Memory Hole

This is mostly a pretty crummy drawing of nothing in particular. Or, at least, it sort of is of something, but it ended up coming out all wrong, as usual. Good thing my so-called aesthetic’s all built around wrongness. Anyway…at least I’ll be ready to spot-illustrate a story someplace when they get around to reimagining 1984, which I’m sure they’ll do soon enough. Like, they’ll give it the Michael Bay treatment, which means the Thought Police’ll be souped-up Robocops, and Julia will be a Swedish supermodel, and Winston (I’m guessing Mark Wahlberg) will kick O’Brien’s ass hard and will then free all the sexcriminals from the Ministry of Love and also overthrow the Oligarchy with the help of a cute CGI mutant named Mouse (which is just her nickname from the space orphanage – she’s actually half kangaroo, with Tina Turner hair). Or, you know, something like that. And, of course, it’ll be called 2084, ’cause that’s more futuristic. And Winston’s job won’t be in censorship…it’ll be…oh, let’s say he’s a bounty hunter, employed by the leaders of Airstrip One (which’ll instead be named Neo York, or perhaps Victory Dome) to hunt down dissidents, but who has a giant change of heart when he sees Julia in a shirt emblazoned with a catchy slogan. A shirt that’s for some reason wet all the time.

Illustration Friday – Voices

This was a sort of rejected sketch for a record cover. Which, you know, I mostly get why it was rejected, but for some dumb reason I still kind of like it. Although it is, of course, way too simple and everything.

Future Style of Beach House

Just trying to get back to sketching, after about eighty months of dealing with completely Other stuff. So far, my pen’s not cooperating too much, and I guess also my brains or eyes or whatever. But, over the holidays, I hope I can maybe get back up to speed. I mean, I’d be happy if the speed was at least five miles an hour. Anyway, just to give this thing a title, let’s say it’s a picture from the year 9999 of a vaguely psychedelic type of beach house. Or, I guess it could be a library. Or possibly it’s a weird kind of shed for a backyard tokamak. The people in the corner were supposed to belong to a whole big story, but the story fell apart on account of it had zero actual story elements, other than just two futuristic people wandering around a futuristic city.

Very Fast Radio

I was just rereading Cordwainer Smith’s 1963 story “Drunkboat,” even though I was supposed to be working on my Comm final (and also at long last drawing some actual brand new pictures), when I ran across the phrase “in sta nt me ss age,” which is described in the story as a kind of really expensive FTL telegraph between the Earth and distant planets (I like the expensive part the best, ’cause of how it implies tons of effort and massive amounts of humongous machinery). So, anyway, I’m going to go ahead and propose that Mr. Smith’s mention of IM was the first ever use of that term in the modern sense (although I guess none of us in the unfictional world text or IM at superluminal speeds, no matter how fast we type). Of course, I know my proposal is subject to correction, since there was probably some obscure Victorian futurist who wrote “instant message” in a story or a poem before Cordwainer Smith, but, whatever, I still like to think he was the inventor, as he was the inventor of so many other cool and evocative ideas, such as The Great Pain of Space, and Stop- and Go-Captains, and planoforming ships that looked, on the inside, like anything but spaceships. Of course, I’m sure this etymological observation’s been made before, but I can’t be bothered to google it to see for sure, and besides, I really, really need to get back to work, since I have this Big Rule that I ought not blog unless it’s to upload art, and also because various important grades depend on if I get all my projects done on time. Meaning, that’s all from this word nerd for now.

Ring

So, as usual, there’s nothing too thrilling to report, except that we cast our rings in jewelry class last week, and after 90 hours of grinding and polishing, I guess mine’s finally done. You can sort of see it in the sort of blurry picture down below. And, yeah, just so you know, ’cause I know you’re mentally asking me through the ether, the shape of the fake jewel part’s an upside-down volcano. Which is probably what you thought it was, already, come to think of it.

Anyhow, I’m glad Bryn likes it, ’cause it’s sort of a gigantic ring to have to haul around all over the place. I mean, not being a jewelry guy, and having zero sense about how much silver actually weighs, I ended up with a ring that’s not only ostentatious but also handy for fending off whoever you might sometimes need to fend off. But, at least it was a fun process, the whole lost wax thing, so if and when I ever get near wax again, I’m gonna try and do it better.

Otherwise, I had a hell of a time writing the artist’s statement I was supposed to write for my other art class. It’s still not very good, but maybe by the time I have to write an official one I’ll finally be at least half a real artist, and also might be at least a little more familiar with how to write English sentences. Oh, and I guess I had to write this critique thing, too, which was of course pretty painful, although I was only 25% as brutally honest about my own work this semester as I should’ve been. Mostly my work was way short of the mark, but I’m in the neighborhood, I think, of figuring out how to get where I wanna go. It’s a sketchy neighborhood, is the only problem, but I’ve seen worse places.