THE HUMAN CANVAS - A Snake Handler!

Let me start

by saying that, for this

edition of The Human Canvas, 

I'm proud once again to show the

handywork of my

goddaughter.

And once again,

to protect her anonymity,

we'll just refer to her as

"Kalynn Smothers".

I first published

a handfull of these a month or so back,

with a post entitled Now, Some REAL Handywork,

(link to it HERE) and have been anxiously awaiting

the next bunch.

She thoughtfully called

the above session "Green Ribbon",

and was free to admit that she doesn't

really know what this next one is.

It reminds me of that

"yarn-wrapped around nails in a board" 

art that ya end up making at Vacation Bible School,

or Cub Scouts or something. At least, that's all

I can put my finger on.

This next one makes me think of holiday decorations.

A handy reminder.

And with my recent

delving into trying to represent flowers,

of COURSE I like this thumbnail.

Beyond the flower - it looks divine!

(((divine? da-vine? THE VINE? Hello? Is this thing on?)))

Oh yeah. 

I almost forgot.
A snake handler? 

Back to that first shot.
She drew a snake. On her hand. 
She's a snake handler. 

Okay?

Oy.

Thanks again "Kalynn".

I'll share 'em as often as you will.

And Val... and Ray... you know who you are...

Thanks for being cool with this.

 

Please check back - more Human Canvas

just around the corner.

 

But thanks for stopping by this time.

THE HUMAN CANVAS - Here Be Pirates! Arrrrr....

Arrrr.

That's a friend of mine, Mike.

He's served as photographer for a few

Human Canvas sessions, and we've often talked

about turning the ink onto him.

The sessions he's served

as photographer on... ALL quite nice.

Links to some of those sessions HERE, HERE,

HERE, and HERE. He has quite a few real tattoos,

and, like me, the only one he really wants

to cover is his own name.

Mine HAS been.

Funny.

Anyway,

So this turned into

a nice new experiment. I've often wanted

to color in an existing tattoo...

...As well as see

what Sharpie ink does to cover ink

that's IN the skin.

So THERE'S the cover-up of one tattoo.

Now to start coloring in the other.

Close up for some detail...

I chose to add a bit of the belly

to that side section. The curve of this snake

is a bit awkward for me to envision.

...And now, back out for the hair.

(which I'd always seen, by the way, as flames.

We WILL be revisiting this one before he gets it

colored in and detailed.

For reals, that is.

 

I also paid more

attention (FINALLY) to where

I might need to lay my hand as I'm drawing,

so I didn't detail and color in the snake

completely before working

on the hair.

Add two more layers of color to the hair,

then add a background.

Mike's Irish, so...

...Add a four-leaf clover...

...OH!

And a plume!

Ya can't have a pirate hat without a plume!

So...

One clover and plume later...

Here be pirates!

Arrrrrrr!

We call him Mike.

We'll be hitting this one again,

as well as filling in and adding

to his other tattoos.

Check back for that.

There's some fun stuff coming!

Thanks Mike.

And thank YOU for checking this out.

Still more in the wings waiting to get out there.

Soon.

The Human Canvas - A Floating Rose

Yeah.

Yeah. I know. 

That's a fish. We'll get to that rose.

But this shot... 
It was really kind of a cool fluke.
A friend of mine, Mike Munoz, was taking
photos for me that night, which allowed my hands
and pen(s) to be in the shots. With the darker edges
on top, as well as the placement of the pen, it ended
up with a bit of a 3-d look. 

REALLY happy about that one!

This is the the one 

that got me thinking about it. 

The rose, that is. Not just a rose, though. 

Drawing a rose which had more depth... 

a 3-d effect... almost floating.

So, three colors 

and some black later...

...um, 

and a stem...

Here's that rose.

Now during our photo sessions, 

both during the Human Canvas portions, 

as well as the general portraiture and costumed shoots, 

I'd occasionally try to make her laugh. 

I think these shots 

were the most personality driven, 

and - by my eye - showed some real honesty 

and warm moments.

