Squirrel Moll

Work Haiku

committee triggers:
flourescent tubes and hair gel
sweet and glitt'ring pain

***

good info or not

all-day meetings slay the soul;

bring many markers

Poetry: Turgid

I just came across this again. It is, without a doubt, the best poem I have ever written.

~ Turgid ~

In the back lot of our love affair
Your slippery sweetness resonated like a gong.
There was a time you'd ask twice for a roll of toilet paper.
When will you ask me for rolls again?

Deep within the bowels of passion
Where heat rises with a moist scent, so thick you can see --
I made cinnamon rolls from a can, spread packets of icing.
When will you ask me for rolls again?

Just outside the kitchen of our relationship
A scratching sound claws at my eyes with scarlet streaks.
I tumbled down the hillside that summer day.
You'll never ask me for rolls again.

(Written for the Poetry Games: Awesome Crappy Poems Thread in the Piker Press Forums)

Red Hot Paintings that Sell!

Is this a book review? Is it a humor column? Is it an artsy "how to"? No. It's just one of my pre-migraine days where too many lights / sounds / scents are really agitating. And -- fabulous me! -- I'm bringing you along for the ride.

Since people, television and sunlight are all making me queasy, this sort of day is perfect for flipping through old stacks of art books for learning opportunities. Bookish, you say? Perhaps. Boring as dried toast? Maybe in general. But not today! Today's lesson is the love child of Paris Hilton and Gene Simmons, and Emeril Lagasse is its au pair. Today we let Mike Svob and his (hilariously titled) book "Paint Red Hot Landscapes That Sell!" show us why we aren't rich, famous, and up to our unmentionables in meaningless one night stands!

Practice along with us, with an exercise taken from Mike's book!

1. Select a study photo. A different art book I read recently said "don't pick a crappy pix, dumb@ss, u suck too much as it is". So of course I rushed right out and picked a reference that, as a sample of photography, is just okay. This wasn't meant to be an amazing photograph. It was meant to clearly reproduce an amazing work of art without getting in the way. But I simply love the leopard, with his angry, googly eyes. I went with this as a reference photo anyway. Screw it.
   

   Bronze leopards inalid with gold, unearthed from the tomb of Liu Sheng. Photo
   from "The Chinese Exhibition: A pictoral record of the Exhibition of
   Archaeological Finds of the The People's Republic of China" publication put out
   by the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum of Kansas City, Missouri in 1975.




2. Step 2 is to make an outline drawing. Never mind the humble start, I am on my way to being the next Thomas Kincaide! (But redder hotter.)




3. Start with the darks. Let me point out here that I don't actually like Mike's art. His color schemes and compositions unsettle me and his topics make me vaguely cranky. Even if I have a mild dislike of his art, though, I love his approach to painting.
   
   His work has a coked-out, arrogant rock star feel to it. "Ignore the color and small tonal value changes," Mike says. The ignorant, mouth-breathing, "I like this because it matches my couch" masses aren't capable of understanding nuance anyway. Just slap your darks on! Because (with the help of this book) you are Red Hot. Look at my practice image! Darks! I am red hot!




4. The glaze and the middle value. Mike's example was screeching magenta, but he's doing landscapes. (SEXY landscapes.) Landscapes are green. They favor a contrasting red color. I'm doing a ... well, a black and white leopard. Leopards are orange, right? Picture a color wheel in your mind. Perhaps tatooed on a bronzed Calvin Klein model. Look across the color wheel -- somewhere past the external obliques, perhaps simmering on the transversus abdominis -- to see what the complement to orange is. We go with blue!
   
   
   Hm. It occurs to me that a leopard is not a landscape. Will this affect the outcome?




5. Re-establish the lights with opaque paint. Mike is painting with, uh... gessos and acrylics? Some sort of real, red hot, artist implements! I bet Mike rocks a sexy artist smock, too, which he removes only to service groupies. I don't have groupies. Or acrylics. I'm using GIMP and I had to rearrange my layers to make this work:
   
   • Bottom - line art.
     
   • Next up, glaze layer of solid color. (Set it to "multiply", kids at home, so it doesn't hide your line art.)
     
   • Up top, the layer with the darks.
   
   I was going to put my lights on a layer just below the darks, but I got a little flustered from the sex appeal of Mike's red hot example and slobbered my lights all over my glaze layer. It's like screwing up a real canvas, only less expensive!
   
   
   Also I forgot to save step four, so you've only got one picture for steps 4 and 5. I know. You're devastated. The mystery! What DID it look like when I added the blue but hadn't yet added the white? You will never know, couch-matchers.




6. Re-establish the lights with... WAIT. Steps 4 and 5 were the same in Mike's book, too. What the hell. This doesn't go with my couch at all.




7. "Now introduce different color temperatures." He had all hots (RED hots!) and I've got all cools, so I guess I need to sex up my image with some oranges and reds and stuff. I have named this layer "panty dropping warm tones". I believe any commercially successful artist will understand.




8. "Finish up by painting in all the shapes that remain." What the...? Isn't that a little like handing someone a block of wood and telling them to carve away anything that doesn't look like an elephant? I guess if I could learn to do this, I could learn to paint red hot landscapes. That sell.
   
   I'm not real wild about the end result. Mine is actually not so very different than Mike's. They both look a little bit like a kindergartener ate a few brightly colored crayons, then threw up in the playground after the wax clashed with the cafeteria food. Maybe an artistic kindergartener. But Mike's practice piece for this session is much rougher than his normal works, too. The whole point is this is practice.
   
   This was actually a really fun way to play with shapes and lights and darks, with some sexxxay color thrown in. I learned a lot and enjoyed the crap out of myself. And if this wouldn't look good in your living room, it's because you needed new furniture anyway. Because, thanks to Mike Svob, I am red hot, baby.

