes have ruptured.)

 

Coins:

 

I actually spent an hour or two a few nights ago working on my collection.  I have quite a few very low-end world coins I need to label and sort, and I really want to log them all into a spreadsheet.  That will make it easier to keep track of what countries from which I don't have examples.

 

I'm still undecided about what to do with the gift certificate Mom and Dad gave me.  Now I'm leaning back toward trying to acquire a Greek coin bearing a gorgoneion (gorgon's head).

 

 

Art fact

 

Here's another great fact you can bring up at parties:  For a hundred years or so, up until the early 20^th Century, many artists used a brown oil paint that was made from Egyptian mummies.  It was called mummy brown.

 

honk if you love rooks

 

Here is something I think about every time I blow my nose.  In chess, rooks are considered more valuable pieces than bishops. That's because rooks move orthogonally (up and down and back and forth across the board) and bishops move diagonally.  That means rooks can move to any square on the board, but a bishop can only move to the same color square that it starts out on; rooks have the potential to control twice as much of the board as bishops.

 

Kleenex is the bishop.  It's great for blowing noses, but you can't flush it.  Toilet paper is the rook.  You can both blow your nose with it and it's also flushable.  Dual purpose!  That means toilet paper is a more valuable commodity than Kleenex.

 

I think about that when I'm looking for something to blow my nose with.  I don't really think about other times.

 

Here's your fun fact for the day:  Up until close to the year 1600, the English language didn't have a distinct word for the color orange.

 

 

There is one corner of our office that is a Bob corner.  There are three offices located in that corner; two of the offices belong to Bobs. Within thirty feet of that corner are four cubicles that belong to Bobs. The percentage of the population named Bob for that small part of the office is about 42%.

 

 

Pen & Ink work in progress

Here is the drawing of Farmington I'm working on. When it's done, it will be 12 x 18 inches.

Hey, Dad and Brian, this guy beat us to it.

A metal detectorist found hoard of 52,000 ancient Roman coins:

 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100708/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_roman_coins

 

Finally, some numismatic news to report.

 

For my birthday, my parents have given me a gift certificate to VCoins.com.  Now comes the torture: I have to decide what to spend it on.  How do I make up my mind?  They is a great selection of ancient coins there, but I need to find a way to develop a focus.

 

I've decided I'd better read some history to find something I find particularly interesting.

 

My coins have been very neglected. I really want to go through an do some organizing and weeding, but haven't had the time.  Fortunately—at least, in that regard—I accrue coins so slowly that the disorganization in my collection is a problem that has been looming for years without becoming a crisis.

 

 

Book Report: Neverwhere

I finally read Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman. Aaron loaned it to me (about three years ago) thinking I enjoy it since I'd had enjoyed Gaiman's American Gods, and he was right. It comes across as a little bit of a cross between The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Alice in Wonderland; a young Scottish man moves to London for work, and ends up sucked into parallel supernatural London, existing in the forgotten crevices and tunnels beneath the city and on rooftops, inhabited by the overlooked and forgotten. It's a sort of spirit world of homelessness and mythology, capable of observing the "real" world while going unnoticed itself. It's a strange idea, but carried off pretty well.

It's less complex and sprawling than American Gods, with more modest aspirations, but it was fun and involving. It also really, really helped that Gaiman has easy-to-like writing style. I read through it very quickly; it was very well paced; it was frequently funny; and the two main villains were loads of grotesque fun.

It's too bad that the writers of the TV series "Lost" didn't take a few notes here. Both stories dealt with every-day people suddenly thrust into strange worlds governed by alien rules and customs. For reasons I'm still pondering, Gaiman's world seems to hold together better than that of "Lost."

Lockstitch

 I've had a few conversations lately about how sewing machines work.  Everyone I talked to was as mystified as I was. However, I just found this animation.  I hope it works here; I'm not sure I've ever tried posting a .gif file.

 

Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose

 

Laurie, the organizer of the Louisville Area Skeptics meetup group (http://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Area-Skeptics/), mentioned at last night's Science Café meeting that future presenters will include a retired couple from India who now spend most of their time in the United States.  For a few months each year, though, they travel through rural India with a mobile science lab, teaching kids about science.  Laurie mentioned that this is similar to what she does here in our community.  Sometimes she goes to a school that has a science lab, which the kids go to once or twice a week, and it's great.  Sometimes—all too often—there is no science lab at all.

