Not a whole lot to say at the moment, other than that I’m pretty happy with the below picture that I spent the first half of today creating. It would have been a great day if it was over when I finished that, but I still had a handful of other projects to finish. Anyway, maybe I’ll drop in a fun post tomorrow if the mood should strike me, but there most likely won’t be much else of interest until Tuesday.

Just some artist’s notes on the picture: Yes, it looks really gritty and kind of fucked up. That’s the intent. I mean, it’s Sid Vicious I’m trying to portray, and I really think that this piece in particular captures the character as well as the likeness of the subject quite well. Plus it’s just spray paint and a template, so I can remake as many of these things as I want. I’m going to attempt to put it onto a sweatshirt, so we’ll see how well spray paint takes to clothing. And yes, I know all about silk screening, I just like to experiment.

So long, all over, the end.

-sullivan

And that’s the order in which I’m doing things tonite, with the possible exclusion of the die part. I worked all day on another portrait, am taking a a little break now, and later on I’m going to Bernie’s to enjoy some good old Youngstown hardcore. On second thought, maybe the die thing is a very real possibility.

To your right you’ll see the aptly named “Hitler Quarter.” You see, it’s funny, you can take a sharpie to just about any coin, give your favorite president some black hair and a little moustache, and they look like hitler. This makes me realize that the kid in my illustration class who chose hitler as the subject for his portraiture series was taking the easiest route. You can slap a little moustache and some stupid hair on anyone, and they’ll look like Hitler. I mean, there’s not even any effort involved, because no one cares what Hitler actually looked like, apart from his little megalomaniacal cookie duster. That kid is a lazy fucking bastard.

I think I’m going to start doing this to all of my change and put it in tip jars wherever I go, just to get it circulating. I encourage you all to join me.

Apart from the Hitler thing, there’s something about the quarter that has never sat right with me and now I realize what it is. Why the hell is George Washington not wearing a shirt? I mean, Jefferson’s got a coat on, Lincoln is fully clothed, and Eisenhower…well, he might be wearing a t-shirt or something, but he’s just as likely to be nekkid. I think I’m going to start spending quarters and dimes much more fervently to get those nude presidents the hell out of my pocket.

Oh, and if you liked that Transplants song and would like another (and don’t pilfer music from the internet like some people I may or may not know), you can download a second one for free from the Epitaph Records website.

-sullivan

So I got up early to do some sketching for various projects that I will very soon and very begrudgingly undertake, and it turned out that it only took me about 20 minutes to get what I needed done. So settled in with a fresh cup of coffee and an hour and a half that I’m going to devote to what the kids call “chillin,” here’s your news.

This weekend is sure to be a maelstrom of vulgarities, self directed mutterings and vague references to “killing them all” as I rush to complete 5 projects in 3 days. This is what happens to me when I start toying with the idea of dropping out of school in the middle of the semester and cease all work-like activities in lieu of sleeping and staring at things. The prospect of getting all of this work done wouldn’t seem so imposing if it weren’t for my drawing being shit as of late. Painting too. I know I can do both, but I’m not doing any of it to my liking. Even the Sid Vicious from the previous post has started to look pretty bad to me, but I harldy have time to spend figuring out exactly how to fix it. Once in a while whilst I am drawing, I’ll suddenly have a really good sketch in front of me and not really remember doing it. I hope that happens tonite, so that I can avoid further dishonoring Sid’s rep.

Ooh, I love it when I can feel the caffeine coursing through my veins. I’m NOT a junkie.

I found a new band yesterday that my friend Travis told me about the last time I was back in Youngstown (Yonton, for the ghetto-ly inclined). Of course when he told me I forgot the name almost instantly – standard operating procedure for me – and didn’t remember what the hell is was until I found a random sheet of paper on my floor with “Transplants” printed out in bold font, radiating out from the impenetrable darkness surrounding it. It was a sign. Anyway, the Transplants are a punk rock/rap band featuring everyone’s favorite incoherent vocalist, Tim Armstrong. Now there were a lot of signs telling me to stay away from these guys, such as them being classified partially as “rap,” the fact that they have the ex-Blink 182 drummer, my dissappointment in Gordy from the Forgotten not being involved as I was initially told…did I mention the rap thing? But anyway, I listened to some of it, and it’s just too damn catchy for me not to like it. You can get at least one of their mp3s here.

And it looks like I don’t have much in the way of cool art to slap into the post this morning, but I’ll see if I can’t rectify that later on today. Plus, with the way this page is currently arranged, I can’t imagine that the load time is anything but awful. Time to go do some sketches…perhaps of the Pulp Hero persuasion…

-sullivan

Ok, so here’s a run down of things that have been pissing me off lately, right up until the present as I type this ranting, rambling diatribe. Starting a few weeks ago, I really lost all desire to be in school. I tried to play it off as my being bitter that winter break was over (bitter? me? NO), but the feeling took hold and wrestled me to the ground, stabbing me in the eyes with forks and frozen hot dogs until I decided that I really needed to find a way out. At about the same time I got sick, and that really didn’t help the situation. It became more like being in the colliseum, in unarmed combat against giant fork-armed hot dog demons with an appetite for sullivans unmatched by even the lion’s appetite for christians. I hear christians are damned tasty too. Anyhow, I kind of stopped doing work and what not, and the work I did manage to finish was pretty half assed. So after beating myself up over not doing work during times where I simply should have been working, I finally made a decision to drop down to minimum full time hours, and tough it out until the end of the semester. Sounds pretty reasonable…problem taken care of right? Yeah, that would be the case if my faceless bastard son of a car would start so I could go down to school and get these things taken care of, in addition to not missing my classes this afternoon. So after spending about an hour of digging out of a foot or so of that burning white death I call snow, the piece of shit doesn’t even have the common courtesy to start up. I guess it’s pissed at me for leaving it buried alive all weekend…and for never washing it…and maybe for blowing out its tires frequently, and for letting the undercarriage rust and the exhaust fall off, and for wrecking it and obliterating the front end…but I put gas in it, what more does it want. So right now, while I should be sitting merrily in my Illustrator class, making some badass werewolf picture for all of you (read: Klio) to love and enjoy, I’m instead sitting in here while I attempt my “Mechanics lamp on top of distributor cap no jutsu” in a last ditch effort to get my day’s plans rolling. If this doesn’t work I think I’m going to practice headstands in snowdrifts.

Oh and if all that isn’t enough to piss me off, I seem to be excreting some sort of fluorescent pink substance that only comes out after I shower. I have no evidence that it’s coming directly from me, but whatever the hell it is, it has stained my bath towel, and the shower floor, and ONLY happens when I use the shower. Maybe I was kidnapped by aliens and cross-bred with one of those hideous strawberry Little Debbie snacks, and my delicious pink filling is falling out. And I used to be so damn tasty.

And here’s today’s happy art bullshit, chock full o’ elf.

Or at least there WOULD be a picture there, if Brent’s hard drive had room for me to copy a jpeg image to the server. I’ll have to fix that later. There almost wasn’t enough space for me to save this update…

-sullivan

So last night I finally watched the end of Cowboy Bebop, after more than a year of stretching out the series in an attempt to savor every delicious morsel to its last. In retrospect it was a foolish thing to do, because all I did was deprive myself of something so utterly fantastic, that I could have been enjoying over and over again in the meantime. I honestly can’t think of anything else I could ask for in a show of any kind. It had humor, suspense, drama, it could be light hearted at times, and painfully sad at others. But most importantly it had style out the wazoo. I’d talk more about it but, I don’t know if I’d be able to stop. I think I still need time to roll it over in my head some more. But damn I love that series.

-sullivan