Day 138: Don’t Talk About The Weather

Look, it's raining disinformation!

I spent the earlier part of today working on the commission piece, which is on a wood panel. I love painting on wood. It’s soft and rough and absorbent and can take way more abuse than canvas. I’d just read an article about “going with the flow” in order to really enjoy life, so when I picked up a panel, I realized that the grain pattern of the wood itself is really quite intriguing on its own and decided to work with it instead of drawing something over it.

I traced some of the lines, which began to form a landscape-y composition. I painted in a large cloud and some ground, then I busted out the watercolor pencils for the sky. They had such fabulous names- heliotrope, carmine, vermilion… so I thought “heck, I think I’m going to write the names in there, like some kind of cool color-by-number”. And after I’d done that, I began to think of this video I watched recently that talked about the difference between disinformation and misinformation, and how “the powers that be” use both skillfully to successfully discredit dissenters. I can’t look at clouds without thinking about Chemtrails, and the particles of watercolor pencil began to fall on the cloud in a way that made me think of the particulates in aerial spraying tainting our atmosphere, so I wrote some of those in. Then I went back and crossed everything out and replaced it with the words used by the organizations that tell us everything is A-OK. I even included the title of an amusing, well-done documentary about Chemtrails called “don’t talk about the weather”.

I feel like it may have been better as a plain old landscape without the words in it, but then again, it was interesting to try to put some kind of written statement in with the imagery. And in conclusion, GO SHARKS! My game is on in a few, so see y’all tomorrow!

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Day 108: Bee Butts

After yesterday’s photo trip fail, I decided to go for it today with a fully charged camera battery. I started out with wildflowers, and discovered the bees were having a great day in the nectar-collecting business. Most of the photos I got were of the bee’s behinds, however…

…and that pattern stuck with us all the way out into Placerville, where we traveled to enjoy the Annual Apple Blossom festival. We visited the Boa Vista Orchards first, where we picked up some apple-blackberry wine, apple-pumpkin butter, blackberry jam and raw local honey. Somehow, purchasing the honey seemed to alter the bees’ photogenic attitudes, and they began to work with me:

And when we made it to the Lava Cap Winery, where we enjoyed a nice chardonnay with mushroom brie and proscuitto overlooking the forested hillside, Rob even discovered a sweet-smelling bush covered in BUMBLE BEES! It was a real treat. Neither of us had seen a bumblebee in years.

In fact, when we lived in Campbell, we’d see dead bees on the sidewalk often. A lot of people think the mystery of bees dying off suddenly can be attributed to the aerial spraying being conducted under the premise of “geo-engineering”, in which aluminum particulates (like those in sunscreen) are being sprayed into the air to make clouds more reflective and in theory, to prevent global warming. If you’ve ever noticed planes spraying lines that spread out and become hazy clouds, you’ve seen chemtrails in action. This trailer from a documentary detailing scientific findings of serious changes in the ecology of northern California. Prompted by the sudden deaths of fish and trees, scientists were shocked to discover unsafe ph levels in the water and soil, and extremely high parts per million of the chemicals from the aerial spraying- far past EPA ratings. It’s from the website GeoEngineeringWatch.org, which I’d encourage you to take a peek at if you want to learn more.

I used to be afraid of bees, but now I love them. I know they’re just doing their best to survive and support the environment, as well as supply us will all kinds of goodies like honey, royal jelly and bee pollen. And I hope more people will become aware of ways to protect them- and us- by learning about and becoming involved with environmental threats. Hope you enjoyed the busy little bee butts!

Day 13

Today’s painting is brought to you by the letters P I O O M & A! (As in “pulled it out of my ass”.) I didn’t have a photograph to use for the image I wanted, so I figured I’d just cross my fingers and hope it didn’t come out looking like the Michelin Man attacking the yellow brick road. Mom’s going to chuckle to herself when she sees this one, because she’ll remember me whining about how boring and lame landscapes are and how much I hate painting them- which was true years ago. I felt like every piece of “art” I ever saw for sale in a Bed, Bath and Beyond or on the wall at Aaron Brothers was some boring collection of “happy little trees”.. snore, puke, asphixiation threat from snoring and puking at the same time, etc.

But now that I’m a little older and I live closer to the wilderness than I did when I was in the bay area, I enjoy the compositions that nature makes and the big blocks of color. I don’t enjoy painting every tiny little leaf, mind you, (remember- impatient!) but I have found a way to like doing them, as I discovered today, working on this thing.

I expected it to be stormy again all day but it was clear this  morning, for the most part. I really love the drive out to Folsom because it’s so beautiful. The farther out you get into gold country, the more the city structures begin to fall away. The far-off Oaks make blue blotches against the yellow hills. The giant white cotton ball clouds come creeping over the Sierras with cold wind puffing them up, and on a handful of days, we get a nice, deep blue sky.

Unfortunately, most other days the sky is hazy from aerial spraying. Next time it looks like a couple of pilots are playing tic-tac-toe, remember the word “chemtrails” and google it. That’s why there’s a thin white line there in the sky, in contrast to this meringue of a natural cloud, which I textured a bit with a palette knife. I don’t know why the blue and yellow is so stuck on me lately, but I guess I’ve got to just go with it until it’s done- which may be never. I always seem to come back to the primaries. Here it is straight-on: