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Painting for Imbeciles...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 194
So, finally, confronting my anxiety and resolving to use up my art supplies.
Most of which, at the time of this writing, have pleasantly decayed into uselessness, repeated freeze-thawing of the watercolors, acrylics and oils has left very little that remains useful.
Whew.
Before beginning I consult with some of the innumerable YouTube videos on the particular topic I've chosen.
"Painting for Imbeciles". Results may vary.
I comb through them, there are many, many, many and I watch quite a few before settling on a couple I like.
This should be a cinch.
Of course, it isn't, and while the artist/narrator surely knows his stuff it's not coming through the screen to me.
They tell me that color and shape and tonality are important.
Like bloody hell they are.
I paint along. If he's painting a ballerina I end up with Bigfoot. If he's painting a still life I end up with a bullet-ridden corpse.
Maybe they were right?
Are these my eyes? What in the hell am I doing wrong? If I stand 10 feet back from the canvas, glasses off, it only vaguely resembles what I'm working towards.
Step any closer and it falls apart.
Rub it out, try again.
And again.
And again.
I'm realizing why I so long postponed this, what I can't figure out is how I have so many art supplies...
Conrad Moricand
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 179
And, reading at the moment Blaise Cendrars "Moravagine" I come across a reference to Conrad Moricand, the French Astrologer that stays with Henry Miller in Big Sur and is so aptly described in his story "A Devil in Paradise", a hilarious, albeit very unflattering portrait.
And so googling for more information I find nothing, only that he was a personage of some import, that he was known to Cendrars (who dedicated a book to him), to Miller, to pretty much everyone in Paris, but whose legacy seems to only be as a comical prop in literature.
Reminding me a bit of the Character of Gregory, someone I knew in London & Prague who achieved nothing, did nothing, yet somehow knew and was known to everyone.
A credit at the 2nd hand bookstore
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 170
(restless night, up, down, many dreams of which I only remembered the last)
That I was in the bookstore - warm, ambient light, exchanging a big bag of books, in which there's a 2 volume set of ...
The clerk (no clerk of the bookstore that I'm aware of) a large, good-natured woman gives me my total - some $670 - and I'm taken aback by the amount of the credit, and she offers to pay me cash and I say "no, no, I'll take the credit..." because I read, I'll read that this winter, and then I reconsider, the cash would be handy, I have bills, only now she's come to my desk (across the bookstore) and she's apologizing, that two volume set is actually a couple of guns in holsters, and she's not able to take them, setting them on my desk - and I'm surprised, sure enough, 2 guns in their holsters and so I take them out, quickly tuck them in a drawer, they're unregistered, I have no permits...
...and as she's standing there apologizing a bunch of police force their way into my area, they're looking over my desk, and I understand that she must have called the police when she realized her error, she's looking a little like she's betrayed me; the police, all in black leotards with white masks that resemble fencing masks, they look like the AI renderings of police in the style of Gorey I just did, and they're there, looking at my desk, and I know I'm in trouble and wondering how this happened...
Snow...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 201
And the snow, falling the first day of December and every day since.
It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...
The first day, postings on Facebook of a list of streets to avoid, one watched 3 accidents in 15 minutes, to embark down the hill, steep, 45 degrees, sheer ice, and uncontrolled slide into parked cars, this is the moment a lot of people realize they shouldn't have parked on the hill, they should have put on winter tires, and a hundred other such considerations as the slip-slide uncontrollably down the mountain...
By the second the idiots have largely been culled, now it's just the wintry days and perpetual snow, absolutely beautiful, this town could easily be the setting for a Hallmark Christmas Film.
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