Category: Art

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A While Ago…

Via Sickoricko, I saw this…

And it immediately reminded me of a painting I'd done back in…1986 (?)…of something that came to me in a meditation:

Not exactly the same thing, but similar enough that it reminded me of the vehicle in my painting.

I was standing on the deck of an ancient Egyptian sailing vessel—in the middle of the Mediterranean, mind you—when this flying craft appeared on the horizon and flew directly toward the boat, only a hundred or so feet above my head. It was so close I could see the pilot waving to me.

I have absolutely no idea what ever happened to this painting…or at this point most of my pre-portraiture work.

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Patron Of The Arts

I stumbled across this artist's work on Instagram (edited, obviously). Asked for the unedited versions and learned that whoever is posting them is not actually the original artist. As for tracking down the artist himself, I came up empty because it seems all his web presence is hopelessly out of date, although he does have an active Twitter account. Sadly it doesn't seem like he's done much new work lately. Maybe the Muses have taken a vacation. I know from personal experience they are wont to do that.

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This is One of the Reasons I Stopped Painting

I mean, other than the obvious reason I give people; that the Muses have permanently left the building.

Digital art is something that's fascinated me since its infancy. I suppose I should have tried to get into it back in the day,  but I never seemed to have the necessary computing hardware or the funds available to purchase a digitizing tablet which was a requirement to do anything serious. (I mean, have you ever tried drawing with a mouse?)  Now that I do have the means to get what I need, I'm so hopelessly out of touch with the medium that I get flummoxed by simply opening Adobe Illustrator. I have a very basic knowledge of Photoshop – mostly photo retouching and creating simple, text-based images, but nowhere near the level of expertise used to create the images above.

Also, my particular painting style is now a filter available through any number of graphics programs, so…why bother?

A new initiative at work—being pushed by the new boss—is professional development. Before COVID hit and the world shut down, I was scheduled to take some beginner Illustrator classes, but that fell by the wayside. Now, apprently it's not considered "essential to my job," so it's not happening.

So if push comes to shove and there's no way of avoiding training, I'm going to opt for some additional Microsoft fucking Sharepoint crap since our entire web presence is based on it and my immediate supervisor—who has a hard-on for the platform—insists on assigning me tickets related to it because I "need to get up to speed."

Yeah, whatever.

Speaking of that, as of our last team meeting in regards to this initiative, I'm supposed to be focusing on my personal "career trajectory." Honey, my career trajectory consists of getting the fuck out of there and retiring in something like 945 work days.

Yes, I'm counting.

Sorry, I didn't mean for this to turn into a work rant.

(BTW, the artwork above is by Tim Razumovsky.)