A recent acquaintance has invited me to display some of my works at a local fund raiser for dobermann rescues. That sounds like a lot of fun to me. She suggested I may get some commissions based on my dog paintings. I hope so, but really I’m just looking forward to a good time. She did send me some pictures of a couple of dobermanns I could paint for display. Here are the work ups I have done on them so far
I’ll update further during and after the show.
It has been a while since I’ve updated my website. Like so many others, I began using Facebook and Instagram to reach a wider audience. However, those platforms are zeroing in on creators and people with differing opinions. Discord updated their terms of service to say they could deplatform you for something you did while NOT on their platform. Imagine getting into an argument with someone and then trying to take a bus home, and the bus company won’t let you ride because they agreed with the person you were arguing with. It makes no sense.
Worse, they are closing in on risqué creators. If your art skills are good enough, the bots tag you. Once they start tagging you, the “punishments” compound, even if you get a previous violation overturned. One could probably argue that getting the previous violation overturned simply made them more intent on bringing you down.
With all that in mind, I’ll be doing what I should have been doing all along. I will publish on my website and share from there and through my newsletter. At least until my domain host and mail server decide to censor us too.
This week I trekked out to Cullen Park in northwest Houston to do a little sketching at the Koch-Schmidt cemetery. Established in 1854 this cemetery sits inside Cullen Park just north or the Addicks Reservoir. There are a lot of these little cemeteries around, even in the golf course I like to go to. This one is chained off so I can’t really get up inside for great pics, but it was a fun day for me at least.
There’s a video at the YouTube showing the sketch set up and process: https://youtu.be/trPzDCfZxzM
This week, took the bike out to Mary Jo Peckham Park. It’s a a little fishing park in a small town just outside Houston. There’s a playground, an indoor swimming pool free to all county residents, and a pond stocked with bass, rainbow trout, and catfish.
The place is FULL of vultures. The whole area has vultures. Golf courses, parks, mall parking lots… Vultures flock here like other places have pigeons.
So I decided to load up and go paint them. At one point while painting them, some ducks wandered up and about twenty MORE vultures swooped in hissing and posturing to run the ducks off. It was very surreal.
There’s a video of the the painting process up on the youtube machine here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPBF-lJvJr8&list=PLUaBuRlaP-h7ZF0tfnnu6deFqcum835fn&index=1
This week I took a 100 mile round trip down to the USS Texas, a WW1 and WWII era battleship that has been permanently recommissioned as a museum. I got some nice pics of it and shared some nice ones from when my beautiful young bride went. The museum is closed indefinitely while they make repairs to the ship. It is leaking so they have to repair the leaks BEFORE they can haul it to the shipyard for full repairs. You can learn more, by goodies, and donate here: https://battleshiptexas.org/
Had to go old school on the “GPS” by taping the directions to the motorcycle tank. After putting a hunnert miles on the bike, it’s time for a beer!
I’ve uploaded the video to the YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRsT9VaPVvM