Oh my! New work, nice. Brand new year with returning clientele is a terrific thing to have. I for one embrace it! Plus with my wife & kids gone to Guiding Camp all weekend I don’t feel bad about logging double digit hours on the old laptop in between dog walks, and cold/flu medication top ups. At this pace I’m not exactly grinding, more of a slow mortar and pestle — Ha! If I didn’t do it now I’d just have to be thrice as active come Monday morning and who needs that kind of pressure, and grief in their lives. This portion I’m working on isn’t as detail driven, so my cold medicated mind can follow what I’m doing without causing myself major issues down the road. And that’s working, smart & hard. Keep the ball rolling while I eventually recuperate.
Plus it’s bitterly cold outside, and I’m not much for the cold, even with long johns, and snow pants this sort of chill will take the breath right out of your lungs, and seal your nostrils shut. It’ll attach itself to your eye lids, lips, tongue, and skin, and not want to let go. Dangerously low temps this weekend is what I’m getting at.
Likely no climbing this weekend either, so I had best use my hours today, and tomorrow morning to great effect, so I can at least get this section completed before I turn my eyes towards the data driven portion on Monday morning. At least I know what I’m doing this week coming.
Oh, thank you to everybody overseas who are downloading my books in the new year. I hope you enjoy them, or parts of them anyway. Ciao Bella!
What a weird week it has been with the flu/cold/cough thing going on. I missed a couple of days being in this weird, sickly sleep state. I’m not exactly on the mend as of yet, but I don’t consistently feel as bad as I did on Tuesday, and Wednesday. That’s something positive. I’ll take it.
The weather today is to take a frightening dip. Northern Ontario could see Polar Vortex lows of up to -58 °C. Which is insane, those are proper acrylic temps right there. Gas lines freeze when it gets that cold. I don’t much care for the mid minus twenties, let alone going that much further down. Yikes!
My eldest daughter’s choir was scheduled to sing the national anthem at the Ojhl hockey game last night. I initially got the arena wrong, so we needed to drive elsewhere to go to the correct spot. We were still a full hour early for the game. We watched the first period only, our town was up 5 – 0, by the end of the first period, so we went home. They did not provide a microphone for the choir, and less than half of them showed up to perform. My daughter’s new core friend group was there, so she had a blast. A few of my friends were there with kids to support the school food drive initiative. Had a good chat. Tried to keep my distance though — illness and all that.
The family is gearing up for a bitterly cold weekend at Girl Guides Camp. Just the dog and I at home while I recuperate from this random flu/cold situation. I envision dog walks, sleeping in, movie marathons, and eating a whole bunch of pizza. I don’t need much to keep me satisfied.
Had some new work in early this morning too, so that’s pretty great too. Ciao Bella!
No longer does my head feel like it will explode with a blinding headache, and the chills/fever are subsiding, however, now we welcome a runny nose, and a chest cough into the mix. I can at least eat a bit, and walk around without immediately wanting to lie down for a couple of hours. I took a good dose of NyQuill last night, so you know that I slept. I just had weird reoccurring dreams the whole time. Which is another good sign to show that I am in fact unwell. Glory days.
Luckily it has been a very quiet work week so my illness has not impacted anyone but myself, and my immediate family. Nice.
However, it is now in fact Thursday and the weekend rapidly approaches. I do not feel confident that I can host people here for a movie night, not attend any familial gatherings outside of the house. I just tried a brunch with my wife, and we maybe should have waited for Monday. What’s done, is done.
May you all feel better than I for the remainder of this horrible Canadian winter. Ciao Bella!
An unceasing head ache, dizziness, chills, and an off and on fever. I had both my flu shot, and a Covid shot in mid December, but boy oh boy do I feel rotten right now. All I want to do is lie down and sleep this away. Fun times.
Now sick to my stomach, with rotten guts to boot. Not impressed. I was supposed to have the weekend to myself to watch movies, and walk the dog. Now I feel ill and want nothing more than to sleep the day(s) away. My hips and ankles hurt too. So does my rib cage. I can’t seem to get warm, and my temperature is only slightly elevated. Let us hope this course corrects quickly. This sucks.
Thursday was a snow day here, because we were gifted about fourteen inches of snow over the course of twenty four hours. Then Friday was a pre planned PA Day for teachers to work on their report cards, and that rolled us nice a smoothly into the regularly scheduled weekend. All that to say that right am this morning was full of tears, tantrums, wobbly children shrieking about hating school, and not wanting to go. My spouse was car pooling today and was able to leave prior to the big theatrical elements of this morning’s meltdown. While it was fun to be off for so long, the pay off at the end is always going to be a resistance to going back to school. Those crocodile tears get real big & juicy around here. The level of shrillness goes way, way up too. We meted out a few extra hugs, a couple of pauses, some delays on the walk to the doors, but eventually they all went in, and I got the dog to the farm for his walk with Gracie-Mae. The world is right — again.
