Vivian Swift's Blog
April 1, 2022
On Taking a Joke.
So the big story this week is Will Smith storming the stage to belt Chris Rock at the Oscars. I wasn’t watching it live but I woke up in the middle of the night as I usually do and I picked up my phone and turned on YouTube looking for the latest BTS news and the site was blowing up with the uncensored tape of the ceremony. I watched it and couldn’t believe my eyes. What an asshole.
Will Smith apologized “to the Academy” when he got is Oscar and then he put up another apology the next day on Instagram and both of them were self-serving horseshit. As of Thursday, March 31, WillSmith has not reached out to Chris Rock personally and begged his forgiveness and even if he does, Will Smith is forever a steaming pile of human turds to me.
I can’t stand his wife, either.
When I married my sweet Top Cat almost 18 years ago, I explained to him that I had a big mouth and at times I feel the need to call out some asshole (real life examples: the bitch who was texting in the movie theater, the the MAGAt in line at the gas station, the dip shit who had to tell me about my BLM flag that “all lives matter”). If that happens, I told him, he is never to step in and try to “protect” me from the consequences of my actions. And my darling Top Cat has done just that: he has walked away while I go nose-to-nose with some creep (I have anger issues) and let me handle the situation on my own because I am a grown ass woman with an adequate vocabulary and a spine. And that’s why I love him. He understands that I can handle myself.
Jada Pinkett Smith, not so much.
There’s another discussion worth having about How To Take a Joke, Even If It’s Not That Funny, Because That’s All It Was, An Unfunny Joke, And Nobody Was “Making Fun” Of Anybody for Chrissake…but I don’t have the energy.
Anyway…we didn’t have internet for 2 days here at Too Many Cats Manor on the north shore of Long Island this week, so my news coverage might be a bit skimpy this week. And lordy, what a week it was:
The Russians are talking about down-sizing their army in eastern Ukraine, which is a save-face way of saying “withdraw” but I don’t trust those bastards a bit and neither do the Ukrainians. We’ll have to hope for the best when it comes to de-escalating the war. But I found some happy” news stories dint meantime:
And this is the story of a British Army vet named Tim Locks and two pals who were in Ukraine distributing essentials such as toiletries, baby formula and nappies that had been donated by crowdfunding. After hearing from a conservationist in his hotel about two animals that needed to be rescued from the front line, Locks, 45, went on a daring four-day mission across war-torn Ukraine to save the lives of a lion and a wolf, driving a 1200-mile round trip from Lviv to Zaporizhzhia Oblast in the country’s south-east to save the animals.
Driving amid heavy Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities, they declared their cargo as ‘a lion and a wolf’ at checkpoints, one guard telling the men there was a war on and it was no time to joke around. Tim said that he took the officer to the side of the van, opened the door, and showed him this proper big lion, “like Aslan out of Narnia.”
Once they crossed the border to Romania, they met a vet who spent two hours completing paperwork. Then they set off to the zoo in the north-eastern city of Radauti. Police helped them drive non-stop, providing a blue-lighted escort as the trio gathered up hundreds more miles. They used a forklift and the help of 20 Romanians in a tricky operation to lift the animals into their new home.
BTW, the animals have names. They are Simba, the lion, and Akyla the wolf.
It’s worth remembering (because it’s easy to forget) that not ALL Russians are assholes:
I like to think that this guy is a typical Ukrainian:
Actually, this guy (above) is the brother of the mayor of Kyiv, Vitaly Klitschko, elected in 2014 and re-elected in 2020.
Actually, it wasn’t the mayor who told Fox News that they had blood on their hands, it was the other Klitschko, the boxer, who said that (you can find the video on YouTube) and the guy speaks almost perfect English and he’s as big as a mountain. Both brothers are staying in Ukraine to fight the Russians.
Mom Klitschko, you raised your boys right.
In Jan. 6 news:
Madison Crawford is a 26-year old little shit representing the 11th Congressional District of North Carolina, and he is a liar and a MAGAt creep and this week he claimed that senior politicians from his party have invited him join their orgies (in order to show that some RINOs are as depraved as Democrats).
This is the little shit:
The Republican leader of the House took Madison into his chambers and gave him a talking-to about making other Republicans look bad, but so far Crawford has not retracted his claim. Now, Crawford is a well-known liar, but . . .
Anyway.
Trump had a rally in Georgia last week:
Here are some quotes:
The good news is that the rally was sparsely attended:
But .. .
Anyway. . .
And that’s my abbreviated round-up of the latest happenings in the demise of intelligent life on Earth.
When I’m not thinking about politics, I’m thinking about truth, beauty, love, and how to be the best version of me so I can be a light and a comfort to others.
Sorry that this week’s post is a bit slap-dash due to the time constraint and shitty WiFi. ON two mornings this week we woke up to temperatures in the 20s, and we even had as now flurry on Sunday.
Have a great weekend, everyone. I know that life will suck, will truly SUCK as long as there are Republicans in the world, but let’s hold on to our humanity, day by day, heart to heart, by treasuring the fleeting moments of joy and warmth and kindness that comes to us as an unearthly serenity in our souls as if bequeathed by angels, like this here picture of a wombat in a wheelbarrow:
March 25, 2022
Negative for COVID.
Last week I was looking up symptoms off brain tumors (I had a six-day headache and wanted useful tips on self-trepanation) and I found this (read until the end):
I ended up not drilling a hole into my thinky-meat and letting this virus run its course. Also, and this was news to me, caffeine helps alieve headache pain so I got some Exederine and I’ve been eating it like candy. I don’t think I have a brain tumor because the headache pops up in different part of my thinky-meat, so, yay. I also don’t have COVID.
If I had gotten COVID I’m sure I would have been less sick but I got a virus that I wasn’t immunized against and I was sick sick sick sick. But let’s not dwell on that. I have some snaps from my excellent adventures in Southern California.
It started with a delightful plane trip out of JFK New York because this is who I sat behind:
Things I did in LA: I went to a bar and stayed out until 1AM and I took in a BTS concert film at a theater that was so deluxe it had cocktail waiters come to your recliners (!), and went to a lovely BBQ party with people who were smart and fun, and here’s a photo of dawn over the San Gabriel Mountains in Pasadena, CA, where I accompanied an ephemera dealer to the Rose Bowl Flea Market (over 600 vendors) who took me with her when she checked in at 5:30AM:
I spent two days in Koreatown and researched some authentic Korean cuisine. This tteokbokki (rice cakes in spicy sauce) and kimchi were delicious although I didn’t care for the chewy texture of the rice cakes:
The next day I was able to compare LA’s best jjajangmyeon (black soy bean sauce with chopped veggies over udon noodles) with the jjajangmyeon I make at home and I like my own jjajangmyeon better because I use less oil and a LOT more gochujang (Koren hot pepper paste):
On Venice Beach I went to a dumpy-looking restaurant called Venice Ramen and had spicy chicken over fresh ramen noodles and it was OUTSTANDING:
On one of my Koreatown outings I walked four miles to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to see a Korean vase there, assuming that when I go there I wold not be disappointed that their gallery of Asian art would be closed due to construction (which it was). But the walk was lovely and took me past the La Brea Tar Pits, which you can see, and smell, from Wilshire Boulevard. Who knew?
Then it was time to go home and you’ll never guess WHO Was SITTING IN FRONT OF ME for the ride back to New York!!!
Yes — it’s the same little white dog who sat in front of me six days earlier!
That was the only bright spot on my journey home. There’s no way to justify myself: I admit, I was a creep, the worst kind of traveller. I knew I was sick but I got on the plane anyway. During the flight, I was so poorly with apathy and fatigue and misery and I couldn’t watch a movie, I couldn’t read, all I could do was loll in a daze of anti-histamines while sucking on throat lozenges and coughing quietly into my face mask for 5 hours and loathe the old guy who was siting in the window seat next to me just because he existed.
Well, to be honest, I loathed everyone in the world at that point, except the cute little white dog sitting in front of me.
It’s been a week now and I feel better. Not good. Just “better”. I’m on a slow mend, not made any better for having had to cancel a trip to London that I was booked to take this weekend.
But it’s been an eventful week here in the slow collapse of civilization as we know it so let’s get on with the news:
Maybe not ALL Russians are assholes . . .
. . . but these guys deserved what they got:
I didn’t understand this one at first:
But this explains it:
Here are some Ukrainian rabbis packing rifles in synagogue:
This is from a camera inside the temple:
More about the shitbag Senator from Texas later, but this seemed like a good place to drop this:
Remember? Last year when Texas got hit with an unusual ice storm and hundreds of thousands of people lost power and Cruz flew to Cancun and left his dog behind in their freezing home? True story.
That shit doesn’t happen in Ukraine:
Months ago my sister sent me some photos of a cool cat who was famous on Instagram for his cocktail hour nonchalance:
Come to find out that this cat is Ukrainian and he’s called Stepan:
I am in awe of everyone who fled with their cats . . . Ukrainian cats must be a different breed than the ornery little fuckers I live with, who I know would never be chill enough to take on the run.
In American news, Katanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated to be a Supreme Court Justice, sat for three days of confirmation hearings in the US Senate.
Marsha Blackburn got a Home Ec degree from Mississippi State University and that’s what we’re saying: the Republican Senator from Tennessee has a bullshit degree from a bullshit college. Fight tme.
This is Marsha Blackburn, by the way:
Later in the week, Marsha Blackburn (remember, she’s a US Senator) tweeted this:
Only one problem:
What this guy said:
Lindsey Graham, the Senator from South Carolina, asked Judge Jackson about her religion:
The Senator from Nebraska said this because of the guy sitting behind him:
This was after Ted Cruz, the Senator from Texas, grilled Judge Jackson about two children’s books that are in the library of a private school that her daughters attended about ten years ago:
The book is called Anti-Racist Baby and it’s about instilling color blindness in young children (I think — I haven’t read it, but it sounds like one of those do-gooder shitty books that rile yup the rabid right wing). Cruz went through the book page by page, even though Judge Jackson reminded Cruz that the book is not part of her purview as a Supreme Court Justice.
In other news from Washington Dc, the trucker convoy is still driving in circles around the city, nobody knows why, but it seems to be finally running out of steam:
This is interesting:
Dubai si a place where Russian oligarchs looking to park their wealth — including their lavish yachts — in order to evade the pesky global sanctions levied against Russia for invading Ukraine. The United Arab Emirates has yet to announce similar sanctions, no has it denounced the invasion. If Manafort is looking to reconnect with the spies he was convicted of consorting with for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, or maybe he wants to high-dive off a Russian billionaire’s yacht helipad or just chat over dinner, Dubai is a great destination this time of year.
And this happened:
And this is the office off the esteemed lawyer willing to taken Trump’s dead-in-the-water law suit:
Dear Readers, this shit (below) just started to go down yesterday and I don’thave the time or energy to follow in detail — but I’m sure the story is still developing and we’ll know more nest week so of now, this is the breaking news about how Ginny Thomas, wife of dipshit Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, conspired with Trump’s Chief of Staff to overturn the 2020 presidential election:
And as of now, Clarence Thomas has been in the hospital for a viral infection for a week. I’m praying for Thomas, real hard. Could we be on the eve of a Biden SCOTUS pick No. 2?
I read that watching too much bad news does physical harm to one’s thinky-meat, so this is why I always end my blogs with some levity to remind us of the things that are really important about getting through life on this planet:
I haven’t worked in an office in years but I still enjoy office humor:
Fact check for those times when I think that I’d like to move to Australia . . .
On second thought, I’d rather deal with roos in the middle of the night than have to listen to Ted Cruz question a Democratic president’s Supreme Court nominee.
And now for an interlude to check in on those people whose happiness is found at the thrift store:
It’s Spring, time to get in shape for Summer, right?
This would not work for me at a dinner party. A family reunion, maybe. . .
Have a great weekend, everyone. Stay safe from self-satisfied ignorance, stupidity, and evil…or make it simple, and just stay away from Republicans.
March 18, 2022
слава україні
Dear Readers,
Thank you for all your support last week. I appreciate you all, but to name a few: Rachel, Steve, Alex, Pixie, Serena, Maryanne the OG, Barb, Kirra, Leslie, David, and Charlotte. I’m not going without a fight.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of fight in me this week. I came down with something when I was in California last week (story to come) and I barely have any energy, it being sapped by an unceasing headache, sore throat, cough, fever/chills, and shortness of breath. I haven’t been this sick in years and I forgot that when you are in distress, the simplest things seem exhaustingly complicated. For example, I can’t do the hard thinking when it comes to meals so for the time being I’m living on toast and tonic water.
Yesterday I went for a COVID test but I won’t have the results until Friday. Until then, I’ll be in my bathrobe, which I haven’t taken off since I flew home from Los Angeles — I even wore it to the test site (it was a drive-thru so no dress code). Next week I hope we’ll have a nice long visit when I bring you up to date with my unsettling experience with a patronizing flight attendant and how I was at the Rose Bowl at dawn and other unwise activities in crowded bars and my BTS concert “date” and various sundry hi/low lights of my trip. But for now, all I want to do is sleep.
Stay safe, everyone.
Fuck Putin.
Glory to Ukraine.
Not every Russian is a MAGAt . . .
