Unconventionalisms

My wife and I have very unconventional pasts, to say the least.  You wouldn’t know it to look at us.  Today, I’m a burly biker type, and she’s a catholic school teacher.  Growing up, however, she took autoshop where I took show choir and Home Economics.  She played football.  I was a cheerleader.  Today, if the car is making a funny noise, I go into the house and find my wife to go look at it.

me: Hey Myst, the car is making a duhduhduhduhduh noise.
Myst: OK, get me a beer and I’ll go take a look at it.

So tonight’s challenge to draw something “Dad” was a little difficult.  Everything I thought of that was obviously mine, was not necessarily easily identifiable as “Dad”.  Frankly, in most households they would have been much more “Mom”.  I do have a few masculine traits though.  I could have drawn my razor, my golf clubs, my bike, etc.  I settled on my work boots.  They are a well worn testament to traditional “Dadness”.  She looks hotter in them though.

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EDM 20: Draw something “Dad”

How To Braid Your Back Hair…

Tonight’s EDM challenge was to draw something that I’ve made.  It has been a long time since I actually made something from scratch.  Well, something interesting anyway.  I built a book case two or three years ago, but that’s just a big box with shelves.  I welded a set of hearts into a paper weight five or six years ago.  Lately I spend my time customizing things I buy.  I busy myself hot gluing pencil cases and sharpeners into field sketch pads.  But I made this back scratcher a while ago.  It’s a large comb nailed to a 5/16″ bamboo rod.  I wrapped some wire around the business end and slipped a piece of copper tubing over the other end to keep the rod from splitting out.  I need to make a new one.  I wonder if that would qualify for the thing-a-day challenge?  A step by step wip on making a back-hair-braider is creative *AND* usefull.

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EDM 19: Draw something you’ve made

Windows

I signed up for yet another challenge, Thing-a-day.  The concept is that for the entire month of February, I am challenged to create something every day.  I’m already sketching and writing every night here.  Now I’ll try some other things on top of this.  Is it cheating if I’m already brainstorming ideas?  I know that I want to create a field watercolor sketch kit like Russ Stutler’s.  I have a couple of pieces of patio furiture that I have been wanting to build forever.  I have a very large chess set that I have been imagining for years.  The challenge tonight was to draw a view from a window.  This is really more of a view *OF* a window instead of *FROM*.  It’s dark outside so I can’t really see anything outside.  It’s cold outside, so I’m not going out there to draw the view from the other side.  So I drew what I could see from my kitchen to my back porch.  My first thought was that eyes are the windows of the soul and  I seriously considered trying to draw my reflection in my wife’s eye.  I may follow up on that during the next few weeks.  Maybe I’m just using art and creativity as a way get a hot chick to sit with me for a while.

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EDM 18: Draw the view from a window.

When All You Have Is A Hammer…

It’s funny to me that today’s EDM challenge would be to draw your favorite tool.  I wasn’t exactly sure how to draw cynicism or sarcasm, or even wit.  Those are the tools that I use the most to pound through my day.  My beautiful young bride just yesterday said to me, “When all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.”  Well, she didn’t actually *SAY* it.  Some character on television said it and she pointed at me and hollered, “AMEN!”  As I innocently stared at her, deer in the headlight eyes and all, she proceeded to explain to me that I am so accustomed to being mistreated by people that I am suspicious of anyone being nice to me.  She went on to suggest that I find some new tools with which to challenge the world so that I would quit beating the same dead horses.  I let her rant on for a few minutes until she took a breath and I said, “I’m sorry, Baby, you’re right.”  This is the sarcastic phrase I use to signal that I’m not going to argue with her and that we should skip straight to the “making up.”  I may indeed need to find some new tools, but today, I’ll stick with the hammer.

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EDM 16: Draw a favorite tool