Naughty, Naughty Nature

I am sooooooo immature. Let me prove it to you.


Saw a picture of the Great Blue Hole in Belize and my mind, for no reason other than I am a child inside, thought "Oh look, goat.se Caribbean style!"

Yes, I saw this picture of Mother Nature's wonder and grandeur and immediately thought of a bunghole. And then, not 15 minutes later, I saw The Door to Hell in Turkmenistan and theorized that the Great Blue Hole ate some wicked vindaloo chicken. In case you don't know what the Door to Hell is, there was an oil field and it collapsed. The engineers didn't want noxious fumes to fill caverns and maybe nearby villages so they decided to burn the natural gas. The figured it would burn out in a few weeks:

It's been more than forty years.


That's not even the half of it. A few years ago I planted Jungle Gold African Impatiens in my shade garden out back. I did this for one reason and one reason only. the little flowers looked like twats.

They looked even more twat-like in real life.

You know, maybe it isn't me. Maybe it's nature. She's the one who keeps sexing up everything. Seriously, look at this tree.

That cannot be by accident. Still not convinced?

I mean, COME ON!


Oh and Mama Nature's got everybody's genitalia on display.

It can't be just me.

Because, I swear to God, this is real life passion-fruit. Not kidding or photoshopped or nothing. A true fruit growing from a tree.

There. Now you are immature too.

How Can I Paint When The World's Gonna End?

There is a piece-- a project, really-- that I've been working on for two weeks now. And by "working on" I mean not doing diddly squat. Most of the tedious, not fun part is done I just haven't put brush to canvas and I don't know why. At night I lie awake thinking and plotting how I'm going to attack the painting. I do this because I don't sleep. And then my mind just takes a weird turn and I start thinking about the star Betelgeuse-- or, as I'm going to call if from now on, Beetlejuice.

This is the size of Beetlejuice compared to our solar system, so good thing it's 640 light-years away. It is about to go supernova. Aaany minute now. Or perhaps as soon as 10,000 years or maybe even it already has. We don't really know considering all news from Beetlejuice is 640 years old. Scientist now say that when it goes supernova it probably won't produce a gamma ray burst. Probably. Let's be clear. If it did produce a gamma ray burst it would kill us all. It most likely won't, assure the astrophysicists. Most likely.

Which means to me that it is not outside the realm of possibility. So it is possible Beetlejuice already went supernova and did produce a gamma ray burst and we've all been dead for 640 years, we just don't know it.



This is more worrying to me then the Yellowstone Super Volcano. It's gonna blow one of these centuries. It's kinda overdue but we can watch it and perhaps prepare as a global community. Oh sure, us United Statsians are clearly fucked and will have to depend on the kindness of our allies. But we've been spreading around nothing but goodwill lately, so I'm sure those of us who survive will be fine. BTW, here's an artist's rendition of the Yellowstone Super Volcano:

Isn't that super volcano beautiful? And while I'm sure that is a digital painting, I'd love to be able to produce something like this on canvas. If only I weren't worrying so much about the world ending. . .


Why yes, I do have an Etsy: Fallen Face Studio

There is Fan Art for Every Corner of Fandom

Do  you know what there is a lot of fan art of? I mean besides the types of Stars both Trek and Wars? Breaking Bad. There are mountains of Breaking Bad fan art. Mostly of Heisenburg's head. Here however, is Isabella Morawetz's not-White's-head fan painting.

I'm going to be honest. I have never watched Breaking Bad, not even one minute of the introduction so I have no idea what this is a painting of and how it fits into the Breaking Bad world. I just really liked it.


Just because your favorite show hasn't been on TV for three decades doesn't mean you can't paint steampunk fan art of it.

I searched and searched for an artist name for this piece, but not only could I not find a name, I couldn't find the painting again either. If any of the five of you who read this know who the artist is, leave it in the comments.