But never forget: Every MAGAt is an asshole:
Here’s what Republicans do when they think they can get away with it:
And here’s what Republicans do when everyone is watching:
Here’s the deets:
Iowa State Rep. Lauren Necochea (D), who described the bill as the most “extreme assault on reproductive rights” the state had seen in decades, clarified the extreme nature of the proposal with State Rep. Steven Harris (R), the bill’s sponsor, before the vote this week, asking what legal rights the family of a rapist would have.
“If I am raped and choose to have an abortion and my rapist has 10 siblings, is there anything to preclude all of them and their spouses from bringing a lawsuit for $20,000 each,” Necochea asked on the Idaho House floor.
The bill’s sponsor responded: “I’m not sure their spouses are included in that list,” Steven Harris said; “But no.” [Meaning: Harris affirms that there is nothing in the bill that stops a rapist’s 10 siblings from suing a victim for $20,000 each.]
Here’s an appropriate counter-measure that Democrats should seriously consider:
This is true even in 2022:
Because I am under the weather, the current events section of today’s blog is a bit skimpy. I just do not have the stamina to cover all the Republican stupidity this week. But I saved some ereeeming IRL stuff for you:
In case you can’t see it the dogs are crowding around to look at a basket of kittens. Everybody go: Awwwwwwwwww.
You have to be certain vintage to get these next two:
To everyone born in the 19802 – 1990s :
I really do. I hate green tea.
Have a great weekend, everyone. Be the best versions of yourselves, the one you worked so hard to be (you incredible post apocalyptic monster, you) and, if this has you feeling a bit too beastly and pessimistic, heres something to put light in our heart and joy in your soul: a photo of a wombat in a wheelbarrow:
You’re welcome.
March 9, 2022
Is This The Worst of Times?
If you’re like me, you have what you call your “Fuck Putin” money that you have sitting around, waiting to be spent on something that will help Ukraine and Ukrainians while the idiots we have in Washington wring their hands over whether or not they can send missiles and fighter jets to Kyiv, because doing so might make the Russians really mad at us. This week I heard from a friend of a friend who has a friend who runs a small hotel in Romania that is taking in refugees from Ukraine. The hotel has a capacity for 39 guests, and they started out with 5 Ukrainians, then 22, and now they are up to 45 and they are not asking for help, but this friend of theirs, who is a friend of a friend, put a message out, so that’s where my “Fuck Putin” money has gone.
If you don’t have a friend of a friend who has a friend who runs a hotel in Romania, I’ve read that you can go onto AirBnB and make a reservation for a stay in the lovely sovereign nation of Ukraine, send payment, and add a note to your host that you will not be showing up for this visit but please use the money towards helping his/her fellow citizens. I’ve read that this is very effective.
I know we all want to do something immediate, personal, and useful for Ukraine.
Remember when we thought that hanging chads was the worst thing that ever happened to our country?
In other news, I want to update you all on the book that I received anonymously for my birthday. Thank you, Citizen Reader, for the extra-ciriccular help wth my Korean language studies!
The good thing about books is that they take my mind off of the horrible situations at home and abroad. Yesterday I was so depressed and weary of the world that I picked up a book — a novel — because I was too dispirited to drink or eat, and I read the whole damn ting in a day. I haven’t read a book in a day since the 1990s.
The book was Olive, Again, the sequel to Olive Kittereridge (the best selling Pulitzer Prize book of 2008, which I have not read) by Elizabeth Strout. Top Cat chose it for me, I don’t know why, but I really liked it. I might even go read Olive Kitteridge, but I don’t know…two novels in one year…yeeesh….
Here are my two take-aways from Olive, Again:
In a conversation about faith between two non-believers, one says that the “duty” of being human in a seemingly points universe is: “To bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.”
A man, contemplating the loss of a happy first marriage and how he ended up in a boring second marriage, and the apparent dissatisfaction and compromises and sheer nuttiness of self and the people around him: …it came to him that it should never be taken lightly, the essential loneliness of people, that the choices they made to keep themselves from that gaping darkness were choices that required respect…”
Me, I study Korean and paint pet portraits and collect Blue Jay feathers. These things bring me a pure joy. What do you do to keep yourself in a safe place from the solitary, nasty, brutal, and shortness of things?
Oh, well, for now, there’s no avoiding it. Let’s check in on current events:
The mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania helped paint this on the road that leads to the Russian Embassy there:
The Mothproof Georgia is a statue erected in 1958 to celebrate the 1500th anniversary of Tbilisi, the capital.
The reason neither the US nor Nato can declare a No Fly Zone over Ukraine is because according to the rules of war (yes, there are actual “rules”) the only combatants can declare No Fly Zones so, gif the US or NATO were to declare such a thing twould be tantamount to declaring war on Russia and for some reason, nobody wants to do that.
This is who we should be fighting for:
Speaking of the traitor weasels of the Republican party…
The American-instigated Canadian Trucker protest shit show in Ottawa ended when Ottawa police deployed pepper spray and stun grenades to disperse crowds, towed away over 70 vehicles, and arrested 191 people, bringing a total of 389 charges against 103 of them .
The Canadian Trucker Alliance issuing a statement that said most of the protesters had no connection to Canadian trucking. . .
. . . and some U S truckers took a similar convoy to Washington, DC, to protest a federal mask mandate — but there has never been a federal mask mandate. . .
. . . although the actor Ricky Schroder said he was willing to die for his freedom to protest something that doesn’t exist and how Joe Biden is raising the price of gasoline and the Bible something blah blah blah.
I could run a weekly blog on nothing but Republican bullshittery. but let’s keep it down to this for now:
BTW, it’s not a mobile home — it’s a shack with a rusted tin roof that is rented out to campers in the Appalachian Mountains. Meadows doesn’t own the shack, and he has never visited it. his wife, Debbie, stayed there a day or two in the Fall of 2020.
After Trump lost the election, Meadows was one of the most influential Republicans claiming without factual evidence that widespread voter fraud had taken place. (He reiterated those claims in a recent memoir.) In late 2020 and early 2021, he e-mailed the Justice Department, urging it to investigate claims of voter fraud, including claims that courts had previously rejected.
DBTW, Meadows used this voter registration to vote int he 2020 presidential election. BTW, it’s a federal crime to provide false information to register to vote in a federal election.
This would not be the first time that Meadows seemed to mislead the public on the matters of his credentials or his real-estate holdings. For a long time, news outlets, apparently relying on his official House biography, reported that Meadows had earned a B.A. from the University of South Florida, though he actually received an associate’s degree. And Meadows appears to have violated congressional ethics guidelines by not disclosing his ownership of a hundred and thirty-four acres in Dinosaur, Colorado, which he ultimately sold to a nonprofit that aimed to use dinosaur bones in an effort to prove the literal truth of the creation story in the Book of Genesis.
God, I hate these people.
