Bloodsucker

Vampiric bloodsuckers are somehow considered cool and sexy and are all over the place these days, especially around Halloween. But what is the REAL bloodsucker that is all over the place these days? It's our friend the Bedbug, who is infesting human space in renewed hordes, leaving unsexy, painful, itchy bites all over its victims. Imagine those hot vampire bites as ugly raised red marks itching like hell. No trick or treat for these little monsters! Happy scary day and don't let the bedbugs bite ya!

"Bedbugula" is Photosuck, 7" x 10", a wasted hour or so on October 31, 2010.

Natick Architecture

Natick, Massachusetts was mostly built in the late 19th and early 20th century. The buildings of Main Street date from the 1880s to the turn of the century. The building where my mother's art studio is, was a dance hall in the previous century as well as an office building later on. It's still a dance hall, not for adult pleasures but for little girls who take dance classes there. It doesn't have an elevator. To get to the upper floor you have to march up about 20 steep steps made out of hard granite. It would be prohibitively expensive to install an elevator, and you cannot do too many changes to the building because it was declared a "historic" edifice.

Once you get to the top of the steps and into the studio, you see other ornate 19th century buildings across the street through the tall studio windows. One of the buildings was built by the Freemasons and an upper room is still used for ceremonies. This is a drawing of some of the ornaments on this block. They don't build'em like they used to. Pitt pen on sketchbook page, about 5" x 4".

I returned home after a hellish 2-day journey on roads plagued by deterioration, traffic, and construction. The visit home was very difficult. The best part was wine tasting with my mother. There were many other parts which are not the subject of this By-product. But I am home now and must immediately return to my projects, such as making enough art to show and sell at Darkovercon (coming up for the 33rd time next month) and learning to digitally draw and paint beautiful girls.

The parents' door

I didn't post yesterday due to circumstances I won't go into, here. But I am now in New Jersey on my way back to the DC area from Massachusetts, and there's hotel internet, and my little laptop can process stuff in Photoshop, so here's a post. This is a drawing of the front door to my parents' house, looking out from the den. The glass-fronted cabinet to the right is filled with cups and glasses. In the foreground you can see part of a couch, with a round cushion on it and a gift bag (containing some of my mother's birthday presents). The scrollwork on the glass door frame is old rusty aluminum but is original to the house from the mid 50s when it was built. Outside the door you can see wind chimes hanging from the eaves and a hanging planter. Our family belongs to a very recognizable American subculture of artsy Northeastern intellectuals, if you know this type you immediately will know what I am talking about. If I were an interior designer I would love to restore this house to a fresh re-envisioning of "Mid-Century Modern" but that is not going to happen. This visit has been very difficult for me.

Drawing is Pitt drawing pen on sketchbook paper, about 7" x 7". Photographed with my digital camera and then cleaned up in Photoshop from shadows and distortion. No scanner necessary! Some greyscale tone added, also in Photoshop.

New England, as advertised

Yes, it's a photograph. I don't see how making a painting of this would add anything to my appreciation of the sight. These trees are on the street where my parents live, where I grew up. The house down the street there is not the parental home. Nature turns up the saturation and goes over the top here, at this time of year. I spent today looking at the brilliant colors as well as socializing with the family. I am on my best behavior.

Photo taken with a Canon S90 "point and shoot."

Calendar Scenes of Fall

Photoshop has a number of artist-friendly options for making "realistic" trees and leaves. The "Scatter" and "Shape Dynamics" brush modifiers create pixel scattering which looks like leaves. The "Brush Creation" option allows you to make a "digital rubber stamp" in exactly the leaf shape you want, and then the aforementioned options will scatter your leafy image wherever you want to place it. I traced real leaves picked from the big pile beneath my parents' maple tree. As for color, Photoshop has the "Color Dynamics" option which makes your brush appear to shift colors while you are applying your virtual paint. All this is a fair imitation of the traditional painter's use of mushy brush ends dipped in a dry mix of paint and then dabbed onto the surface. In this way, nice seasonal images can be made that look like a calendar scene for October or November.

Here is what a real scene of calendaric Fall looks like. I took this at the Nashoba Valley Winery where I gave my mother a wine tasting for her 89th birthday. "Real," of course, must be qualified in photography. The colors of this photo have been Photoshop enhanced so that they look the way fall leaves really look to our imagination.

New England Colors, Cloudy Evening

The fall colors are quieter under cloudy skies, especially in the evening when a bit of mist and rain is in the air. I saw this fleeting sight out my car window as I toiled through the highways up to Massachusetts. The roads are under construction in many places and backups hinder journeys every day. But here I am in my original home state, with orange leaves everywhere. I hope to continue making sketches when I can. This is Photoshop with Wacom Bamboo tablet, from memory, about 7 inches square.

Bagels and Autumn Lunch

As promised I'm posting from my hotel room at my stop-off place in New Jersey. Before I left Falls Church I stopped by Mena's sandwich and donut shop for a send-off bagel. Thus I was able to take this picture of my newly re-decorated sign. Through the marvels of modern technology I processed the picture and am posting it right here from my laptop through wi fi. I don't take this for granted. But other people are already posting from their thought-directed, inner/holographic visualization headsets while they are on the supersonic jet flight to Tokyo to dance with genius-intelligent, empathic robot babes. You won't get those in New Jersey for a long time to come.

Tomorrow I head for New England which is full of colorful leaves. What would Norman Rockwell do if he had to use Photoshop for his illustrations? Maybe I'll find out.