Blog
Well you know my name is Simon, and I like to do draw-rings
I’m having my bath now! Every day at five, a lady comes and bathes me!
Don’t look at my bum!
I don’t look at your bum, bum-looker!
Cheeky monkey!
^_^
Would you like to see some of my draw-rings?
Here is a draw-ring I did of a lady. She’s not wearing much clothes!
Well, it’s itme to go, I’m starting to get prune hands!
I can’t do my draw-rings when I’ve got prune hands!
Pretty soon, Lumella, the lady who bathes me, is gonna come in and make sure I washed everywhere, especially my bits and pieces!
Cheeky monkey!
Alright, goodbye everybody, bye!
Tomato
This one holds a special place in my heart.
It’s terrible.
One of the first acrylic paintings I’ve ever done.
I have many incarnations of this piece… a sketch I did in a spiral notebook (original),
then I made a piece out of it in a ceramics class in college.
I meant to post a scan + photo of the other incarnations… but I either misplaced them or was just too lazy to look somewhere other than my loft wall right next to my desk (where I have a lot of shit posted. (It’s like my Facebook wall, but REAL!!!!11!1one))
Eergh.
I came here to drink milk and kick ass…
I had to post this because I love The IT Crowd, and this scene is just the bees knees super hysterical
FUCKING GREAT!
Now, if you haven’t seen the series, I recommend you do that right now. Go on, do it!
Before I start typing in all caps to convey how badly I feel you need to watch this.
You’re welcome.
SHORT stories: The Deep – PES
Saw this video and LOVED it. Combined my love of antiqued metal objects AND deep sea.
My mind has been blown! Such a creative use of everyday objects!
I want a motherfucking salad!
I saw this on theHairpin.com and had to repost. It’s brilliant.
It’s called Women Laughing Alone with Salad!
Guess what it’s about! Common! GUESS!
Women… who are laughing alone… with salad!
Check it out and lol with me.
Franconia!
Last Saturday some friends invited me to go with them to tour the Franconia Brewing Company in McKinney, TX. I’ve been meaning to make a US-wide tour-de-beer, so no better place to start than right in my backyard!
I got lots of pics to share, so bare with me!
The Brewmaster
(Want more? Many more pictures can be found on my Flickr!)
I was impressed with their process. It was a small facility, but they have a small operation. They don’t currently bottle their beers, and won’t unless they get a recycling program arranged with the vendors that request to sell their beer. They have made an effort to keep their operation as environmentally sound as possible (i.e. recycling hot water, only producing what’s ordered, taking what little waste they have to the recycling center themselves…).
Well done, guys!
On a side note, the Winter Wheat was phenomenal. I have had the regular wheat and dunkle beers, but this one was new to me. 9% alcohol content, too. Nom nom nom.
Wishful Thinking
My circadian rhythm is all sorts of messed up. Maybe it was the whole sleeping-in (every day of my month-long vacation) thing, coupled with the inconsistant feeding times, but the result is a really crappy first-day-back-at-work.
I’m also a little bitter that we hadn’t had any winter-like precipitation this whole holiday season! I suppose it’s better that way. If it so much as rains, the motorists around here forget how to drive (they’re not much better when it’s dry, either).
To cheer me up a little (or encourage me to feel a little less bitter), I’m posting some of last year’s frosty pictures.* It’s nothing amazing, I’ll assure you. This is Dallas, after all.
* I said “last year” but since it IS past December 31st, it would qualify as year-before-last. Although that’s not right, either. We had snow last year and haven’t yet edited those photos. These are from 2008?**
** Checked the data. They’re from 3 years ago almost to the date. Metadata says January 5, 2008. Oh well, they were re-mastered today! THEY’RE NEW NOW, BITCHES!
Excuses, excuses
I haven’t had a chance to update at all, lately.
I recently had the opportunity to shoot at a fund raiser for My Possibilities, a local non-profit organization that helps adults with disabilities. I met some really awesome people and got TONS of photos (approx. 400+) of the event.
Editing said photos has been eating up most of my time. As well as shooting/editing/sending off photos from the City Council Meetings (more on that, later).
I promise, once I finish the remaining 101 photos, I will be posting more content, as well as updating with some of my own art. ^_^
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a gift: pictures of my super-cute dog, Ollie!!