Anyway.
I am long past the age when I’m looking to advance myself in some coporate job setting but these still resonate:
OK, so that’s that for the news and outrage for this week. What should we do now? Laugh to keep from crying?
OK, we’ve covered cats for the week. There’s another thing I need to discuss, concerning the future of my blog. I got a bill from the host of this blog, Go Daddy (they monitor my domaine for hackers and malware) and to keep this thing going under their supervision for the next three years is going to cost me $720. American dollars. I have no intention of paying that. I’m told that I need to act in two weeks so, if you check in here one day and it’s dark, it will be because Go Daddy pulled the plug.
You all have my email, right? In super-secret code, may email is my full name at yahoo dot com, so if we need to stay in touch feel free to contact me if this thing should disappear.
As I type this, it is Wednesday afternoon of March 9 and I’ll publish this on March 10, a day early, because I’m going to be busy (see below) this weekend, but I must tell you that it’s SNOWING on the north shore of Long island today!
Big, fat, fluffy flakes. I did not expect this. It’s going to snow all day, accumulation being around 1 – 3 inches. But this much i know is true:
Have great weekend, everyone.
My Korean husbands, BTS, are holding a live concert in Seoul, South Korea and they are broadcasting it all over the world to select theaters. So I will be sitting in a darkened, sold-out theater on Saturday, awash in the best way I know of keeping the solitary, nasty, brutal, and shortness of things at bay. I do hope you all have something similar in store, to remind yourself that there is still, despite a ton of evidence to the contrary, some beauty and gentleness and love in the world.
And dogs. There are dogs:
March 4, 2022
It Was One of Those Weeks, Which is Every Week.
So it’s been another week of mind-numbing stupidity and evil. I don’t have much to say today so I’ll just let the current events roll.
Wendy Rogers as a Republican state senator Arizona. We have to stop electing stupid people:
This is what Trump put himself ON RECORD as saying when the Russians crossed into Ukraine:
There are people in America who are worried that the Russian sanctions might raise the price of gasoline, so here’s a photo from a subway station/bomb shelter in Kyiv:
The sunflower is the national flower of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, in St. Petersburgh:
Russian police arrested Yelena Osipova:
Osipova, 77, as a baby survived the siege of Leningrad, which happened in 1941 in the Second World War and involved the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Translated into English, Osipova’s banners read: “Son: don’t go to this war! Soldier! Drop your weapons and you will be a real hero! Don’t shoot!”
These 10-year olds were putting flowers at the Ukranian embassy when they got arrested:
Speaking of children. . .
This happened in China:
This guy was at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin:
And here’s the Brandenburg Gate, etc.:
San Fransisco:
Small town in the middle of Tennessee:
Private home in Alberta, Canada:
Niagara Falls:
Edinburgh, Scotland:
Empire State Building, NYC:
Times Square, to be exact:
I ordered a Ukrainian flag to hang on my house. It’s back ordered (of course) but I should get it my March 10. I hope to god the war will be over by then. I not, I hope to god that the nuclear reactor at Zaporizahzhia holds out against Russian bombs. if note, I hope the fall out is minimal. If not. . . well. . . were fucked.
I know that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is sucking all the attention right now, but in climate change news, really really bad things are happening in Australia:
So, yeah, the world is pretty much fucked wherever you go.
Let’s check inn on those who are most responsible for letting Earth rot.
Do you remember when I told you about the “high tea” that Melanoma was holding in Naples, Florida (top ticket price $50,000) where “a portion of the proceeds” where going to a charity that didn’t exist? Well, the state of Florida investigated this “charitable” event and this happened:
Let’s catch up on some news about the idiots who love Donald Trump, OK?
The family of this asshole still doesn’t get it:
Two of Trump’s fans in Congress, Lauren Bobert from Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia, heckled President Biden during his State of the Union speech this week:
Just your average, conservative Republican:
This is from Taylor’s website, calling Biden “radical”:
And this:
Here’s the story:
A Las Vegas business executive whose claim of voter fraud was featured by state Republicans in November 2020 as proof of tainted votes has agreed to plead guilty to a reduced charge of voting more than once in the same election.
Donald “Kirk” Hartle is expected to pay a $2,000 fine and receive the equivalent of one year of probation when he’s sentenced, according to a plea agreement filed Monday ahead of his scheduled plea on Tuesday in state court in Las Vegas.
Hartle, 55, had faced two felony charges in a criminal complaint alleging that he used his dead wife’s ballot. Hartle’s wife, Rosemarie Hartle, died in 2017 at age 52.
Jesus, I hate these people.
These guys, too:
These truckers wanted to paralyze DC during Biden’s Stateof the Union speech the same way American agitators screwed up Ottawa last month, but the convoy ran out of gas about 2,000 mile s short. This is their rally in DC on March 1:
20 people attended. The event permit was for 3,000.
Don Jr knows why America doesn’t have a Putin problem:
The latest from Florida:
And that’s all that’s grim as of March 3, 2022.
I didn’t see any of the Winter Olympics but that doesn’t mean that I don’t relate to this:
This is a rare photo of Schrödingers cat:
Have a great weekend, Dear Ones. And whatever it takes for you to survive the coming week, whatever it takes to not go crazy or sad or ballistic . . . make that the most important thing you do.
February 25, 2022
WWIII
Hi Dear Readers. I’m taking the week off. I thought I might have gotten Covid except that I had none of the symptoms except for crushing ennui, which isn’t a symptom, so I guess I’m just tired and depressed about Ukraine and the Republicans’ adoration of Putin and how everything that is messed up is all because old white guys won’t just shut the fuck up, for chrissake.
Let’s meet back here next Friday. I have a new pup to paint!
Keep sane, everyone.
XXOO
February 18, 2022
Sorry, Canada.
Well, I did not expect this:
Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 13, we woke up to three inches of snow. I hurriedly set out a Champagne-O-Meter and let it sit out there all day. When I retrieved it at 6:30 the innards were the consistency of a slushie and friends, if you have never had a champagne slushie, you owe it to yourselves to go semi-freeze a bottle right now.
The Super Bowl (which I did not watch because I have better things to do, such as pounding down a big ass champagne slushy while looking up Asian street food videos on YouTube) was held at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles and if you remember, that’s the same stadium where I spent two sublime nights with my Korean husbands when they sold out SoFi four times last year:
Then it was Valentine’s Day . . .
We’ll get into it later but take heart, Dear Ones, Donald Trump had a really, really shitty Valentine’s Day and when we discuss current events (below, way below) it will warm you heart.
In the meantime, we have a darling dog to paint!
