Work in Progress

I'm working on a blog redesign and haven't figured everything out yet.  Bear with me: the design instructions are as clear as mud.

3 Guesses

If you really can't guess the name, I've failed miserably - or you had a deprived childhood.  Regardless, let me know and I'll enlighten you. 

Acrylic on canvas.  11" x 14"

This was my experimental canvas, used to try out various techniques like watercolor, wash, drip, cheesecloth and spattering - and to see the color interplay.  After all the screwing around, some parts looked really great, some really ugly.  I'd been trying to decide what to do with the darn thing, finally got an inspiration a couple days ago and painted the above 'masterpiece'.

Abstracted backgrounds appeal to me big time, will be using them frequently.

Summer 2012

This map shows our summer travel route and the stops along the way.  As the numbers imply, we'll be doing the loop clockwise.  Most of the stops indicate overnights but some are just there to force the software (Streets & Trips) to take the route we prefer instead of the one it likes.

This will be our 3rd summer of travel in our EDGE travel trailer.  Last summer, doing the Canadian Maritimes, we logged 11263 miles in 80 days.  The summer of 2010 we went to Alaska: 14819 miles; 116 days.  This year we'll pull the trailer about 3500 miles and log an additional 1000 miles of side trips in the pickup over a period of 65-70 days.  So, we'll be spending a lot less time driving and setting up/breaking camp, a lot more time enjoying the scenery, hiking, and so on.   

The map itself was generated by the S&T software mentioned above.  I printed a copy of the map, then scanned it into the computer as a jpeg file.  There's probably a slick way of  grabbing  the map directly from the S&T itinerary and plopping it into the blog but I'll be damned if I can figure out how it's done.  Spent nearly 2 hours dicking around with copy/ paste, save to file, etc.  It's not the first time I've tried, either.  It is the last, though.  Piss on it.

Helix

White contains all colors while black is the absence of color.  That's what we learned in school.  In painting though, black is a color and it comes in various shades - or you can mix up your own custom shades.  Shades produced from 2 or more colors are called chromatic.  And that's the end of today's art lesson - which, most readers are thinking, is a good thing because they find the subject slightly less exciting than, well ......... watching paint dry.

On Cat's Eye I used flat mars black for the background.  The Helix background is a chromatic, consisting of dark blue, light dog crap (burnt sienna), and a dab of red.  Backgrounds don't come through well in photographs but viewed up close and personal, they make a considerable difference.  I'm using a different shade of black background on each of the nebula paintings.  When completed and grouped together on the wall, the different backgrounds should make the display more interesting.  To me, anyway.

Helix Nebula

Second in a series.

Acrylic on canvas; 16" x 20".

Helix, like Cat's Eye, is a planetary nebula, a star in it's death throes.  Helix may be the closest nebula to earth, a mere 650 light years away.  It's called Helix because astronomers think it's a trillion mile long tube and that, when viewed from earth, we're looking at it end on - looking right down the center of the tube.  How they came to this conclusion I haven't a clue.  Helix is large for a planetary nebula, somewhere in the 2-5 light year range in width.  Colorful little bugger.

Cat's Eye

Nebulae (the plural of nebula) are huge interstellar clouds of dust or ionized gases, mostly helium and hydrogen.  Nebulae used to refer to all objects that weren't obviously planets, stars or comets.  Now, with the Hubble and advanced science the term has become more specific.  They come in 4 flavors: emission, reflection, dark and planetary.  Emission types generate their own light with high temperature gases, while reflection types are dust-based and reflect light from nearby stars.  Both are star incubators: Mr and Mrs Ion get it on and out pops a brand new star.  Oh, isn't it the cutest 'little' thing!  Bright, too!  Pass those cigars around! 

Dark nebulae, also dust-based, appear mostly in silhouette because they are parked in front of a light source.  The gaseous remains of dying stars are called planetary nebulae, although they have nothing to do with planets.  They neither make planets nor consume them; they just happen to look like planets when viewed through a wimpy telescope.

Nebulae are, in my opinion, the most colorful and photogenic items in the cosmos.  And therein lies the reason I'm writing about them here; my latest art project is a nebula.  Semi-abstract art appeals to me and I've been casting about for inspiration, something a little different but not overly weird.  Nebulae fit the bill.  Yeah, yeah, I know: a painting that obviously duplicates an actual object is not abstract.  In this case, the abstract artwork was done by Big Mama and she did one hell of a job.  Unlike Brownie in New Orleans.

 

Cat's Eye Nebula

 Acrylic on canvas; 16" x 20"

Cat's Eye, my favorite nebula, is a colorful, attractively-shaped planetary type.  I'm doing a series of 3-4 nebula paintings.  When I'm done, I'll encourage readers to select their own favorite.

Doggerel lll

Not much that's newsworthy here so I'm posting another doggerel.  If you're new to the blog and like this one, a couple others were posted in September, 2011.

GRAVITY

Gravity keeps most things in place,
Instead of drifting off in space.

Lacking it, we’d float away,
Unless tethered night and day.

Food would rise up off our plate,
Dogs and cats would levitate.

But gravity has a darker side,

That assaults our bodies, wounds our pride.

Bodies hard, straight, athletic,

Gravity strives to turn pathetic.

What once was a taut hard belly,

Evolves into a bag of jelly.

Offsetting all those sagging guts,

Are flaccid, drooping ugly butts.

Women’s breasts, once firm and pert,

Hang and flop like bags of dirt.

Hair that once adorned our head,

Heads south, comes out our ears instead.

Faces that once were tight and sleek,

Now flabby jowls and rubber cheeks.

Exercise though you might,

Gravity’s going to win this fight.

For this, Newton was dubbed a knight,

Now I ask you, “Does that seem right?”

It just makes be kind of sick,

Calling that twit ‘Sir Issac.’

Mike Delaney
7-6-05
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