And I also have a few fan art paintings of very obvious fan art subjects. The aforementioned Star franchises, Dr. Who, Minecraft and others. Here are some Futurama minis I done did.

But does fan art have to be a movie or TV show? What if you really like former president Richard Nixon and you paint about that? Does that count?

It could be that the artist, Wayne White, isn't really a fan of Nixon. He really enjoys putting words into his paintings. Other words include "BIGUNS" and "Artificial Cherry Flavoring". Now that I come to think of it, perhaps he does like those things.

And finally there is this guy who loves Taco Bell. Specifically, he loves Taco Bell's salsa/sauce (why do I think it's a guy? Dunno. Seems guyish).

I traced this back to an anonymous Reddit user. I think this guy should step up and take credit for this fanfreakingtastic work of Taco Bell art.


Why yes, I do have an Etsy: Fallen Face Studio

Music To Paint Mirror Balls By

This all started when I woke up with these sentences running through my mind: Idle hands are the playground of the Devil. Do you wanna get funky with me? Do you wanna?

Obviously my brain had been taken over in a Disco invasion and I had to paint about it. However, having played Peter Brown's Get Funky With Me about twenty times since then, I've grown tired of it. How about instead of getting funky with Peter, we calm the fuck down and just dance with him?



Well hey, this song reminds me of when I was under-aged and getting into discos in NYC left and right. Seriously-- high schooling 5 days a week and disco-ing 3 days a week and working-- WORKING!!!! at a supermarket-- waaaaaay before I turned 18 much less 21. Reminds me of something. . .

It's Thursday and we don't want to do anything too strenuous, there is school the next day after all. A sit down with a pitcher at The Back Fence while listening to some live guitar music is a fine way to start the weekend. Yeah, when I was 16 the weekend started on Thursday.



The lighting at The Back Fence is so reminiscent of something. . ..

Back in school on Friday no worse for wear because we are immortal. We sang this song at 78 rpms instead of 45 thereby rendering Thelma totally squirrelish.

"That's no moon!"

After school we end up here. Where's here? Why our favorite dance club where everybody knows our names, the beats are familiar and we all can meet at the bathroom to discuss the pickings out on the floor.

This is beginning to be a thing.

Surely this song was an oldie by the time we did The Freak out on the floor but I still remember hearing porn star Andrea True backing up our dance moves with her vocals.

Is it a disco ball or a mirror ball?

Isn't it nice that we made it home in time to get ready to go out? Saturday was the real party night. What is waiting for us out there, girls?



 

So dark and yet so light.

Are we fakers or are we here to snap our fingers until we put holes in our thumbs?!!

THAT'S RIGHT!

And so the sun comes up and it is now Sunday, the day when we slowly walk the walk of shame in the glaring early morning light with our high heels swinging from our fingers because our feet can't take it anymore.



And we take one final shot at our disco ball, sleep and store up energy for the next weekend ready to store up memories to post about years later.

I Regret Being Cheap and Caution

Cinnamon Cooney, of the fantastic lip tutorial, recently put up a how to on painting an old copper background which I loved. Here, you'll love it too.



I decided to experiment with it and since I wasn't sure how my experiment was going to work out, I used my very cheap school grade paint and acrylic paper.

 Step One: Putting on burnt umber and phthalo blue with a big brush.

The elementary school burnt umber wasn't bad but the phthalo blue was just. . . wrong. And opaque. Who ever heard of opaque phthalo anything? Who ever heard of the word 'phthalo' to begin with? The people who do not want to say 'phthalocyanine', that's who.

Step Two: Draw outline of pitcher with charcoal pencil and paint around it.

I'd like to point out how well the drawing turned out considering I can't draw for shit as you can see by how many times I had to draw the belly of the pitcher before I got it right. Seriously, like three or four tries just to get an outline of a pitcher! Why am I here? Why do I even pretend I can art when I can't draw a simple pitcher?

Step Three: Get over myself and add layers.