This is Ginger:
Ginger (2007 – 2020) is the beloved spirit animal of Jennfer and Greg, who live in South Carolina and still miss this sweet lady every day. I love this photo of Ginger because of the pure happiness that radiates from her eyes. I also like it that she’s photographed against a plain background (no grass this week!) and I’m challenged by the strong lights and shadows of this image, which was obviously taken on a bright, sunny day. I’ll try to get those hi-lights and shadows. Also, I love the slightly off-center of this photo — a very kinetic, somewhat quizzical pose, if you ask me. However, for her portrait, I thought her being off-center would get annoying if you had to look at it in a painting, so I’m going to rotate the picture slightly and give her a more mature, but no less energetic, attitude:
It starts with a drawing. I’m a pretty good draftsperson, but I like to trace my photos (as much as I can) because tracing lets me get every nuance and proportion of my subject just right — however, there’s always bits that I just can’t see well enough to trace (noses, always noses, and paws and things in shadow) so I so have to fall back on my drawing often any way, but let me advise you all: get good at tracing and the world is your oyster.
Let’s begin, with the eyes — you can’t see in this photo (below), but I used three different shades of brown to capture the light and shades in Ginger’s eyes:
When I first saw this photo, I thought Ginger’s eyebrows would be the hard part, but I was wrong. Right after I did the eyes, as I was plotting my next moves, I realized that everything would depend on getting her mouth right. Unlike Munch from last week, Ginger’s tongue isn’t hanging out like a huge pink space in the middle of the picture — but her mouth takes up a lot of her face and dog’s mouths are rather intricate and weird things. All them teef and gums and lips, it can look like a messy gash if you don’t fully understand what you’re painting and I am not an expert on dog mandibles. But that doesn’t stop me:
This was as far as I could go. In order to paint her chin, I’d have to put over her little yellow furry bib, and to do that, I’d have to paint it at the same time as I did her black shoulders and let the black and yellow bleed into each other to simulate her fur. It’s complicated — I cannot emphasize enough that you have to have a strategy when you paint stuff; you have to think it out as if you are building a bookcase, or a chair, or anything that exists in the 3D world.
It was clear to e that I’d have to do a bleed to get Ginger’s hi-contrast of yellow and black fur on her bib. You all know that I LOVE BLEEDS! And I especially LOVE BLECK BLEEDS!! Painting with a black that is as saturated as my Cotman Windsor-Newton paints is a joy! I was really looking forward to this! I did a test run on a operate piece of Canson 90-pound paper, got the timing down, and then I went in on Ginger:
I am so happy with this bleed! Not too much, not too little — just right for Ginger. She’s got the kind of fluffy fur that lets me use the paints and the paper to the fullest, which I enjoy immensely. And because of her coloring,
I get to do a lot of smaller bless all over her! Here’s the next one (it was a sunny day and I’m wearing a pink T-shirt, so you’re getting a rosy reflection in the pix — sorry about that):
I use this flat brush to dab in some fur texture here:
My trusty size-00 brush lets me do details:
I want to say a little bit about the yellow I mixed for Ginger’s fur: I used my Winsor Newton paints for oomph, combined with my chalky Grumbacher paints for a certain matte finish that I like. The Grumbacher paints also make the pigment a little less “loose” than if I used Winsor Newton alone — it’s a feel I have for the way they both lay down on the paper. And even though Ginger’s yellow fur looks like an easy color, I like to mix many different shades of yellow (I have six in my paint box) to get a nice, complex “yellow” that isn’t straight from the tube. I also added two different oranges to the mix. I might have added a little burnt sienna also — I like that color a lot and I tend to throw it in when I do gray, blue, and browns also.
Ginger’s nose, which is half in shadow, took me 25 minutes to do. Even though you don’t see both nostrils in the reference photo, I had to know where they were so I could shade them correctly, so I actually had to paint her nose first with both nostrils showing and then go back and shade out half of it:
Blue/gray highlights:
Now I do Ginger’s velvet ears:
I took the liberty of painting her right ear very black because when I did her ear with the highlights that were in the reference photo, it looked weird. As you know, photographs and paintings have different logics to them, and for this portrait I needed to stick with watercolor logic:
I’m going to leave Ginger’s tongue that soft pink color even though the photo has a dark black shadow to it and I don’t trust myself to pull that off, but I’m going to add some shade to her right (our left) side and then we are
DONE:
Thank you, sweet Ginger, for being the lovely model for today’s painting. I aways connect with my subjects when iIspend time with them like this, but Ginger was special because she’s the first dog I’ve painted who is no longer with us, and I am sure that her soul was pure love and that her spirit comforts her humans even though her physical absence is a loss that is deeply felt in their hearts.
Dogs. We don’t deserve them.
It’s telling that the Trumps don’t have a dog, because they are all, each and every one of them, too shitty and wretched and pustular to care for anything else but their own self-interests, but this story that I’m going to dwell on here sets a new low.
On January 11, 2021, Melania Trump announced that she was auctioning her personal NFT for personal profit, in what she called The Head of State Collection, which featured a white hat she wore on a state visit to France in 2018 with two other items. She set the opening — OPENING — bid at $250,000, and bids were only accepted in the cryptocurrency of the Solana blockchain called SOL.
Wait. If Melanoma is married to a billionaire, why does she need $250,000 worth of chump change? To put it in perspective, that $250,000 to a billionaire is the same as $250 to a millionaire; it’s 25 cents to a thousandaire. It is peanuts, hardly even worth getting out of bed for. So why does she need to sell stuff?? Can’t she just poke around the sofa cushions at Mar=A-Lago and find some loose change??
Anyway, Broke Melanoma went on to claim that “A portion [ get that: a PORTION] of the proceeds derived from this auction will provide foster care children with access to computer science and technology education.” News outlets, such as CNN, tried numerous times to get Trump to clarify the portion size, and who the exact beneficiaries of said portion,were going to be, but never received a response.
All of the items Trump was selling could only be purchased via cryptocurrency. Her move towards NFT, mostly a trendy B-list celebrity genre money-grab, was questionable in terms of a post-first lady business, but it is the selling of an item she wore to an official White House event that shows “that the Trumps were always shameless about making money, and that Melania keeps proving that she is a Trump through and through,” said Kate Andersen Brower, a CNN contributor and author of “First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies.
In case you missed it, the sale came and went, and the headline was:
Looks Like the Auction of Melania Trump’s First NFT Was Such a Dud She Had to Buy the Thing HerselfA total of only five bids appeared to have been made on Mrs. Trump’s items since the auction started, each hovering around the required minimum bid of 1,800 Solana tokens. As of 3 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 19, when the auction was scheduled to end, the final listed bid was around $170,000, with the exact dollar value fluctuating along with the volatile crypto market.
Public records on the Solana (SOL) blockchain indicate that the auction winner is the same address that minted the piece—albeit through a very convoluted process. Solana is a public blockchain, like Ethereum and Bitcoin. This means that anybody with internet access can follow where NFTs are sold.
