Pyrotechnics in Powderhorn

Man, it's been a minute since Painting Mondays were in effect.
But hopefully they are back on track, now,
after getting re-inspired out at Jeff Gogue's shop last week.
I started this one out there,
and finished(?) it this afternoon.
I used a photo that Meryl had texted me that morning as reference,
which you can see it on the "i love dead birds" blog here.
And if you're into that kind of thing,
check out Zadora's addition today.

Oil 8x8

















Some friends came over for a picnic style dinner tonight,
then we met up with our neighbors,
and walked across the street to the fireworks.
Powderhorn celebrates only the best holidays,
and Powderhorn Park is one of three spots to see fireworks in Minneapolis.
I love this neighborhood.

We brought a few blankets,
enough sparklers to share with everyone,
and had ourselves a time.
Meryl has a fancy new camera,
and snapped some shots of everything.


































I hope everyone had a super loud,
and bright bright bright 4th of July weekend.
Back to work tomorrow,
but it looks like a full week of fun on the books.
Some old awesome clients I haven't seen in a long time came out of hiding,
and new ones appeared out of nowhere.
(sounds so good to me)
I hope they're ready,
I just got filled up with lemonade and blackpowder.

A different kind of 'Painting Monday'

I don't know what other people do on their days off,
but here at Louderhorn Inn,
there's always something absurd going down.
(and it usually involves Ryan)

I spent today doing my taxes and mail art and rogue taxidermy.
Ryan is combining an alligator head with a goose body,
(both from old, broken mounts)
and he had to make a new neck for it.
And since he only does the manliest kind of art-making,
he ignored paper-mâché and clay and latex molds,
and made the neck out of spray foam installation instead.
That actually isn't even the whole story, it's worse than that.
He also used glue and sawdust.
No kidding.
And it looks so good.
But it was all yellow and gross colored,
so he asked me to paint it to look alligator-ish.
I think it came out pretty well,
and I can't wait to see the finished mount.
I believe that after we take some professional glamour shots,
this beautiful creature will be up for sale.
I'll keep you posted.

Weekending.

This week's Painting Monday wasn't as productive as I was hoping.
I started painting this warthog skull as practice,
but I only got a couple hours into it before I was needing certain spots to dry
before I could go back into them.
I guess it's a lot like tattooing.
If you do a spot orange,
it's going to be a bitch to try and change it to white a couple minutes later.
So when I went to tighten up the mouth area,
I realized it'd have to wait till another day.
(of course, the skull is being painted from life,
since I Ryan keeps finding me the sickest skulls around,
and working off of google images is not dope at all)

I also had a bunch of drawings to do for this work week starting tomorrow.
As long as everything goes as planned,
it should be a full week of tattoo photos for the blog (portfolio?).
It's funny the waves that exciting tattoo projects come in.
Sometimes it's awesome all week long,
and sometimes it's......not.