New Year's Resolution

Blogs around this time of year focus on two things. The first is the posting of the author's new year's resolutions. And the other is predictions for this year. (None of last year's predictions came true, but I will try again soon.

But for now, I will post my resolutions:

1. I resolve to not be so literal. One of my friends has charged me with this crime, and I will try to work on being more more figurative, inspired, unrelated, metaphorical, and all that other crap. (language) You will note that my previous post featured a muppet smoking a camel with camels in the background and oil fields smoking. But I cannot attach a more significant meaning to this. By the end of the year, I should be able to understand this painting I did...


2. I resolve to use only one space between sentences. I am the victim of the old-school typewriter instruction that mandated two spaces. My right thumb immediately hits two spaces, rather than one, wasting effort, time, and wearing out my keyboard's space key. At the end of the year, if I keep this resolution, I will gain a minute or two. (However, my own self-editing has already wasted more than a minute, and it is only day five!) If you disagree, try to find two spaces outside of a PRE-tagged format, netscape, firefox, and MSIE turn two-into-one automatically...


3. I resolve to do stuff and things.


4. I resolve to make more art like this:

...and by stuff and things, I mean lose weight, be nicer, stop biting other people's nails, you know: the usual.

Stay tuned for this year's predictions!

--gh

Rumaylah Elmo

This is my latest work, and is really the first of 2005. In terms of digital art, I now consider this my magnum opus...


It took about 50-60 hours to make, luckily the weather turned nasty and I was able to finish it before classes started again. Even the enlarged image is 1/4 the real size. (Email me if you want the 3000x2000 pixel version, it is almost 800kb.) I am thinking of printing this out on the large scale printer. That will be about $6! ($1 per sq. ft.)

I took the spelling of "Rumaylah" from National Geographic. I have a few working copies on my hard-drive that have titles like "Ramalah", "Ramayla", "Ramaylah" etc. If you try to search on the web, you will get twice that number of variations.

Amy inspired me to work on a related work, but I will have to put some thought into it. By the way, when I say related, I mean Sesame Street, or at least childhood icons, and not war... If it materializes, the series will be called "Blue Collar Muppets" or something. For the next work, I am thinking of Grover working as a shade-tree mechanic or something. It will take me a week or so to compose the piece in my mind, and then search for suitable inspiration images to work from.

--gh

A new blog is born...

One of my advisees has been activated in the United States Marine Forces Reserve. He is using a blog to keep us up to date with what the gearing up process is like, and eventually how Iraq is. You can view Sgt. Young's blog here. I also placed a link to his blog in my side bar.

Steph is also blogging now. At least I think this is the right Steph. Technically, I served as her advisor since her real advisor was exhiled to Iraq.

On an unrelated note, it appears that Tyler is blogging again. For some reason, my joke-image about jiggling the toilet seat from the Show-Me Inn sign inspired him:


Well, I have two days of meetings starting tomorrow, and a full week of classes next week. I am so excited to get back to work.

--gh

Reagan, and Pikachu

Here's a little something I drew while I was at the in-laws. They have a book with portraits of presidents and their birthplaces, homes, and sometimes their death places. The picture of Reagan was in black-and-white, but I remember him on television with all that make-up on.

(I fixed the mouth, a bit.)
--gh

Brandon Bird Paintings

I think I have finally found a mentor. Check out the paintings by Brandon Bird, purely a genius.

I challenge you to view many of his selected paintings, and comment on your favorite. For me, it is this gem:


It is titled Elysium. In case you are not of the classical nature, I believe this is what the ancient greeks called Heaven. Indeed...

--gh

Attack of the 100-foot Baby

This started as a pencil drawing that I worked on during the retirement reception of the university provost. In fact, when I scanned the sketch you could see most of the reverse side that bled through the cheap paper the program was written on. For those of you with photoshop abilities, you can find the horrible, horrible words to a song that we sang. I was once asked to help write that song, maybe I should have pitched in.

Today we walked to the A&G restaurant for lunch. The kids will be out of school mid-day tomorrow, so it was one of the only times we could do something like that. After lunch, I asked Amy if we could walk around the courthouse square to listen to the Christmas music blarin' out of the court house loudspeakers. On the way back home, we ended up walking by the funeral home where Bobby Jo Stinnet's service was being held. I hadn't realize that the funeral was in Maryville. There were reporters, cameras, six huge media trucks and satellite dishes all over Market street. Walking around all of this equipment wasn't easy, they were everywhere. A real media circus, the whole world is watching footage 6 blocks from my home. Terrible, terrible story.

Since I was walking down a street, by my church, and in my town, I found it pretty easy to just walk behind the equipment and ignore the whole scene. I did feel more like a jerk for driving 5-6 miles out of my way the previous week, though. Still not quite sure why I did that. I guess I am writing that here to keep me honest.

--gh

Black Line Fish goes back to the suburbs?

The other day I was following a car with some ribbonish stickers on the back and I realized that I have no idea where people get those things. I haven't really been looking for them, but if they are as ubiquitous at the highway makes them appear, then they should be equally available in some store that I shop in.

I have always thought about what sort of automobile adornment I could ever dress my vehicle with. I am a big fan of "MY MIDDLE SCHOOLER CAN KICK YOUR HONOR STUDENT'S ASS!" (Yeah, sorry, language.) I remember seeing the "HONK IF YOU HATE BUMPER STICKERS" and getting a kick out of that. That was in 1982 or something. ...speaking of 1982, the convention center in Washington D.C. was recently demolished. The news reporter was calling it the "old" convention center, and I guess everyone is glad to see it go. Man, I remember when that sucker was brand new! Twenty-two years is hardly old for a building. (I remember thinking it was so modern looking. It had an electronic sign out front!)

So, my thoughts of me driving around with a suitable bumper sticker made me think of a ribbon that says "Support Stuff." That's really all we need. Who cares if that guy supports wildlife, and this dude supports the NRA, while another supports Jesus, or Darwin, or Walter Mondale... does it really have an impact on anyone else? I was all set to vote for George Bush, but on the way to the mall I saw a bumper sticker for John Kerry and that fixed me...

So, this is what I spent my last 3 1/2 hours on. You will have to click on the image to fully read the sticker:

I don't really wear shirts that say stuff, either. I don't go out of my way to not do so, that is contrarian non-conformatism that I don't care to conform to. But, I did think that I could wear a shirt that says "I'm THAT guy!". It doesn't really mean anything, unless you think I am the type of guy that wears a tee-shirt to a concert with the name of the band actually playing in the concert. (Yeah, that is a Jeremy Piven joke.)

--gh

ACME License Maker

This webtool is awesome. ABSOLUTELY AWESOME. It is called the ACME License Maker, and it is used to create fake personalized license plates.

I am using it for a picture I am drawing. Too bad they don't have an ACME GRAVESTONE MAKER!

--gh

unofficial puppet master

LOL, I was the 16th person to visit this page: unofficial puppet master.

The first web page that I ever saw was www.lego.com, that was in 1992 or 1993...

--gh

Flogging

Okay, I think I coined a term when I was writing in the comments of someone else's blog. Some times we find ourselves "blogging" in the comment section of another blog. I told the Captain (Crappy Pants) [language] that this is fake blogging, or flogging.

I'ma flog in m's blog, if'a he's got something new.

--gh