Swirlies: Grandmother Bulldog

You can see where my paper was slanted. >:

This is Grandma Bulldog. Her eyes glow red in the dark, and that thing around her waist is her very pluffy tail. She likes to wear it as a skirt.

Grandmother Bulldog was the third recurring character in the swirly mythos. Sometimes Grandma Bulldog lives with Swirly, but she does have her own home next to Aunt Pachi. Grandma Bulldog is very busy - she's a priestess at St. Utika's, the Swirly Catholic Church over in swirly world. I'm guessing that Swirly Catholic just a different rite, like the Eastern Catholic churches, but still in union with Rome. Who simply might not be aware that some of the Swirly Catholic clergy are female. There should be some interesting discussions when the Vatican learns that Fr. Bulldog is more properly Mother Bulldog.

Fanservice: Hazzanghoul's Evil Hair Machinations

Lillian loves my stupid webcomic, God help her, and I have no idea what all was going on in her head, but she was sitting on the couch in my art studio drawing a Hazz 'n' Ash comic and shouted Ashlinne's dialogue as pictured at left.

I think the key point here is that my comic is better in her head than the way I write it.

Day Planner

So my best buddy Josh's secret identity is the Day Walker. Now I find out my 6-yr-old is actually the Day Planner.

As we got out of the car this morning, she pulled me aside to show me our scheduled activities for the week. Sunday ("S" at left) will be Cake Day. Monday (down at the 6 o'clock position) will be Dog Walking Day. Shoot up to the noon position and you will see that Tuesday is Broccoli Day, (broccoli symbolizing virtue, filial duty and health). Wednesday (3 o'clock) is Cookie Day.

Do you know what this means?

I have succeeded in making my daughter even more anal retentive than I am. Anal retention -- with illustrations. She is going to rule the world. <3

Now, if you will excuse me, I have some baking to do. It's Cake Day! ^^

Games Parrots Play

"Didn't Alex let John get a parrot?" some of you are thinking. "How is that going for her, I wonder?"

Let me introduce you to what it is like to own a parrot by sharing with you some of her favorite games.

• Cage Cleaning When She Who Plays in Poop (that would be me) slides the floor of the cage out and begins using your arch enemy (The Pooper Scooper) to sift your litter, leap down into the fray. Save She Who Plays in Poop from the dread Pooper Scooper by latching onto it with both feet and biting anything in your way. If She Who Plays in Poop is ungrateful, lull her into a false sense of security by mimicking her actions. Pick up old food, large splinters of wood, and anything else on the bottom of the cage (let's not be coy - go for the poop) and fling it about, just like She Who Plays in Poop is doing.



• Cage Cleaning Part 2. If picking a fight with the Pooper Scooper gets boring a) get your feathered head checked, birdbrain, then b) hop on She Who Plays in Poop's scoopin' arm for a ride that's better than anything they got at Disneyland. If the motion of the scooping gets too vigorous (or if She Who Scoops is getting too much poop actually cleaned up and put in that stupid plastic bag), steady yourself by digging your claws in and holding on tight with your beak.



• Fashion Ninja. Sneak down from playground on top of cage silently, ninja style. Creep along the ground until you find where She Who Plays in Poop has carelessly left her jeans in a heap on the floor. Find the button and bite it off! When she screeches, laugh like an evil mastermind.



• Computer Hacker. If She Who Scoops Poop looks like she's going to chase you back onto your lair atop your cage, make a break for the bed and go straight for her laptop. Distract her by making a spang for the power cords. When she dives to protect those, snag the trackball from her mouse and climb the mirror on the wall as high as you can go.



• Ass Assassin. When you know you have overstayed your welcome and you are about to be locked away in the cage again, spit out the trackball so that it falls between the bed and the wall. While She Who Plays in Poop is digging for it, hop down onto the bed. Look cute and innocent. As soon as they take their eyes off you, punish Lovely Hairy Man (that would be John, of course) for not making googoo noises at you; dart across the bed and bite his lovely hairy bottom. When he demands She Who Plays in Poop catch you, act lethally cute. Purr. Coo. Ruffle your feathers and roll over onto your back, crooning. The minute they stop snuggling you, dart for Lovely Hairy Man's butt again. It's fun when he screams.

Steve Irwin, pray for us. >:

Swirlies

For years now, we have been hearing of Lillian's imaginary friend, Swirly, who can do anything. And Swirly's mom, an afflicted being who can do anything you can do, but better. Swirly's mom also suffers painfully from all sorts of ailments, from which she has died many, many times.

If you share about your day, Lillian will tell you about Swirly's mom's day. Which is guaranteed to be just like yours, except one notch worse. Or one notch better. Or one more anything. It's annoying and flattering. (But not as annoying or flattering as Swirly's mom.)

When Lillian went off to kindergarten, Swirly went off to preschool. I guess Swirly was a big hit with Lillian's friends, because the kid across the street ALSO has an imaginary Pokemon, ALSO named Swirly. (FYI, Swirly predates Lillian ever having watched Pokemon, but as soon as Lillian saw Pokemon, she announced, "Oh. That's what Swirly is.")

As Lillian has grown older, her extended family of swirlies has grown in size. This morning I sat down and had Lillian describe the whole family for me. This is Swirly, and her mom. They have vines growing around their heads. (I never realized.) They also breathe fire, walk on lava, and can eat poison. (This, I knew.) Sometimes Swirly is 6, sometimes she is 16, sometimes she is a grown-up, so if you see another picture of Swirly and it looks different, do not be surprised.

You should also know that Swirly is a business proprietor. She owns a manufacturing plant in Africa where she produces carrot-and-broccoli-pies. That part of the swirlies story never changes. I crap you not.