Self-explanatory

. . .

On the process of creation:

Brain Juice

Distilled thoughts which slop
down on paper like black mud
gritty and viscous
The wade through them
Delicious or sickening, I can't decide
Slats of silt so dark and sweet,
and wide across my vast insides.
Coalescent conceptions wait for their final sauté
A steamy ballet or melting sorbet of the
blind writings of my future protégé
A me which can wipe the left overs away

Brain juices unrefined
break free often from my mind
Tart, bitter, perverse.
Greasy confusion which in the foam rises
through the whirling mentalities of which they're comprised
Spit out on your face, on your hands
and your ego: the frosting of obscene indignation
Stripping my muses of fresh contraband
But everyone yells out false appreciation
for my cognitive custards
As I vomit a slurry of dream elementals
That no one's supposed to understand.

Running Low

My well of previous works is slowly but surely drying up, and soon I'll no longer be able to maintain the pace at which I've been posting. I'm still producing art but only a little bit at a time seeing as it's a hobby and not a career. I will keep this site for as long as possible, and even if I go months between, I'll still update it when I can.

For now, I hope you'll be satisfied with whatever you think this is supposed to be:

I drew it for my cousin who wanted me to draw a wolf, but I instead tried to draw anything but a wolf, and still have the picture look like one. It's almost like one of those hidden picture drawings you find in Highlights magazine at the Dentist's office. How many objects can you find!!

Ant jokes. Hilarious.

Please click to enlarge.
In order to better understand the punchline, just read up on the awesome behavior of these ants.
(C. cylindricus is in the same species complex as C. saundersi)

Koyoten von Weltraum

If I'm not mistaken, it means "Coyote of Outer-space" in German, which happens to be the name of the piece I'll be presenting to you today.

This song was written in 2009 by rock wizard Remy Chan and myself, and we recorded this take just last summer (2010). The recording is dropped 1.5 half steps to give my voice a grittier sound. It could stand to be cleaned up a fair amount but it's quite close to what I'd like the end result to sound like.




Here are the lyrics:

__________________________________________

Gather 'round folks, let me tell you a story
'bout a time in the future where I once have been.
Was a little caballera near Alpha Centauri,
runnin' from the law 'cause she killed 20 men.
At her call was a man made of alloyed steel,
killed for creds cause it was his trade.
Sent to kill the girl, but he fell in love,
so he packed his guns and he changed his ways.
She was there for him, he was by her side.
Hits on their heads, they were forced to hide;
just a gal and her tin man. . . tryin' to stay alive.

Droid and cowgirl chased like game
by the hunter they'd been assigned:
half-man, half-fox, red hair like flames,
and he went by the name of Valentine.
His gun, "cupid," shot plasma beams.
Never went for the head always shot for the heart.
Didn't quite matter where he laid his aim
'cause that damned thing could blow trains apart.
On Hades-6 he finally caught their smell,
and on the barren rock where many men had fell,
he chased them across. . . the plains of hell.

They ran as they could but he quickly gained
when they sheltered each other from the acid rains
that fell all night. . . at Back-Bone Ridge,
And the gorge at the ridge was a mile wide
and they tried to flee to the other side
across the old train line. . . the only bridge,
But the fox was there he had chased enough.
The bot stepped in front to protect his love;
he clenched his iron chin. . . and said "Let the duel begin!"
The girl protested with dread on her face
and Valentine shot on his second pace
so the cyborg would not win. . . but she took the blast for him.

His eyes grew red
with molten tears,
let forth a cry
hollow and fierce.
Drips of blood
on the metal man
flecked the ground
as he madly ran.
He clashed with the fox in a death embrace
of titanic proportions, blasting lasers
split the sky like a violet edge
as they both soared off of the canyon's ledge.

Red dust shifted on a stale wind
and settled on the hot and lifeless land,
but a silver claw rose and from over the lip
came the tall android, a severed head in his hand.
Valentine vanquished and lover avenged,
he wrenched and tore at his body's case,
found the last living part that made him a man
and with his dying act hurled it into space.
You can still see it there shining midst the stars.
Take heed these words I do impart:
Never second guess the love. . . from a steel heart.

_______________________________________

In addition, here's a rendering of my take on the climactic scene of the piece:

 Click for full size, and proportionate majesty.

