In the past couple weeks, I’ve been feeling anxious about a lot of the drawings I have online. I’m not sure exactly what prompted this anxiety. I suspect that what happened is that some part of my brain feels that many of the themes that were coming out in the drawings need to be laid to rest.

A lot of the drawings are about feeling sick (from lupus), having migraines, feeling lonely, searching for artistic identity, and… I get this overwhelming sense of explosive artistic energy that needed to go somewhere… and never really found outlet in those drawings. Ultimately, I stopped the project, because I felt like it was too much of a burden to have to come up with something daily– especially when the drawings usually turned out so poorly.

I started the “sketch a day” project on December 16, 2007. On September 7, 2008, I didn’t do a drawing, and noted the excuse, “sick sick sick”. On September 15th I didn’t do one– the note was “malaise. incurable malaise.” On September 18th I put the project on hold indefinitely.

I respect the impulses that led me to do that project… but it no longer feels appropriate for many of those drawings to be public. I have a much stronger sense of artistic direction now. I have very concrete ideas about what I want to do. I continue to work on those things when I get a chance (which isn’t much). In general, I like some things more, and some things less.

I remember that when I was a young adult I was very confused about the concept of “preference”. I wondered how people could have such strong preferences for things. (Food, clothing, music.) I realize now that I was so afraid to assert my own personality that I just assumed I didn’t have any preferences or personality at all. What strange times…!

Anyway, I want to sing those times a lullaby and put them to rest.

Here are the sketches that remain public.

Moth, 2008

Why? Because you see….

#10, 2007

He had to be eliminated, 2008

I am a jealous god, 2008

Of course, I took the idea from some found-paper artwork I found on the wall in an acquaintance’s bathroom in 2007, which was much better than my pieces and Austin Kleon’s pieces. I have no idea who the artist was.

*I don’t know if validated is the right way to explain it. It was the opposite feeling of seeing something and saying, “Hey, I could make that!” (much to the annoyance of everyone around me). It was, “Hey, I made that… and it was kind of boring.”

It occurs to me that I could get this information from a Mechanical Turk. I guess it’s time to think about how much I’m willing to pay for the goods.

Oh also, if you haven’t watched this HARD TIMES episode about outsourcing joke writing, you had better do it immediately.

You know, I was actually going to write about a homework problem here, but by the time I finished typing the post’s title, I was already distracted. Who says bloggers are useless as cats? (I’ll give you a hint– it’s a friend of the family named Arch.)

Last week I made another bathroom sign, this one specifically for the men’s lavatory:

I mean, let’s be honest here. The photo above is probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. The experimentee even reminds me of Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (post Shock Shop, pre-lobotomy). Look through the whole set if you want to see some seriously weird shit. And as far as it being creepy to apply electrical stimulation to facial muscles… well yeah, it looks pretty bad, but I’ve had a TENS unit used on me during physical therapy sessions, and it doesn’t hurt– it’s actually pretty hilarious. Compared to other things people were doing to each other at that time for the sake of medical research, I think this is rather innocuous.

Now that I know something like a TENS unit can be used to stimulate facial muscles, I may have to buy one and do a whole series of photographs of my friends. That doesn’t count as human experimentation, does it? I mean… maybe I should have people sign a release first.

One of the cool things about Richard is that he doesn’t need a TENS unit to individually control his facial muscles.

Are you pretty sure that people at work don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom and touching their bits? That’s gross. You should print this out and put it up. (I licensed it Creative Commons because I am such a big a fan of asepsis.)

I don’t know– I guess some of my health problems I choose to ignore, because there are only so many preventive measures I can take at one time without getting overwhelmed. I have been ignoring my headaches a lot, and many other things, because I have just figured, “Oh, it’s another symptom of lupus, what can I do? I shall ignore it.” That’s been part of making peace with my immunological problems. You make peace with the worst, but keep hoping and working for the best (when you have the energy).

However, this book, by a prominent neurologist, recommends that I quit drinking coffee (and cut out all caffeine, actually, since it’s a potent migraine trigger). HOLY CRAP!!!

I need to say that again: HOLY CRAP!!!!!!!!!