What lucky people, you are!
The Lion and the Crow
I took this shot (macro) of our peach tree. It frequently oozed a viscous fluid in the springtime. I assume this was due to the physical injuries it indured from the various insects that bore into its branches.
I named this one The Lion and the Crow. Can ya see it!?
Other Living/Dead Things
Some more forgotten photos from the yard. It consisted of both living and dead things at any given time. Although, I never did get any pictures of the dog poop-eating turtle we found…
First the living things:
Annnnnd the dead things:
Peach Trees in Bloom
We had 2 peach trees in our rental house’s back yard. They never bore edible fruit (due to the abundance of parasitic insects), but provided plenty of picture-worthy blooms when springtime rolled around.
Fun
I finally cleared off enough space on my desk to hook up the WACOM. I was experimenting with some comic characters but instead decided to play cheerleader for Husband.
And the result:
Edit: I tried to tag these on Facebook to make use of their new feature where you can make these 5 images show up on top. I wanted his profile to show JAMES in Beth-characters, but apparently they’re too full of awesome to show the entire image. The result was a cropped version of what I had intended.
A funny result, however:
Totally looks like “SEX”.
Dew Drops
These photos are from the jungle we had outside the house we had rented. I’d say with all the problems we had in that house, the jungle was the least of our concerns.
My brain is tired.
I’ll just go ahead and post some of the pictures and take a well-overdue nap. -_-
1 down, 1,599 to go!
I finally had time to go through my external drive and copy over photos to re-edit in a higher resolution (i.e. bigger, clearer). That pretty much means going through and finding all the originals, resizing them, touching up (if necessary), and putting borders as close as I could to the edits I had uploaded years ago.
I’ve edited one, so far. Only 1,599 to go!
I cleverly also uploaded a second version (cropped), so instantly I have two photos instead of just one! HOW AWESOME AM I!?
**Answer: Pretty awesome.**
Full version:
Cropped version:
You’re welcome.
Love Where You Live pt. II
I decided to break up the previous post into two since there were two different parts of the event. One was the obvious, making the properties look more presentable and making minor repairs; the other was a sort of festival (complete with a jumpy house things and hot dogs!).
Behold! One of the few photos of people you will see from me:
I chuckled to myself when I saw this couple. HAD to take a picture :)
These faces are priceless!
(this is, by far, one of my favorite pictures)
Love Where You Live pt. I
Once upon an end-of-lease term, Beth had the bright idea that she would volunteer for the city she would soon be leaving.
She wished to accomplish a few goals:
- Give back to the community she was born and raised in (not court mandated, for once)
- Play with puppies EVERY DAY
- Bragging rights Personal enrichment
Well, I tried.
I did make it through 2 whole days of orientation before I just grew tired of it.
HOWEVER, during my interview to be accepted as a city volunteer, I did mention the whole “I [heart] photography” thing. So now “unpaid photographer” is my unofficial volunteer status (as I was officially and permanently released from volunteering at the animal shelter due to non compliance with their minimum hour-per-month policy).
My first job was to shoot the Love Where You Live event hosted in a neighborhood they thought could use a little cosmetic makeover.
All in all, it was a pretty cool event. I actually enjoyed walking around with a camera while other people did the back-breaking manual labor.
Is that lazy? Oh, hell yes! But I think some of the workers were hamming it up for the camera, anyway. Sittin’ there with their free water bottles waiting for the photographer to walk up.
Yeah, I know your game, college students.
In fact, I had little direction. Just show up at this time, and walk around. Not all homes were being “loved” upon, so it was my task to walk for hours until I saw a house with a little sign indicating that it was to have someone there at some point.
So that’s when I decided to just find a group of people and follow them around. They led me to the action.
Without further adieu, l’action:
I fail at prioritizing.
Perhaps my New Year’s resolution this year is to actually DO something productive when I get home from work.
Lofty dream, says I!
The “day job” just drains me, but I promise I will be more “updatey”, eventually. ^_^
In other news, I have a broken blood vessel in my eye. Shooting the evil eye to Husband has a whole new effectiveness. It’s…effective.