Trump’s website discloses that the buyer’s digital address is 497Zu5gfWSv4VNsoQfjixWXQZmKZ2pDzkVSASDBqnFL2. This is where she got creative. At the end of last month, that address was given 1,800 SOL by an address that was itself funded by the very address that created Melania’s NFT. Once the auction concluded, the original creator’s address sent 180,000 SOL back to this newly invented and self-funded address, which converted it into USDC (a stablecoin linked to the U.S. dollar).The piece is classic Melania: weirdly formal and a flagrant money grab gone awry.
And this week, Melanoma announced that she was selling tickets to a “high tea” in Naples, Florida. For those of us who know, despite it’s ritzy-sounding name, “high tea” s actually a workman’s supper, served o a “high” kitchen table; it’s not the fancy tea, which is “low” tea (drunk from a low table in the parlor). Once again, she claims that a “portion” of the proceeds will be given to a charity — but it turns out, it’s just another grift:
A charity event hosted by Melania Trump is being investigated after organizers said a portion of ticket proceeds would go to a charity that doesn’t appear to exist, The New York Times reported.
Trump is due to appear at a “high tea” event in April in Naples, Florida, which organizers say will “benefit Fostering the Future, a Be Best initiative,” which gives computer science scholarships to those aging out of the foster care system.
Regular tickets cost $3,000 and limited VIP tickets cost $50,000 each. (Once again, we’re talking nickels and dimes to a “billionaire”.) It’s unclear what percentage of the proceeds will go to charity.
According to The New York Times, no charity with the name “Fostering the Future” or “Be Best” is registered in Florida.
Florida charity laws require any organizations soliciting donations in the state to be registered.
The Florida agency that oversees charitable fund-raising confirmed to The Times that they could not find evidence that the charity was registered in the state and had opened an inquiry into the event.
Melania Trump declined to comment to The Times, the paper said, but later tweeted: “Everything has been done lawfully, & all documents are in the works.”
That’s the best she can do — claim that all the “paperwork” is “in the works”.
You know who never had to sell her clothes or get people to pay to have “tea” with her? This lady:
You know who else has “paperwork” that is “in the works”? This happened on Valentine’s Day:
This is very, very bad news for Trump.
And then, on Thursday Feb 17, the New York Attorney General got this:
Get your popcorn ready. Watching the precarious finances of “billionaire” Trump come crashing down into bankruptcy and disgrace and ridicule is going to be outstanding entertainment.
All this is overshadowed by the big news story — the Canadian trucker blockade on America’s northern border:
Sorry, Canada. Here we have the most fantastic country to be on our border, the sweetest, kindest, most comfortingly weird people in the world as our neighbors, and we send them mayhem like this.
We dont’ deserve Canada. (But then, again, Who does?)
In other news, Rudy Giuliani says he’ll cooperate with the Jan 6 Congressional investigation:
I steal a lot of Stonekettle’s tweets (above). here’s his blog, Stonekettle Station, for all you Dear Readers who need to be informed Mon-Thurs.
Say what you will about AOC but . . . the girl does good shade ;
This guy, Gary Chambers, burnt a confederate flag for his TV commercial. He’s running to oust one of the dumbest people in the US Senate, John Kennedy, and I say: YES:
OK, now we’re all caught up with current events and outrages.
Every now and then, we need to be reminded that not everyone sucks:
And now let’s take a moment to appreciate the wonder and weirdness of life on Earth:
This perfection really exists on Earth. It’s camellia:
Have a great weekend, everyone. Stay warm, or cool (depending on your hemisphere), drink a nice icy champagne slushy, stay out of Canada’s business, and if that’s botenough to keep you busy and full of wonder, then try this:
February 11, 2022
I Believe in Magic.
It’s been weeks and no one has emailed me about this, so I have to ask: Did one of you Dear Readers send me this cool book for my birthday?
I think the sub-title of the book oversells the contents admirably (great marketing!), because it takes hundreds of hours of Korean lessons just learn how to say “I’m only happy when it rains” (because Korean is hard) but that’s not to say that you can’t learn good Korean from this lovely little K-Pop book. On page 9 I learned a doozy of a suffix that confers expertise in any given skill that, because it is Korean — the world’s most difficult language,– will take far too long to explain here, but THANK YOU to whoever sent this to me anonymously last month. It’s a pleasure to learn some fun, slangy Korean.
This month makes it two years that I’ve been taking language classes from the Korean Culture Center of NYC and I’ve come a long way. Just think. Two years ago I didn’t even know the alphabet (14 consonants and 22 vowels), and today I can conjugate 지네가 되다, which means “to become a centipede”. I did not make this up. It’s a real verb that I came across in a children’s book of Korean folk tales that I’m reading.
But let’s take care of business from last week,.Thank you, Dear Readers, for weighing in on the Pet Portrait of the day.
When last we saw him, Munch was hanging in mid air:
We all decided that Munch needed to be put in context, that is, on a lawn, where the laws of physics would apply and make Munch appear more grounded. I hadn’t planned on doing that, so in order to continue I had to tape off the picture plane (in a standard 5″ x 7″ format):
Thankfully, I had enough paper to allow for the new lay-out.
My plan was to approximate the shallow focus of the photograph by making the background a pale wash of color, and making it more color-maturated and “in focus” in the foreground:
I used my size-00 brush to dab the very wet paint into Munch’s floof :
More of the same:
Also, for the foreground, I am using very wet paint, so adding details is just a matter of sloshing the wet paint into lines that resemble grass:
Taking a step back, I looked at this and I was pleased with the way the patches of wet watercolor dried because I like it when the medium (the watercolor itself) shows up. But I also saw that this foreground area needed more cow bell.
Now, I wasn’t going to actually paint the blades of grass in the foreground to add texture and interest . . .
. . . so I sloshed another wet layer of paint onto the foreground and used a dry brush to “pick up” pigment, leaving the texture of the paper to show through:
Taking another step back, I didn’t like the yellow-ness of the background, and it looked to me that Munch needed more shadow as he lay on the grass. So I added a fine layer of green wash to the background and I abbed in some shading under his belly and his chest and then Munch was DONE:
Next week we are painting this lovely girl:
This, Dear Readers, is the lovely Ginger, and we will talk more about this sweet pup then we meet here next Friday. Spoiler: Those eyebrows are going to be challenge.
In other news, to the surprise of no one, Trump was caught stealing from the American people this past week:
It turns out that the National Archives had been in discussions with Trump’s staff for a year, because Trump advisers lied to the Archives and claimed that Trump only took “mementos” rather than official records. But I guess someone got fed up with the usual Trump bullshit and said, “Fuck it, we’re going in.” So they came, got 15 boxes, and put the orange shit stain on notice that they suspect that 15 boxes might not be the entire haul.