I’ve got loads of laundry to do. A kitchen to clean. Floors to vacuum. Maybe even some mopping to do. A general tidy up would not go amiss. We went to the cottage for the weekend. So that involved a lot of driving, but it also means piles of stuff that came home, and has not been properly put away by my kids, and spouse. I come home, I unpack immediately, then carry on. Not these three. They come in, dump piles of stuff every where, go relax, and just leave stuff for days, weeks, or months; left in bags, suitcases, and piles untouched. Gets under my skin like you wouldn’t believe. But then again 8 have full access to my clothes, and things because I sorted them out upon arrival..if I have forgotten anything I know immediately. It could be weeks before they realize they’ve left an item at the cottage, which they now desperately desire to have. Oh well. Act fast and you can catch extended family before they leave to fetch it home for you. Wait a month to look, and that possibility is gone, gone, gone.
I have some errands to run outside of the house tomorrow. I’m just returning some sharps to the pharmacy, and picking up a prescription. Nothing too fancy. Maybe I’ll get some gas so that we can go climbing without fear of running out of gas! Who knows, the day is wide open until I learn otherwise.
Today is Domestic Duties Monday, so I have things to do around here. I’d like to clean the toilets and sinks too. Lots of household chores for me to pick away at if I’m feeling frisky. Although I generally prefer to do the really persnickety stuff when the weather is better. I like to sit in the sun when I take a break from cleaning, not stare out the window at falling snow, icicles and dirty snowbanks.
I’m going to clean until school ends, or I get a phone call to pick up my youngest who is having a tough morning going back to school after too much time off. Wish us all luck.
Sore hands, back, shoulders, and arms are my reward to taking all the weight off of the back deck. It’s got to come down at some point, just not now while there is both a functioning hot tub, and a full 100 lbs propane tank underneath it. Not a good look to drop several thousand pounds of wood, steel, and ice onto an explosive fuel source for the BBQ. I’d rather not die in a fire ball of gas rapidly expanding.
I didn’t sleep all that well either due to the muscle aches. That and my dog trying to box me out of my own bed. He wiggles and writhes his way across the bed to be touching me, and before you know it he is full court pressing against me. Makes me too hot, and makes it difficult to readjust my legs, and sleeping position. Means ultimately that he gets kicked during the night when he gets too close. So I swapped sides of the bed at some random point last night and confused him. He moved back to where he should have been trying to re establish contact, and I moved back to my original spot once he did that. I slept much better afterwards.
So the Buffalo Bills lost a squeaker of a game in OT, but a lone field goal. Too bad. Seahawks had a massive blow out game versus the 49’ers. 41 to 6. Yikes, what a way to go out.
I need to blast my back and shoulders with heated bubbles in the hot tub. I forget where my Voltaren is, so warm water therapy it will be then! Happy lazy Sunday morning to you.
Had a real nasty drive yesterday evening, and would you look at that, it’s still snowing! Blowing snow, high winds, reduced visibility, slow moving traffic, and borderline motion sickness from the moving snow flakes in my head lights. Thanks! I hate it.
I still feel a little on edge from the drive, and I warned everybody it was coming, nobody listened. Terrible time of year to need to go out and about. Unless you absolutely have to drive — don’t bother. White knuckle drives are unpleasant at best, and catastrophic at worst.
No climbing today, which sort of sucks. The kids shoes are only going to fit for so long! I don’t have much of anything planned for today. A lazy Saturday lay ahead. The only plus was that we didn’t get a second foot of snow with last night’s storm. I think it was only an additional five to ten centimeters. The roads weren’t too bad when they were visible.
To have two in a month is crazy in my opinion. Plus next month we have the Family Day holiday, and probably another PA Day to boot! I need to double check that last but, but my general exasperation still stands. I don’t remember having this many days off each school year in my youth, but then I don’t remember much about my day to day life as a child either. But that’s a whole different discussion. Right now, my focus is the first Friday PA Day of 2026. The next one comes on the last Friday of the month, just in time for a righteous Groundhogs day viewing! Same day — again!?! Waaaah…
Seriously though, the kids kind of slept in a little bit, but not enough to be of any use to me. Luckily there isn’t any new snow accumulation to deal with first thing this morning. But I do still need to brush off the car, and defrost all the windows, because… Personal readiness is something to consider these days. There’s a thought for you huh? Will WWIII kick off shortly with an attempted land grab of Greenland? Who knows. Could be a dry run to annex us here in Canada. What then? Crazy times we are living in. Best get to things while you still can.
We had over a foot of snow yesterday, and today my back and arms are singing the blues. I’m fortunate that my neighbour Steve, from across the way has a snowblower, and he was kind enough to help me dig out the end of my driveway, as the plows had been by twice, and it was up over my knees with hard packed ice crystals and snow. I could have done it all myself, but I sure was glad he did the last third for me. Stand up guy that Steve. Beauty!