One monumental task I have assigned myself… re-photograph all my paintings in a higher res, and also re-edit all my photos so they’re not all “facebook-friendly”. Now, they’ll be Flickr-friendly! HIGH-RES AWESOMENESS!
As a little gift so you all don’t hate my lack of posting, here’s one such re-vamped painting:
- Mattresses are friendly, dim-witted, docile creatures capable of speech. They are all called Zem and live in the swamps of Squornshellous Zeta
Yes, it is inspired by the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. That is, before the movie came out and featured a more iRobot-esc-Marvin.
Of course, my visualization of Marvin created a seriously average-looking, old-school-sci-fi-esc robot….
(DISCLAIMER: I shall add here, that yes, I know he is an android, but look at him! That’s CLEARLY more robot than android. My bad. Fucking jump on my back, internets. I KNOW YOU WANT TO!)
So not having watched the OG TV series OR the movie before painting this, but being just in love with the “trilogy” (I can read!)… you get the robot that closer resembles something out of the Jetson’s. Sue me. I was raised on that shit.
SUPER AMAZING UPDATE 3/5/11: Prints for this piece will be available so soon (via my etsy which is so painfully empty atm) you can taste it! Check back soon, or you will be disemboweled by rabid badgers while stray cats shit in your mouth (it’s super-effective). Love, Beth
New digs (pt. I)
Well, Husband and I have been settling into our new loft apartment. We’ve been here a little longer than I care to admit, and are slowly working on unpacking while stepping over piles of broken-down boxes (and using some as makeshift tables).
In moving in, we had a vague idea of what we wanted to accomplish with our space. Since it is a loft, we don’t have rooms per se, or even too many walls. We thus have to create “zones” in the large open spaces (whatever that means). Super-supportive Husband has come to the conclusion that I should have a perfect work space first and foremost, and then a living area can be put on the back-burner (or eliminated altogether).
With the bookshelf, couch, and an array of desks, we managed to make a really snug area for both of us to work.
It’s messy. So as soon as I muster up the courage (motivation) to actually straighten up, I will provide pictures.
Eventually.
UPDATE 3/10/11: Nope. No pictures, yet.
Tickled, I am. Watch this, you shall.
EDIT: It has come to my attention that WordPress randomly deletes part of the embedded code. If this happens, you can find the video here.
Love,
Beth
First, I got really excited; then really disappointed.
So, I *just* found out that Okami has a sequel coming out!
Why wasn’t I informed about this?
For those of you that have not yet played Okami, I strongly suggest you do so. You don’t even have to be a big video-game buff… you just have to like pretty things. ^_^
Go ahead. Watch the trailer. I’ll wait.
Not only is it a beautiful game, but you get a LOT of content for the price. Seriously, there were times when I asked Husband (who played it before we met) if this plot arch was the last one.
That was mid-game.
I kept playing and playing… left it alone for a couple months (due to moving around, buying a new game or whatever my excuse was…) and was able to pick it right back up and love it even more!
It’s a piece of art.
ANYWAY, back to what I was saying… something along the lines of “OMGNEWOKAMIWOOOOO!!!!1111!1one”.
I recently saw the promotional poster for the new sequel Okamiden floating around the interwebs:
Part of the promotional campaign taking place in NYC
At first I was like d’awwww… then it clicked and I was all GOOOOOOOOOoooooosh!
What what WHAT!?
So, I did what any nerd would do in this situation. I Google’d it. What did I find out?
“It is being designed by Kuniomi Matsushita, the director of the Wii port of Ōkami…” blah blah blah “The Nintendo DS was chosen due to both it being the most successful platform of this generation as well as the touch screen being ideal for controlling the Celestial Brush.”
My heart sank. DS. While it is true, it would make drawing the symbols infinitely easier than say a PS2 controller or the Wiimote. That means I have to physically buy a new game gadget thingie. Do you know how many game gadget thingies we have? I already had a fair amount of game gadget thingies, but after moving in with, then Husband-To-Be, we have combined our awesomeness to over two 30-gallon-tubs!
Oh, and money. I need some of that stuff to buy a new game gadget thingie.
I still have a new PC to build.
Frown.
At least I can play the original on two different platforms. BOO-YAH!
Danny & Annie
Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.
I loved this. It’s sweet, snarky and full of squishy emotions.
Try not to cry (good luck).