Okay?

Back to the rose. At one point, 

while taking shots of this rose experiment, 

I noticed something in my photo that I thought 

I should share with her... 

But I had to be ready 

to take another photo as SOON as it was said. 

Morbid, maybe, but I told her I thought she'd make 

a beautiful corpse.

This is the reaction I got... and was hoping for.

Did I say back to the rose?

Not much more to do.

Add some black, and then gray, to the top edge, 

placed JUST at the collar bone, which will 

add some more shadow...

And step back a bit.

Holding on to it...

Or just floating...

I'm happy with this little experiment. 

One that I'll be going back to. That is, playing 

with the shadows for some 3-D effect. 

Hope you're there to see it.

Thanks for stopping by.

SOOOOoooooo.... much more to come!

Take Five, Dave.

This is the album.

THE album

 

 

This is an album

that you owned even if you weren't into jazz. 

This, and Kinda Blue from Miles Davis.

 

Today, December 5th, 2012,

just into the 9 0'Clock hour, I found out that

Dave Brubeck had just died.

 

I have very little to say on this.

Yet so much, I think.

 

Tears come to my eyes

each time I see another facebook post,

or reply of some sort. Dave Brubeck was a great,

great man in the world of music He explored

something outside of the norm, yet maintained

a feel that remained pleasing.

 

SO many artists of ANY sort

lose this in desperation to do their own thing.

Brubeck's thing - was in his timing.

Time signatures, specifically.

 

(((ahhh, now at 10:05am PST,

I finally hear the first on air announcement with NPR news headlines)))

 

(((SO glad I bought this some years back)))

 

Dave Brubeck,

beyond exploring alternatives

to the world of commonplace meter,

also had impeccable comic timing as well.

Somewhere out there, there's a recording of

Dave playing at the Monterrey Jazz festival. I forget

the year, but it's on a couple of collections. Dave's

playing (I think) For All We Know. In the

middle of it, a plane flies over. A LOUD plane. Like

twin props or some big cargo plane or something.

Anyway. Dave continues the song while the plane

flies over, then... once the noise of the plane has

died down JUST enough, ya hear Dave playing

"...off we go... into the wild blue yon-der...".

The crowd laughed it up a LOT, then

Dave finished the tune

he started with.

 

My favorite Dave Brubeck album

is Moscow Night, out on Concord Records.

Oddly enough, ass I type this, a friend from KVCR

just sent me an e-mail mentioning "The Un-square dance"

- on Moscow Night. So many great ones though.

The "college albums", Young Lions and Old Tigers,

Dave Digs Disney... Far too many greats out

there to choose just one

as a favorite.

 

 

 

But always... Always... go back to Time Out.

 

Dave Brubeck died

within a day or so of his 92nd birthday.

He died of heart failure. He didn't go down in a plane.

He didn't lose it to the needle, or some other kind of abuse.

He was not someone who died in his 20's or 30's or 40's

and died "far too soon", with "so much of his life

ahead of him". Although if he had not died

until well past 120... it would have

been far too soon.

 

He was still performing. He was still introducing

people to his passions. 

 

 

I'll mention again the

"Young Lions and Old Tigers" release.

This came out in the mid 90's on Telarc, and

featured Roy Hargrove, Joe Lovano, Christian McBride, Michael Brecker... no matter who I mention, I'll be

leaving someone out. So I'll stop here. Dave Brubeck

wanted to be remembered as someone who opened doors.

 

He did.

It's not gonna stop the tears though.

 

As soon as

I found out about Brubeck's death,

I sent a message to a friend, Tarik Townsend.

Tarik was someone who stumbled into KVCR one

day to ask about Ozzy and Harriet. We were talking

jazz REAL soon, and it was ever so apparent that his knowledge of Brubeck exceeds any encyclopedia entry anywhere. It's Tarik's words I leave you with.

I'm putting them in without

even reading them.