Noise

__________________________________

       As I walked one dreary evening,

       Trundling though a wooded glen,

       I felt a strange and awkward presence

       Mumbling each now and then.

       This mumbling soon grew into

       A deeply bodied growl,

       Coming from a place nearby,

       Put forth by something foul.

       "Stop!" I said so loudly

       I could see my voice appear

       Wavering in the pitch black,

       I spoke again as it drew near.

       "What are you fiend? Why bother me

       With constant vicious groans?

       Have you come to prey on me

       And pick clean all my bones?

       Why do you growl so?

       Are you a ghoul with skin of gray,

       Or perhaps a succubus

       Here to drink my soul away?

       Stop grumbling you unknown brute,

       You ruthless carnivore!

       Be you changing lycanthrope

       Or twice mouthed manticore?

       What mythic beast could roar as such,

       To shake my very person?

       And since I can not see you,

       My confusion only worsens."

       "Well what are you?" the voice then said,

       "Have you claw or hand?"

       "I," I said, "Am hungry . . .

       Oh now I understand."

___________________________________

The Presidents of Yesterday . . .

. . . TODAY!!!!!!

Here's the first of a string of themed comic gags:

I plan on doing more, but I need to stop worrying about the jokes not making sense because time-traveling presidents is already a stretch. More to come I hope!

Happy Halloween!

A day late, I know, but I hope that everyone had a wonderful weekend filled with good company, zany antics, and most importantly, a fair amount of frightening small children. I find this last bit to be the most important aspect of the entire holiday.

I had such a blast over the entire weekend that I'm already looking forward to next year's Halloween, though the upcoming holiday season is definitely worth getting excited over as well. If there truly is anything better than scaring trick-or-treaters, it's family and mashed potatoes.

 Lysergic Acid (LSD) and God.

    The many faces (and mouths) of dropping acid:





That does happen to be the actual chemical structure reconstructed with some distressingly furry pipe cleaners. I was quite proud of the face paint which I don't think is half bad for being self-administered.

I need a dremel!

Here's the pumpkin I carved last weekend!!

It was a white-skinned pumpkin about the size of a head, so I couldn't pass up the chance to make a skull.

I used an assortment of knives, but primarily a dremel which I had never used before. For those who don't know, a dremel is a rotary power tool with various sanding and drilling bits usually used for metal working, jewelery making. . . etc.

It'd be pretty sweet to light it on fire and make a headless horseman costume =)

"C'est un piège!"

And as we draw ever closer to Halloween, I present yet another costume!

2008's majestic Admiral Ackbar.

Made from a tan t-shirt, an old sweatshirt, two sponges, some markers, a lab coat and some gardening gloves.

"Your Mavis Beacon can't handle wpm of this magnitude!"


Here's me shaping the head over a volley-ball.







"Take evasive action!"

More unpainted sculpture . . .

Here's a bird I gifted to my mum.

It's a Chickadee.

In order to retain the shape of delicate protrusions (e.g., the beak, the legs, etc.), sculpt them ahead of time and bake them by themselves. Then they'll be rigid when you need to add them to the finished piece. This works GREAT with sharp spines and teeth!

Deep-fried alligator on a stick

I have eaten said food, and it has been deemed delicious.

I made a trip out to the Arkansas State Fair. My arteries are now rock solid, but I tried some very interesting food, and learned a lot about alligators and how to effectively frighten small children with alligators. It's been a good week, I'll try to update a little more regularly.

Here is another poem crafted during my trip to Guatemala. It was inspired by maggots, and thus, as an entomologist, it is very close to my heart. The way maggots will literally be when I expire. =D
Enjoy:

______________________________

Fly

Fly so kindly, fly so dainty,
Sculler silver winged,
Casting hums across the void,
With lutes both silver stringed.

Fly so hollow, fly so ugly,
Costume made of bones,
Your music only plays,
for weathered kings on rotting thrones.

Mourning jester, frantic dervish,
Wailing to and fro,
Playing when the banquet ends,
Where few else dare to go.

Fly who glistens, fly who shines,
The last light there for them,
Cry forth to all as you let fall,
Your pale requiem.

____________________________________

Based on a game of "sentence-picture-sentence"

Most people ask for an explanation of the shirt when I wear it, but I find that thinking about the logic detracts from the magic. I usually just say that Batman got the clap from one of Kermit's hos

Three men are playing golf. . .

. . . One of the men happens to be Moses. He tees off, and the wind carries his ball far left where it falls into a pond. The other men laugh at his misfortune but he puts up a hand to silence them. "I got this," he says confidently. Moses plunges his golf-club into the pond, parting the waters like a miniature, duck-infested Red Sea, and he hits the ball out of the now dry pond bed and onto the green.

The second player is Jesus. He tees off, and the same wind brings him similar misfortune, but Jesus' ball remains afloat on the water. He smugly jogs over, stepping on the surface of the pond, and chips his ball up onto the green.

The last man licks his finger and holds it aloft to gauge the wind. He hits the ball in exactly the same manner, and it to is whisked towards the pond . . . but before it hits the surface, an enormous fish leaps from the water and eats the ball. Before the fish even has a chance to hit the water again, a majestic eagle snatches the fish and starts to fly away with it. As the eagle flies over the green, lightning flashes down and kills the bird instantly, causing it to drop the fish. The golf-ball rolls out of the fishes mouth and into the hole for a hole-in-one.

With a sour look on his face, Jesus then turns around and says: "We're not playing like that, dad!"

______________________

And now for your listening pleasure, another theologically themed piece entitled "God's Song," written by Randy Newman, and performed by yours truly:

Old Comics

Here's some old comic-ing from Highschool:
 

I tried to do a series of these, but this was the only remotely funny one. Then that whole Geico thing happened and Homo erectus wasn't funny anymore.

October

Time for more costumes!

The Spirit of Jazz
from the show "The Mighty Boosh"


Halloween 2009

The character in the show is to Jazz, what Satan is to Rock and Roll.









Here's a shot of just the face make up.

And here's me about to eat Peter Parker's brains

Great weekend

Here's a comic:

M-m-m-molluscs

I do find molluscs to be very cool. So much that I crafted a pair of earrings for a similarly passionate friend of mine in the shape of nautilus shells. Plugs for gauged ears to be specific.

The picture isn't that clear, and this is just one of the two. Made from sculpey which was then further chiseled and sanded after being baked to get those small nooks. Painted with acrylic paints including a pale gold that stunningly matched the color and quality of nacre (what accounts for the shimmer of pearls, and the inside of an abalone shell). What it represents is actually a cross-section of the shell so that you can see into all of the chambers, and a real shell follows a logarithmic spiral so it actually wouldn't close in on itself. I just wanted to make them circles.

Some poetry from one of those pesky existential crises:

Fault of Empathy

Could you ever see what I see?
If I put your eyes inside my head,
Perhaps I'd see bitter instead of red.
There are no echoes for sight, visions will never stay the same
So how does one claim that their physical nature is truth,
When your reality is only really a collection of light?
PERCEPTION . . . not just a question
About your state of being
or if what you're seeing is real, but how.
How is now the question of your own connection
to all that's around you, the effect of that blue which
hides in the sky's reflection.
Does it actually touch where your feelings and such reside?
And when it makes that impression, can you honestly say that you've felt exactly that way before?
What more, have you tried to remember every way you've felt while seeing that blue upon prior inspection?
As those recollections fade, we create new inventions of understanding, it's how we grow.
Can you ever know what I know?

Old Costumes

Still in the process of coming up with and constructing a costume. I need something that won't be time intensive, but also something that's original and shows how much I care for the spirit of getting in character.Presented here are some costumes from 2006 and 2008:

This demon costume was initially slated to be accompanied with black wings, but I never finished duct-taping those coat-hangers together.


Otherwise, it was a simple assemblage of body paint, hair dye spray, and a ragged black robe for the bottom. The scythe was some inked wood lashed to a large stick.

When all the soul reaping is said and done, the damned still know how to have a good time.


The party I went to was hosted by friends of friends of friends, and as a result I did not know who to apologize to when I found out that I got red face paint all over EVERYTHING. Ceiling, fridge, walls, other people, toaster, chairs, etc . . .


The mechanic butterfly is my friend Ross, btw.

In 2008 I went as a robot handed coal-miner. . . at least that's what I told most people when they didn't understand what I meant by "Steampunk engineer."


Here's a nice description of what that entails:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk


The vest, fingerless glove, and pick were borrowed items, but the rest was cobbled from leather, paper, and dumpster scraps with a hot-glue gun.

These goggles had lenses from my old 

glasses in them so that I could still see. 

The leather came from an old hat.

My robot arm was constructed of woven titanium, had a load potential of 400 lbs, and was capable of bouncing 30 quarters into plastic cups of beer in 23.75 seconds.


It also had clock gears glued to it. . . just for fun.

Productivity?

Shredder Shredding

-2007

-Pencil on homework

If you look closely enough at the scan, you can see the printed text of an old assignment on the other side.

Coincidentally, I'm posting this as a means of procrastination.

Ants are cool

Here's a big ol' post which includes several drawings completed during my 2 week trip to Borneo. If you're curious about the trip itself I can show you photos, but this isn't the proper forum for that seeing as I didn't take any of the photos.
Over the 2 weeks we got to know and appreciate the 13 professional myrmecologists teaching us about ants, and some of the students decided to put together a thank you presentation. Someone launched the idea of making a key to the instructors, the way one makes a dichotomous key to identify organisms. For those of you who aren't familiar, a dichotomous key is something like:

1 :  specimen has 11 antennal segments . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1': specimen has 12 antennal segments . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2 : specimen has wrinkly buttocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2': specimen does not have wrinkly buttocks . . . . . . . Franklin

3:  . . . .etc.

It's like a chose your own adventure of knowledge.

We put together a slide show splitting out the professors according to gender, physical attributes like hair color, and also according to character and things that made them memorable. It was our chance to give thanks, but also poke fun at them in a sensible way. In order to complement the species descriptions, I made the following caricatures of the instructors:

I made them all a bit smaller so that this post wouldn't be horribly long; so please click on them and look at them at full size!

It might be a little soon

. . . for Halloween festivities to be well under way, but I hear people talking about it and see them getting excited already, and it reminds me how much I love Halloween. In preemptive celebration I'm going to start posting costumes I've worn, and for the most-part made.

Kicking it off is Jack Skellington from Halloween 2005:

Seeing as I was even skinnier back then, I made for a pretty convincing skeleton. That and a vertical pinstripe can be very slimming.













Here's another shot of me lamenting:

More costumes to be posted before this year's Hallows, but now the main dilemma is coming up with this years costume and finding the time to put it together.

I'll be attending a Mad-scientist/Sci-Fi party so at least I have some guidelines to start from.

I can't wait!

Moving right along

Because I have yet to post anything text-based, I thought I'd put up a poem. Here's one that I concocted in a Texas airport on my way down to Guatemala last summer (2009). I was inspired by a man I saw who seemed to be . . . bitterly uninspired.

_______________________

Lump

Oh here comes Mr. Toad.

Gullet drooped like dripping tallow,

Little leering nodes,

And skin like soap eroded—shallow pits of sickly pallor—

And his knuckles knots of rope.

His eyes spit mist of swollen sorrow

All across your toes.

No taller than your feet he grows.

No innocence he knows.

Slack-jawed staring, hardly caring

What bones he cracks or brains he lacks.

His smugness stays intact

As he waddles through his woes,

Bottled in his mottled clothes

Of slimy sin and salty grins.

Oh why so bitter, grim Sir Toad?

The loads you bear are paltry, hardly fair

To call them grandiose.

They’re composed of your own shyness,

Squinting faces of the self you loathe.

How can you dare to hate us so when you were born a fetid soul?

Redemption thrown through pleading windows, that’s the fate you chose.

__________________________

I'm going to go get a glass of juice. Cheers.

-T

Apparently pinching doesn't work

Last night I had a dream where my teeth were falling out. It's one I have fairly consistently, and as a result, I became aware this time that it was likely unreal. In the dream I began to pinch myself with increasing force, but nothing happened and the dream proceeded as normal. When I woke up it took me a while to remember that it had happened, but I seem to have lost a little faith in reality.

Moving on. Here's a sculpture I did last February (2010). I didn't have anything in mind when I started making it, so its form was plucked from the aether and surprised me as it manifested.

Maybe one day it will be painted, and as long as we're dreaming, I'd really like to make a cast of it and make resin replicas. We'll see how that goes.

I only have a little scrap of Sculpey left and I haven't been able to find anywhere to buy more in Arkansas yet, so my sculpting may cease for the time being.

May you always wake up when you want to,

-Theo

Subsisting on caffeine and kitten giggles

. . . and the latter of the two are fairly hard to come by, so I'm pretty tired.
The weekend is here and I'm going to be baking pies. You can't be mad or stressed (or any other negative emotion) when you bake a pie. It's just not possible.
The only food related piece I have is a shirt from last year, rendered for my good friend Steve.

Picamas was our "hotsauce of choice" when traveling around Guatemala. It was green and opaque, and looked a lot like Ninja Turtle ooze, but it was also delicious. We joked about going to the factory where it's produced (wherever that may be), and picking up a shirt for Steve, but we never did, so I made one with fabric markers. The picture is just what's on the label.

Best. Tent buddy. Ever.

Now back to work, and daydreaming of desserts.

Legos are the building blocks of my childhood

Here's a stop-animation I made 4 years ago over the summer. I used Legos and a little bit of MSPaint, and it all took around 2 weeks to put together. I've wanted to animate more but the time investment is a bit much for my current lifestyle. That and I didn't lug all of my Legos down to Arkansas.

This video is set to a great Johnny Cash song which warns of the dangers of mixing politics with . . . well really with Anything else.

Enjoy

My family just got bigger

I want to wish the warmest of congratulations to my sister Elise and my new brother in law Jonathan. I just got back from their lovely wedding where amazing food, company, and dancing were in abundance. It's gems of comfort like this that really fuel you through the year. =)

All that I have to post that is slightly relevant are some sketches from the bike-trip in Tuscany I went on with them several months ago:

The first is a wishing well from a courtyard in San Gimignano.
The second is a low angle shot of an arched walk way in the same town.

The last one (below) is the top of the Duomo di Siena as seen from across town.

 

Each sketch was done in a couple of hours with mechanical pencil on heavy acid-free paper . . . if it matters. Please click the photos so you can see them full size; they look much better that way. This is true for everything I post on this blog.

. . . torn apart by idle hands . . .

Today's piece is from a couple of years ago:

Tiger Mask

-Fall 2008
-Paper, markers, tape
-Not of my own design, actually from an old french template I found in my garage back in California
-Not a mask for wearing, more of a wall decoration

Paper Tiger: also a really cool Beck song.

Facebook Graffiti app and it's wonders.

I'm behind on my scanning, so today I've only pooled some old Facebook graffit. If you haven't checked out the work that some people are able to produce with such a simple engine, I suggest you check out their archives. The best part is that you can watch a replay of any piece as it's being drawn!

Some generic zombie slaying from summer 2008





This represents a hilariously dressed tourist from the Louvre dubbed "Skipper" imbibing Glogg, a spiced cider purchased at Ikea, and forcibly extracting teeth from Diablo of the Blizzard game franchise. It's kindof a "you had to be there" concept, but it's fun to look at.


  

 Finally we have Dragon Eye Morrison from the film "Electric Dragon 80,000 volts." A very strange and slightly worthwhile movie where Dragon Eye roams around Tokyo for about an hour looking for lizards and then in the last 10 minutes does battle with his nemesis: Thunderbolt Buddha. No joke.

I'm not 100% sure that those are the right Japanese characters.

Welcome!

My first post upon returning from ant-studying travels abroad in Borneo. The goal is to have a record of everything I've created, and of course being able to share all of it with friends.

To kick things off: a hood ornament I made for my '81 Volvo:

Beastacles: (like Hercules but with a "beast" instead of a "Hercu")

  -March 2010
  -Made with Super Sculpey and acrylic paint.

Unfortunately one of the spines has since broken off, but it's amazingly intact despite what it's driven through.

He likes to eat bugs and listen to the Doobie Brothers.









Here it is fresh out of the oven:


UPDATE: This piece was chipped off the hood of my car with a crowbar by some asshole in Kansas City, Missouri. My car stopped working about two months after that.

Seriously . . . WTF >.<