 

This prompted a string of thoughts to run through my head: Is once a week for a science lab enough? That seems so slight.  But shouldn't every subject taught in a school be considered, in some way, a science?  Do I consider all such subjects a science?  Some obviously have more to do with science than others: Math and the other sciences are closely bound.  History involves lots of research, with ties to archaeology, geology, psychology, and medicine.

 

How do you apply science to literature and art, though?  I suppose I'm so used to the skeptical mindset now that it never seems natural to erect a wall between "the sciences" and "the humanities."  They are all wrapped up together.

 

At last night's Science Café meetup, Dr. Lee Alan Dugatkin gave a presentation based on his new book, _Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose_ (http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Jefferson-Giant-Moose-Natural/dp/0226169146).  I have not read the book—yet. I now intend to, because if it's even half as interesting and amusing as Dr. Dugatkin's presentation, it should be engrossing.

 

Dr. Dugatkin related how many of our nation's founding fathers became involved in a conflict that was only tangentially related to our war of independence from England.  Biology, literature, history, nationalism, economics, politics, and personal and professional pride were all wrapped up together as leaders in the fledgling United States sought to refute the theory of New World degeneracy: the notion that animal species in North America were smaller, feebler, slower, and less diverse than their Old World counterparts, due largely to the New World's allegedly colder, damper climate.

 

Thomas Jefferson, who proclaimed himself to be a scientist first and a politician second, became obsessed (according to Dugatkin) with refuting these claims, which became widely believed in Europe with the publication of the writings of esteemed French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon.  Jefferson and his colleagues read these theories with alarm, for the notion that the New World was land which was inhospitable to robust life (including humans and all their enterprises) was an assault not just on the truth and their own personal pride, but also on economic ventures and the integrity of their developing nation.  Jefferson undertook an effort to have a huge moose shot, preserved, and sent to France to illustrate the error of the theory.

 

It seemed obvious that Dr. Dugatkin really knew his material, and took delight in answering questions.  He was an engaging speaker on a very interesting topic, illustrated by great anecdotes (and when you mix cultural conflict, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, French naturalists, frontiersmen, giant moose, and Native Americans, you're bound to get some great anecdotes).  It was often quite funny. It even involved weasel penises.

 

Stephen Jay Gould wrote a series of essays for Natural History magazine in which he sought to illustrate the importance of the very human, error-prone personalities who have been involved in our scientific history.  In much the same way as I can't see any real line that keeps science out of art, there is often a false notion that science is an endeavor removed from other human passions.  That couldn't be less accurate; all human prides and prejudices are displayed in the history of science, and without their great motivations, the sciences themselves would be stunted and feeble.

 

New house portrait commission

I just finished this a few days ago.  I'll spare you the self-critism and just say I'm happy with it.
 

 

 

Why is it that if I nod off two or three times during a meeting, I lose track of time and find it nearly impossible to tell whether I've been in the meeting for twenty minutes or an hour; yet if I wake up in the middle of the night, I can usually guess what time it is and be off by less than fifteen minutes?

 

Car painting 100% finished

 I just realized I never put up a photo here of the car at 100% completion.  This picture came out a little too pale and blue, but it's close. I wonder if you can spot the differences between this and how it looked at 99.9% finished?

 

Category change: flower to weed

Last night I had to declare war on these cute little flowers in my garden.  I don't know where they came from; they might have been part of some "remainder" garden center plants that someone gave me a few years ago, but I don't think so.  They only grow to about 12 inches, and end with nickel-sized, lavender-tinted white flowers with yellow centers. They are pretty and sort of subtle.

 

However, the stems also bear needle-like thorns. I tolerated this when it was only growing in one small patch of the garden, because I didn't really have to do anything with it.  Now, though, there are seedlings popping up in the yard nearby, and the seedlings have thorns, too.  They would be quite painful to step on barefoot.

 

With grim resolve, I put on leather gloves, grabbed a spray bottle of Roundup, and attacked the plants.  I pulled up the ones I could find in the yard (there were fifteen or twenty), and sprayed carefully around the sweet corn, asters, bee balm, and mint to destroy what I could find in the garden.  Something tells me the fight's not over yet, though.

 

 

Well, it's been a week, so I guess I better post something before my commercial sponsors desert me.

 

Art:

 

   I am working on two pen & ink drawings.  One is a walnut ink commissioned drawing of a house, and the other is a black-and-white drawing of Farmington.  With the Farmington drawing, I'm working out the best way to capture the bricks.  Bricks always seem tricky.  Drawing each brick seems wayyyy to detailed, but how else do you make brick look like brick?  There are ways…  However, in this case, the question is needless.  I'm working rather large, and I want it to be very detailed, so yeah, I'm drawing each brick.  We'll see how that goes.

 

Garden:

 

  The corn is more than two feet tall and growing fast.  I also planted a little more in the spaces between the peas and the spinach and the onions, figuring that those vegetables were about to expire, and the corn will   grown in and take over the spots.  The corn has sprouted, the peas are bolting and wilting, and the spinach is about worn out, so the plan seems to be working so far.

 

  Helga gave us some bee balm, and I love it.  It is large and bright, and it's the prettiest thing in our garden right now.  I also ate some of the flowers, and they're interesting.  They taste a lot like oregano with a   little bit of a spicy kick to them.

 

Coins:

 

 Missing them.

 

Metal detecing:

 

  Missing it.

 

Books:

 

I   just finished a "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" novella called "The Snow Women."  This was the first time I've ever read anything by Fritz Lieber, at least that I can recall.  It was a decent story, and I might read some more of the stories sometime.

 

  A few nights ago we were at a book store, and I commented to Kim that there are so many books that I'd like to read that picking up one and reading it seems like a terrible waste.  How can I choose what to read next? Why bother?  It's like being hungry and only getting a French fry.

 

Movies:

 

  Haven't seen anything.

 

 

More paintings that didn't work out

 

 

Article about why so many coin designs are lousy

http://numismaticnews.net/article/Poor_quality_coin_designs_lamented/

 

 

I'm looking at you, Florida and Indiana state quarters.
 

 

Triptych painting - are its days numbered?

Here is one of the "corner paintings" that I don't know what to do with. It's on canvas, so I could take it apart and re-use the stretcher bars. However, I'm in no hurry, because I almost like this one.

I painted this in 2002 (I think); it's the view from the Falls of the Ohio State Park Interpretive Center's observation deck, looking towards the Falls, on a rainy, misty day when the river was high. It is, to date, one of the largest single painting projects I've ever undertaken. In fact, it might be the biggest.

It never really developed in a way in which I was really satisfied, but I like many of the elements. I like the colors, I like the idea, I like how the bridge looks. I was very conscious from the start that it was a very minimal composition, flat and very straight-forward. The simplicity was on thing that I found interesting and challenging about it: how could it be turned into an interesting painting?

Unfortunately, I don't think I pushed it quite far enough. It needs more engaging textures and a more carefully planned use of color to really succeed, I think. That's one of those things that I think I'm better at now than I was a few years ago.

I like the scale, and I like the subject, although I'm still not convinced that the composition could ever have completely worked, even if the above problems had been taken care of.

painting demolition

Kim and I have decided to clean out the corner of our living room that includes my not-quite-good-enough paintings. The old paintings in the corner must go.  I'll be looking for ways to break them down for scrap or otherwise salvage parts for other uses.

 

I know there are people who get a little worked up about me destroying the sub-par paintings, so I won't hurry through the process.  I'll photograph them, and anyone who is interested can make me an offer.

 

These are all works that I couldn't previously bring myself to get rid of, but didn't really have a place on any wall in my house, and weren't presentable as far as something to give or sell to others.  Some are works from college, and really aren't too bad; some are things that never really developed the way I wanted; and some are merely unfinished, and may still be completed by me in the near future.

 

I'll put pictures of them on my blog soon.

 

 

Illustration

I've had to take an online bloodborne pathogen course for work. This is a page from it that caught my attention.  I'm not so sure about that last sentence: Really, no one has ever gotten a disease from performing CPR?  That just strikes me as unlikely.  I can understand no confirmed cases of HIV or hepatitis B transmission, but c'mon.

 

Also, that is one funky cool illustration.  The sexy protruding yellow lips, the single breast, the funnel-shaped right arm, the hands of two different sizes...that's a woman I want to know.  I actually do like the drawing.  It's pretty wiggy, yet still perfectly and immediately conveys the artist's intent.