My favorite part of this story is that Shit-for-Brains Trump took the infamous map of Hurricane Dorian from 2019,when he erroneously told reporters that it was headed for Alabama and, when called out on it, produced map IN THE OVAL OFFICE from the NHC that had been obviously altered with a Sharpie that miraculously included Alabama (this, below, is a contemporaneous tweet that shows he didn’t fool anyone with that stupid Sharpie):
I love it that future generations will have Trump’s fake hurricane map to “study” when they write history explaining who on earth such a moron got elected to the presidency.
Twitter had some fun about Trump looting the White House, particularly after it was reported that he even took furniture):
Of course everyone knows that Trump broke the law by stealing all those official docs and who knows what else he’s got squirreled away?
And the breaking news is that Trump regularly flushed documents down the White House toilet.
The law that Trump broke is called the Presidential Records Act, and Trump is the most egregious violator of it in the law’s 44 years of existence, historians say. “Since [Richard] Nixon, there is no example of a president just pretending the law doesn’t exist,” said presidential historian Robert David Johnson.
Ignoring this law is a way to obscure history and make it more difficult for future administrations to govern. But as with so many of the “norms” that Trump steamrolled while president, it’s hard to see how he will be held accountable for doing so, so says the Washington Post.So, fuck. Chances are good that he’s going to get away with it. FUCK FUCK fuckitty FUCK.
But it’s not just Trump who is dragging America into the shitter:
Marjorie Taylor Greene is the blonde on the right (above), the representative from the 14th Congressional District of Georgia:
Twitter had fun with this news:
Also: “I’ve met the Gazpacho Police and they are consommé professionals.”
“The Gazpacho Police work mostly on cold cases.”
Etc.
Lauren Bobert is the representative from Colorado’s Third Congressional District (she’s the idiot in the MAGA hat above) apparently hasn’t noticed that the US Constitution has been amended 27 times:
Louie Gomert, currently the representative from Texas’s First Congressional District, is running for Texas Attorney General against the current Republican Ken Paxton (Paxton isn’t Nazi enough). Gomert is famous for being widely known as the dumbest person in Congress, an institution that is loaded with people who are as stupid as a box of turds :
Gomert is vehemently anti-gun control (he has said that gun control would weaken ties between fathers and sons) and is jumping on the Book Banning bandwagon to appeal to the typical asshole Texan Republican:
Hey Texas, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida:
How about we add four seats to the Supreme Court and make ALL the new justices African Americans???
And here’s my weekly rant about capitalism gone amok:
You all know that I like religion about as much as I like Republicans, so this did not surprise me at all:
And that pretty much covers the news of the week.
So now it’s time for the puppies and butterflies portion of our get-together:
I have always thought mushrooms were creepy and I don’t eat them EVER, and now I have Science to back me up:
So all mushrooms are magic, but some are just more magical than others? Did I get that right?
Have a great weekend, everyone. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that we love in a wondrous world, that just being here is in itself a death-defying feat. I hope you all have the chance to make a little magic in your days. And, speaking of everyday wizardry:
And if that’s not enough enchantment for you, here’s a picture of a wombat in a wheelbarrow:
February 4, 2022
Tiger Eye
Here on the north shore of Long Island the snow started after dark last Friday night, so I set up the Champagne-O-Meter out on the breakfast table on the den patio (this is for Dear Reader Gigi!):
On Saturday morning we woke up to this:
By lunch the snowing had stopped and all we had to deal with was blustery winds with a -4F degree chill factor. (That’s minus a thousand degrees in Celsius.)
Looks like we totaled at 10 inches (25.4 centimeters).
Top Cat and I had an excellent Snow Day and neither of us ventured out all day, except to feed the birds. I read my Korean folk tales for 2 1/2 hours and then I began to paint another pet portrait (see below — meet Munch!) and then it was time for ice cold champagne in front of a fire before a dinner of Top Cat’s split pea soup.
In other news, last Saturday I found a new cat at the heavy equipment repair shop where I feed a small colony of feral cats:
This poor little thing had been dropped off with her carrier and there she was, waiting for her old owners to come back and get her.
The next day, I found her in the far end of the lot with another permanent resident that we call Baby:
Baby has access to the garage and its heater, thanks to a very kind man who works there. Baby will be going home with this guy later this month, and then we’ll only have Blackie, Callie, Smokey, and Whitely to care for.
On Tuesday, before the blizzard, I was able to trap the new girl (I’m 90% sure it’s a girl) and take her home with me. It made me sad to see how dirty she was, as if she’d been too shell shocked from being abandoned to groom herself, but she’s been sequestered in my upstairs guest bathroom for over a week and although she’s still very frightened, she has cleaned up and is looking very cute.
We are calling her Suga, and looking to socialize her and find her a new home.
So now that we’re all caught up, let’s paint a dog!
Everyone, meet Munch, who lives in Cambridge, MA:
Munch has a lot going on: there’s floof all around his nose, and he’s got a sort-of tortoiseshell mix of color in his fur, and that tongue is hanging out front and center of the portrait. He also has a rather goofy gaze, and to get Munch I’ll have to get that happy stare.
So let’s begin:
As you can see, Munch has light brown eyes with a bit of gold in them, and has an impressive amount of black eyeliner above and below the eye . . .
. . . so let’s start there:
I’m going to be picky and paint in his fuzz with tiny brush strokes:
For the ears I’m going to let the paints play with each other one a very wet surface:
Nose:
This is where I stopped because it was late in the afternoon and getting dark and I only paint by natural light, and in the living room I had Snow Day champagne to drink with my Top Cat:
The next day I tackled the tongue because I knew that if I screwed that up the whole portrait would be ruined so why not get it over with:
When I took a close look at the finished tongue, I saw that I had drawn it too big — I had mistaken a bit of lower lip for tongue and got the shape a tad wrong, but I was sure I cold correct it without having to trash the whole project:
The pink areas determine the shape of Munch’s smile:
More floof:
Oooooh! I love a good bleed:
Here is where we are today:
Here’s the problem:
In the photo that I’m using for reference (above), Munch is seen laying on his stomach in the grass with a sharp focus on his face and front paws. We, as viewers, are used to the language of photography so we are not bothered that his behind and hind legs are just a light-colored lump behind his left ear. So I took that assumption and I thought I could get away with painting just the bits of Munch that are in sharp focus in the foreground, but….now I think, nope. Munch needs to be grounded in some physical reality, not floating on his elbows.
What do you think? Should I add the bit of his belly we can see here? Do you think that could do it?
Or should I go all out and try to capture the soft focus of his back end and maybe even do a bit of lawn?
