People love to ask artists what inspires them. This is kind of annoying, because generally speaking, artists just love to make their art, not sit around contemplating the reasons. An artist who helped me get going in oils said that what inspired him were the bills in his PO box. I’ve occasionally pondered the question […]
A List of What’s Occupying My Time and Thoughts
Taxes We haven’t gotten our 1099s from Social Security yet and don’t know if they will come in the mail or if we have to do something impossible online to receive them. As if doing taxes wasn’t abhorrent enough, there are so many obstacles and difficulties just getting stuff ready for the accountant. Shoes I […]
The Building in the Library Mural
When I was designing the Ivanhoe Library mural, I dug around for photos of a building that is cemented in my memory as a beautiful old structure. (Apparently, I’ve loved old buildings all my life.) I found a photo of the Ivanhoe School auditorium in Laura Spalding’s book Ivanhoe—the Town with Three Names: Klink, Venice […]
Exploding Head
Not literally. Figuratively. There is a difference in these two terms despite the language butchering (figurative, not literal) that is commonplace. Using a template to convert a book from Word to InDesign is supposed to be easy. Sure, if everything works. When does that happen?? Converting the InDesign file to a PDF for proofreading is […]
Red-Neck Ramblings
I could be oil painting but seem to want to pull weeds, write blog posts, text with a friend about a difficult situation, make yogurt, and write a few letters. We have a bit of a situation, but as a wise friend has said, “When you have a problem and you have money to fix […]
Eleven New Learnings in January
Learned from Intern: 2. The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web where people can search through old websites; he found my first website from around 2003 or so. 3. People in Asian countries make vertical emoticons (°-°) instead of sideways :-). I’ve been having fun with this! (*U*) 4. Youth […]
Thoughts on Internship
My Intern Today I am painting, progressing on the mural on the Ivanhoe library. I am writing this post before I have painted today, thinking ahead. Each day I work on the mural, there are multiple decisions to make. In the past, when I’d get a little stuck, I’d pick a somewhat mindless task, such […]
Goofing Off in Three Rivers
Yeah, yeah, I could be painting sequoia trees. Instead, I’m just lollygagging around. No deadlines, no pressure, just enjoying the season masquerading as winter in Three Rivers. Here are some photos from a recent walk. Yes, I am so boring that a walk passes for fun and goofing off in my life. The elephant is […]
What Happened, Part Two
Today I will be painting on the Ivanhoe library mural, Lord willing, the Creek, etc. The past two days have been seriously disrupted by many hours on the phone trying to solve the website problem, which also took down my email. If I was a smoker, it would have been a couple of 2-pack days. […]
What Happened??
My website croaked. I called the server? host? platform? something to ask for help on Tuesday morning, January 6. The man on the phone said he could see what happened, fixed it, and it would be fine in about 10 minutes. It wasn’t. Twelve hours later, it was back, but nothing after December 30, 2025, […]