So we’re here on Friday. The world hasn’t ended yet. Still have lunches to make, snow to clear, garbage cans to empty, butts to wipe, dogs to walk, food to prepare. On and on. I’m too old for the draft, and would not pass the medical due to Crohn’s, and hearing loss, but you bet your ass I’d carry ammunition for guns, put out fires, and haul heavy shit to the best of my ability, to contribute. I don’t know jack about fighting, but I can do tasks so that other more important people can focus on what’s imperative. Thankfully we have our affairs in order, so that’s good to know. A load off my mind.
Leafs lost 6-5 to Vegas last night. Not a stellar performance after the Utah, and Denver losses that preceded it. Cool, cool, cool…
Hope your Friday isn’t filled with existential dread. Take care out there.
The point of this, and hopefully future paintings is not to be good, but to help me regain my “hand feel” for the brushes, and the movement of the pain on canvas. I haven’t painted for pleasure all that much since I finished art school (the first one). I have gone through two art programs, one introductory to Fine Arts, and the other for Graphic Design. I’m not naturally talented, nor do I have connections in the art/gallery world, so being a self proclaimed fine artist fell flat before I had even finished my year’s long course. But I’m good enough that it gave me a leg up against non artists in graphic design, so I’ve worked almost exclusively with a mouse since 2006. I did a handful of paintings for my kids, one or two each over the last eleven years, so I’m fairly rusty. I did two or three for the fair over the years, but also not very good. I’ve lost the touch!
So going back to it I have been very explicit with myself about the fact that I am not aiming for good art, just finished art work. Working the brush edges, relearning how to layer glazes, trying to stipple, and sweep, and swirl, and curl complex shapes. Trying to get consistent with line weights, and control over the paint itself. All of it takes time. And the results are in the time spent, not the final product that looks like ass. If after the year is out, I find I like stuff more and more, then that will likely keep me coming back, but for now, it’s about doing the paintings, not looking for admiration, or applause for the images I produce.
Nobody claps for the pages upon pages of cross hatching practice we did in class, and for homework, but the skills you developed from that made your class work better. You could tell who was building muscle memory for repeatability, and who was just getting lucky here and there. How many isometric cubes did we doodle back in school, hundred? Thousands? It felt like busy work, but being able to draw straight lines unaided is super difficult. Takes years of drills, and practice. Nobody cares for that, just the clean crisp line work on a mock-up of a product.
You can certainly enjoy the admiration that good art receives, but if you hate to practice proportions, perspective, shading, line work, weighting, balance, colour theory, and how to handle your brushes, and pencils then you don’t live being an artist, you like being liked. Which is cool. You do you. But do much of what goes into it is unseen, and not glamourous at all. Sitting on a horse, or standing at an easel keeping the muscle memory alive.
I look to Alex Maleev, and Alex Ross for inspiration, not to compare myself against. Take hints, and tips from their body of work, not cry because I can’t replicate it with any fidelity. That’s nuts. I’m pulled in many different directions, and don’t want to try to become them. I’m trying to find me. What’s my voice. What’s my style. Where do I feel comfortable. Where do I excel. Where do I feel free to expand, and explore artistically. Trying to home in on that has proven very challenging.
I look at old work, where I can tell I was having fun, and going for broke. I want to get back to small brushes, small canvas, and weird characters. I have tried for years to capture realism, and failed miserably. It’s not in the books for me. I want pop colour, pop art nonsense. Robots, killer samurai teddy bear assassin’s, blood splatter, and organic shapes. I don’t do hard edge, hard sci-fi. Not with paint anyway.
Even when I sculpt I avoid cars, guns, machinery and the like. I like fat doughy bad guys, that are muscly but indulge in eating too much. Former champs that are no longer symmetrical hulks, but chunky monkeys. I like the stretch, and lay of fats, and tissue. I like lanky haired, massive beasts. Ropey arteries and veins on necks, and biceps. Those things tell stories, and are things I can adequately capture in clay. Play to your strengths.
So while my paintings aren’t classically good, by any stretch of the imagination, I’m happy about it (them) because I’m doing the thing. I’m building that muscle memory back up. I’m allowing for that outlet to happen. It gets too easy to not work because you become unhappy with the final outcome. Let it go. If you find peace, or happiness in the doing, then don’t linger on the ending. It’s just a picture. You can paint over it in white and go again. That’s the glory of a canvas. Go again.
We’ve had about ten inches of snow here since last night. Everything is cancelled. All the things closed. Dog walk at the farm postponed. I spent an hour or two shoveling in the minus twenty six windchill, and I no longer feel like doing much of anything. It is however still snowing, I see another round or two in my immediate future. Fun times!
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 
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