OR, does Munch’s pose in mid-air not bother you as much as it bothers me? Let me know. I am pondering this.
So let’s take a look at this week’s news and let’s ponder Trump’s own admission that he tried to stage a coup after the last presidential elections:
WHY IS HE NOT IN JAIL?????
I hope the DoJ is preparing a meticulously researched open-and-shut case of sedition:
And let’s put this in the fast lane:
Stewart Rhodes, the leader of The Oath Keepers, has been charged with sedition for his conspiracy to use a violent insurrection to oveturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election and install Donald Trump in theWhite House.He’s sitting in jail while he awaits trial in Washington DC and so far his legal defense fund has raised $80 towards its goal of $250,000.
The Oath Keepers, formed by Rhodes in 2009, recruits military veterans, police officers, and first responders to “defend the Constitution”. He’s not just a political shitbag, though — he’s also a real-life idiot: he wears and eye patch because he shot his own eye out when he dropped a loaded pistol and it shot him in the face. He was 27 at the time, and a former weapons instructor for the U.S. Army.
As of Feb. 3, as I am typing this (on Thursday morning), his legal defense fund has collected $430. Wit that kind of money he should be able to hire Rudy Giuliani, right?
Oh, right! It was Groundhog Day on Wednesday — how’d it go?
Texas is banning books that — gasp! — dares to mention the history of slavery and institutional discrimination against Afrian-Americans because it might make white people feel bad:
Hey, Texas:
Sadly, it’s not just Texas. There’s stupidity to spare in Washington state:
Oklahoma is not running out of morons any time soon:
Michigan, stand up and be counted…or not:
Oh lord, I am so tried of stupid people running this country.
Marjorie Taylor Green, the Qanon-Republican representative from Georgia, recently had a meet-and-greet with a fan:
Don’t forget:
This guy is my favorite MAGAt of the week:
Fox “News” covered this asshole’s resignation wen he was “forced out”, but hasn’t made a peep about his death:
Am I the only person who wonders why American workers have not gone one a general strike to raise the minimum wage to $25 an hour?
And now we’re all caught up on current events. Feb 1 was Lunar New Year, year of the Water Tiger — you get a re-do on your New Year’s Resolutions!
If hidden cameras were in my house. . .
Don’t you love a good thrifting story? So, enjoy:
Have a great weekend, everyone. Let me know what you think about the next step in Munch’s portrait, and tune in next week when I have either solved Munch’s gravity problem, or totally screwed it up and started over.
And Happy Year of the Tiger! Let me hear you roar!
January 21, 2022
The Whole Dog.
Last week, you all met the Lady Olga:
Olga is a dog with very fetching spots, which I really wanted to paint because in the words of the great Sheldon Cooper: “What’s life without whimsy?”, so I asked Steve Reed to send me a photo of her that shows them. I was thinking he would send me a photo of Olga with her back to me, sitting in front of a fire or such but, no, he sent this:
So now I have to paint an entire dog, with a face, in a pose that will have to be done precisely right or else she’ll look as if she’s defying gravity. You gotta get the weight of this posture just right, is what I’m saying.
Here’s my pencil outline:
You can’t see it (above), but I decided to eliminate her right back foot which in the photo you can see peeking out behind her butt. I knew that detail makes sense in a photograph but it would look weird in a painting, and since the pose would look just as fine without it I made life easy for me and deleted it. I also knew that the black thing between Olga’s paw was a toy called a kong, but I couldn’t actually see it in the photo. So I went to the Kong website and got familiar with kongs, and drew it using a guide line (below) to make sure I got the structure stacked correctly along an axis. I also had a bit of a problem with Olga’s right front paw, which is why I use a very light touch when I pencil in my outlines because when/if I have to erase a lot, it doesn’t rub the paper raw :
I don’t know. It still looks weird to me.
Dear Reader Jeanie asked me last week, What China white paint do you use? I am using a base coat of Winsor Newton China White on Olga’s little face into which I will bleed a delicate pink:
I thank Jeanie for her question because I want to take a moment to explain that I don’t use the top of the line Winsor Newton paints — I use their Cotman line, which is not expensive, in a small 12-pan case:
I have been using this little set for about 15 years, and did the illustrations for my second and third books with them. Also, I have been using Canson 90-pound paper since I discovered it in a book shop in Paris in 1979. The point is, you don’t have to use expensive materials to get effective results, but it helps enormously if you stay with a brand of paint and paper for all your works. That way, you get to know everything that those tools will do for you. For example, after all this time, I know these paints and this paper so well that I know exactly how much water to use with each in order to achieve a variety of effects, I know how they react to each other, I understand everything that these materials are capable of. So I can exploit all their properties to make them do what I want them to do, and it suits me fine. It can suit you, too — right?
So here’s me doing Olga’s eyes with my 000-size brush (a 000-size brush is really, really fine):
Yes, I’m still using blue paint for shadows in Olga’s white fur, and I’m using the same blue for the highlights on the black kong:
I wasn’t going to paint Olga wearing her collar, but I got this far and changed my mind, so I drew it in before I continued with her shoulder area.
I have to work quickly here, having painted in another base coat of China white and, before the paint can get too dry, I’m using a rather wet brown/clack mixture to let the two colors bleed just a little, and to use the watery-ness to give some texture:
When I have really teeny tiny details to paint, I use the same breathing techniques that snipers use: I inhale deeply and exhale slowly and that steadies my hand. I find that painting teeny tiny details, such as Olga’s ID tags on her collar, to be very relaxing. This does not require patience on my part — I am NOT a patient person; but I do like to get things just right, so I am able to concentrate and take my time:
This is our girl at the end of Phase I:
I used masking fluid to draw some blades of grass here (below) and when I removed it I could tell that I’d made a mistake by using it on the kong, as you will see later:
I am going to paint in a green grass background here because if I’d left Olga alone (see: above) she’d look like SuperDog, flying through the sky, and I wanted her on Earth. But I’m going to do a light, easy, not-too-persnickety background:
The hard part . . .
. . . is getting the green paint right up to Olga’s edge:
Done, sort of.
I looked at this the next morning and the kong bothered me:
So I re-did it, and now it’s Done.
I didn’t take a photo of the finished portrait and as I type this, it is on it’s way to England, so here’s my crappy photo-shopped Done version with a slightly improved kong:
Since it’s my birthday week I do not want to harsh my high with current events. This week I’m only doing stuff that amused me during my waking hours.
P.S. Even wide awake, I am easily amused.
That’s it for now, Dear Readers. I am taking another week off and I won’t be here next Friday, so have a great weekend and have the best dreams of your life and take a few moments to celebrate that here we are, against astronomical odds, on this exquisite blue planet that is our home in an infinite and cold, dark universe.
And we can have pickles any time we want.