It’s the like health section of my brain library was just toppled by an earthquake! I don’t want to have to go back in there and sort the books and shelve them all again!

However, yesterday it struck me that one of the funniest things a Seattleite could do is to quit drinking coffee, during the holidays, in the middle of winter. Now it’s so funny I have to do it.

I have quit drinking coffee twice before, so I know it can be done, it just really sucks– and I hate “quitting” things. I went through a period in my life where I put myself on a lot of dietary restrictions for imagined weight problems, so this whole “deprivation” feeling starts getting stirred up, and it just feels ugly.

However, I am 29, not 18 still, and I am a different person now, and it will be okay, and it’s not that big of a deal. (Imagine me rocking back and forth repeatedly while saying these self-soothing things.) But seriously, if it helps me with migraines… well shit, of course that’s worth it.

Unrelated side note: My galanthus (snowdrops) are sprouting out of the ground. TOO EARLY, YOU GUYS. SOMEONE IS GOING TO SET YOU UP THE SNOW AND THEN YOU WILL BE SORRY!

Migraine, 2007

The text is a variation on a timeless couplet: “Here I sit, broken-hearted / came to shit, and only farted.” I incorporated some make-believe Old English spelling with some old-timey fonts, some detailing from classic Indian miniature paintings, and painted it in acrylic. Then I pressed the carboard-mounted canvas into some air-drying clay and made a little frame for it. I painted the clay with black gesso, put some finishing touches on everything, and coated it with a couple layers of acrylic varnish. The whole thing measures about 6 1/4 x 4 1/4″.

I think it makes a perfect little pastoral scene for the bathroom.

And a detail:

My friend Theresa is doing a 24-hour video game marathon as part of the Sarcastic Gamer Extra Life fundraiser, which benefits Texas Children’s Hospital.

The fundraising efforts end tomorrow. (“Computer: day of the week?” “Thursday”.)^[1] That’s Friday, people! Theresa only has one day to make up the last $292 to meet her $2000 goal! I’ve offered to donate a small signed print of any of my drawings (anything you can find in the flickr sets on this page) to anyone who helps her make up this last bit!

Say say say, you should donate! It’s very easy. Visit Theresa and Frank’s main fundraising site and clicky. Then she will tell me you donated, and you will tell me via e-mail which print you want, and I will send it to you through the power of postal mail.

Not only will you be helping a great cause, and helping Theresa who is awesome, but you could get a print like this:

or this:

Sweet!

[1] Edit: I posted this after midnight, and I was sick and tired, so my Head Computer was confused. It was already Friday when I queried it, so it was wrong. The probability that it’s a Friday when you’re reading this blog entry is low, but hopefully the probably that it’s the Friday of October 17th 2008 (known to some as 1224219600) is high enough that there will be throngs of people heading over to Theresa’s site and donating. Help, my wetware is failing. What I just said did not make sense.

Edit #2: She did it, you guys! I’m not sure if any of the people who helped her reach $2k came by way of my blog, but if they did–thanks! I’ll get the roster of peeps who donated within the next week, and get to sending out your complimentary prints. :)

But he keeps coming up with the funniest shit. Check out yesterday’s strip, for example.

How can I ever be that funny?

Am I okay with having a kind of lame web comic? Yeah. Yeah, I think I am. So maybe one will appear soon. -Ish.

Update: I just discovered that some person translates XKCD into Spanish, which is awesome, because… is there a cooler way to practice my Spanish? Probably not. And it’s still funny in Spanish!

Oh man, another update: The New Yorker did an interview with Munroe — and the author challenged him to a cartoon-off which I believe Munroe clearly won:

I took inspiration from old alchemical symbols that I found in my awesome Taschen book Alchemy and Mysticism (Amazon doesn’t have it in stock, but the version I have is the 25th Anniversary Edition that I linked to). I also used found paper from a very old copy of Kipling’s Kim. First I laid down a wash of walnut ink and salted it, for texture. Then I pasted paper in select places with “Netural pH Adhesive” (basically bookbinding glue), and illustrated over it with gouache and Micron pens. The patterns that make up the backbone of the paintings are taken from aerial shots found through Google maps. My favorite is the first one because I managed to slip in some crop circles. None of the paintings really mean anything… or do they?