With a sea sponge I layered on not cheap phthalo green and yellow oxide. Only because there was no phthalo green with the grade school paint and the two yellows were like lemon and sunshine yellows. You know, for painting rainbow unicorns.

 Step Four: Use more yellow oxide and gold to layer on more, especially in the highlighted parts, then make a thin wash of white to highlight some more.

 The End.

Note also how funky the lighting is in my painting room. I face a north-facing window where I can look into my neighbor's hallway window if they ever do anything exciting. Which they don't. I got a pretty harsh 100 watt overhead LED bulb which is a giant improvement over the dim, dumb 40 watt fluorescent that was there until a few days ago. And last, but not least, a goose-necked light clamped to the table that I use to shine on stuff I can't see because I'm blind.

The upper left hand corner of this painting did not change from one photo to the next. Yet the time of day, the source(s) of light-- even the angle of the camera changed the colors a lot. I'd like to take it outside to photograph it in natural light but there is a snowpocolyps abrewing and I'm not going out there.

No matter which light it is in, I like the way it turned out but since I painted it on paper instead of canvas I cannot hang it in my home, I can only tape it to my craft room wall like a lovesick teenager.

Our Wide Eyed Little Primate Cousins

I am in the middle of painting a tarsier. I am painting a tasier because I love painting eyes and I hate painting fur. I figure if I paint a tarsier I get to practice the hated fur and reward myself with eyes. In case you have no idea what I am talking about, here's a tarsier:

The smallest totally carnivorous primate in existence. He looks like a much more adorable version of his ghetto cousin the Aye Aye.



O.K. Michele. What kinda of  stereotyping, racist bullshit are you talking about? Ghetto cousin? Really?

Some of you will say that the above photo still does not make it right. Just because the Aye Aye isn't as adorable as the tasier doesn't make using that descriptor acceptable. Some of you may be right. But what if I tell you that the Aye Aye's most distinguishing feature is her fuck-you-finger? Her long, flexible, muscular index finger that she uses to lure prey?

If that's not ghetto, then nothing is.

But enough of our ugly Aye Aye cousins and on to our more adorable cousins named by Dr. Seuss-- the Lorises. Or is that Lorisi? Lorisus? However it is pluralized there are two of them. One is Slender and the other is Slow.

Slender

Slow

What's the difference? Well, one is skinny with bad-assed dance moves and the other is retarded, apparently. Oh and look at that Slow guy's face. It must be painted! The Primate Naming Committee should not have insulted him by calling him Slow. They should have insulted him by calling him Sad.

And finally, one more shot of the tarsier because I must:

Ah, what the hell-- one last one.

Why yes, I do have an Etsy: Fallen Face Studio

Will Kemp's Cherry and Carl's Glass Gems

More of an Art School style YouTuber (he, in fact, has an on-line art school you can enroll in) Will Kemp taught me how to layer with acrylics. You could say Will Kemp's cherry busted my art bone. You could say that but don't. It's stupid. Anyway, here's the first part of Will Kemp's cherry.



Will Kemp's cherry is so complex that it comes in a four part series that contains five parts. I'm not even joking. This series of lessons was one of the best YouTube lesson I ever watched. There's no way I would have been able to tackle Carl's Glass Gem Corn without it.

"Carl's Glass Gem Corn? What the hell is that?" I can pretend someone asks so I may continue typing. Carl's Glass Gem Corn is a painting of corn cultivated by Carl named Glass Gem. The corn is called Glass Gem. Carl is the cultivator. The painting is called Carl's Glass Gem Corn.

Background.

Under-painting layer.

About three layers in.

I'd say there are about 4 more layers in this one.

Another 3 layers plus shine.

This is not how the painting actually looks. All these pictures were taken inside my far too gloomy painting room. It can't be called a studio, it's too dark. Here's a picture of the painting taken outside-- on a cloudy day, no less.

This here one is more how the painting looks in real life.


Why yes, I do have an Etsy! Fallen Face Studio