 

"To many, Dave Brubeck was an innovator of musical time. To others, he was a bombastic pianist who couldn’t swing and played in the wrong key. Multiple wrong keys. But to me, a 15 year old school boy, Mr. Brubeck was a musician who embodied all the qualities of jazz, and then some.
 
I actually thought Mr. Brubeck was black when I first heard him, playing from a stereo in the office of my school. Thanks to the secretary, who gave me the C.D., a love (or obsession) of all things Brubeck was sparked. Brubeck became my hero and role model, not to mention my favorite musician ever, transcending genre, time period, or what have you. The fact that he stayed true to himself in everything he did made a big impression on me. The quality of his that sealed the deal with me was his staunch stance against Jim Crow, highlighted by his hiring of a black bassist in 1958, the thick of the Civil Rights movement. To me, a black young man, this was more remarkable than his musical innovations. A white jazz musician who hired a black bassist and made toe-tapping, head-bobbing music? Was Dave Brubeck a real person?

In short, Dave Brubeck was and is my hero, the musician to which all others are compared. His music has provided the soundtrack to my life for the past seven years, and, along with his Quartet (with alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, my 2nd favorite musician) has become more than a great jazz group. I learned many lessons from him, his group, and his lifestyle. Up to that point, I thought of white jazz musicians as being ‘also-rans’, cute but not to be taken seriously. He completely changed that thought process, introducing me to the West Coast ‘Cool Jazz’ movement of the 1950’s and forcing me to look at Bill Evans and others with new eyes and ears. Above all, he has become family. Though I’ll miss him terribly, I think Brubeck got the last laugh. After playing Desmond’s hit ‘Take Five’ for over 50 years, Brubeck took five."

 

Tarik Townsend
12/5/2012 

Thank you Tarik.

 

And thank YOU for reading this.

Although it may be old news by now.
When Richard Wright passed away,
my night was full of Floyd. With Adam Yauch,
it was the Beasties.

Tonight I know it's gonna be Dave.
Try it. And YOU... go find some Brubeck.
And listen with just a BIT of a different ear.

The Human Canvas - A No Frills Dragon!

Okay. 

SOME Frills.

This one's fairly straight forward.

A nice step-by-step representation

on this one.

...And it MAY be amongst 

the best coupla dragons to date 

(on a Human Canvas, that is).

A link to one of

my other recent favorites is HERE,

and a rant about me not being able to draw

them a certain way, HERE.

I just finally stopped 

referring to them all as Smaug. 

Especially with the movie about to

come out and all. 

If you've been living in a cave,

that's The Hobbit, I'm referencing.

If you've been living in ancient Dwarven caverns...

then you already knew.

I actually started
with a couple of yellow lines
for a reference point. I wanted to maintain
this figure-8 shape.

Though in this case, 

I was really thinking of the symbol 

for infinity.

I also have come to

love the fact that little errors,

or imperfections - don't really matter.

They'll be covered up, or worked into the design,

at a later point.

And I've noted - 

This seems to be on its way 

to becoming my own amalgamation of the dragon. 

A bit of the European and the Asian variety...

and whatever else is there.

And I'm wondering - 

wouldn't it be okay in this case to say "Oriental"?

I mean... we're talking about something exoticised 

from some mysterious other place,

or place of the other,

right?

Anyway - 

Done. Except that I had 

forgotten to draw in a garter as well. 

This was the original intention.

Another intention was to show off the boots.

And now both pieces together.

And now a few shots 

of the fading process. I'll have to double check 

my info on this, but I believe these next three shots 

were consecutively on the next days after the session, 

which was on a Sunday.

The shot above - 

wear from clothing and from a short sleep.

Thanks to this canvas, we MAY know now that tighter

clothing will actually protect the piece. Looser

clothing will rub accross it more often.

Even something gently layed,

like a shawl.

We saw this about a month later.

Showers, sleep, AND a change of

clothing  wore these off over the next two days.

And earlier... 

Did I say BOTH pieces together? 

The two shown here were actually only 2 of 3 that

day. The next... A wonderful experiment.

A successful one, I think.

Check back. 

It's on the way.