James Paige

As I was sitting this morning eating Blinnerunchfast* this morning, I was reflecting on the difficulty involved in drawing really beautiful noses. I drew this caricature of my friend Danielle, and was frustrated by the number of times I had to erase and re-draw her nose. Unattractive noses are easy to draw. You simply pick the most obviously wrong feature of an unattractive nose, and exagerate it, and the nose simply looks right. A beautiful nose, on the other hand, needs to be just right, and if you do the tiniest thing wrong, it shows. In the end I usually give up, and end up over-simplifying beautiful noses. By going minimalist (notice the complete lack of nostrils?) I reduce the number of errors that I as the artist can introduce into the nose, and I trust the viewer the fill in the rest of the beautiful nose with a suitable one from their imagination.

If you have never seen a beautiful nose, and are unable to imagine one, then you have my pity, but I can do nothing to help you today.

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*Blinnerunchfast: A meal that can only be properly eaten by time-travellers. It starts out like brunch, turns into dinner, then goes back to lunch again, and finishes up with a little more breakfast.NOTE: This picture uses PNG transparency, so if you are using Internet Explorer, you will see a big unsightly black box around this picture. Just another reason you should be using Mozilla Firefox instead!

Current mood: Involved

If you have never read it before (and I am betting you haven’t) you should check out
A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage is Irreversible. It is one of the most artistic webcomics I have ever read. It uses a beautiful impressionistic style, and every episode could be framed and put in a gallery. The dialog reads like poetry, and it is very funny.

I salute Dale and Dave!

The Lion Fish Mermaid is a rare sub-species of Mermaid found in tropical regions of the Pacific and Indian oceans. She is venomous, having poison spines hidden within her feathery fins, the prick of which can cause temporary paralysis. Lion Fish Mermaids are hearty and resilient, and therefore they make good aquarium mermaids, though at times they can be moody and demanding. Buying her presents and complimenting her hair can help.

Current mood: Hungry

Edit: Yeah, The purple eyes work better. Thanks, Ryda!

Current mood: Devious

I didn’t know what to write in the speech bubbles. It would look all wrong if it wasn’t in Japanese, and I don’t know Japanese. You can make up your own captions.

Current mood: Feisty

Now I am not going to name names, but some people have been going around, acting all tough, talking big, and making threats that I don’t think they are prepared to back up.

I don’t usually say stuff like this, so I am just goin’ to say it once, and say it clear; My hamster can kick your hamster’s ass.

Yes he can, and that is not a threat, it is a promise. My hamster is the baddest rodent this side of the cosmetics testing laboratory, and he don’t take no nothing from nobody nohow.

My hamster knows Kung-Fu, Voodoo too; He looks good… without a shirt… and he’s goin’ out west where they’ll apreciate him!

Current mood: Blurry

I totally drew this Dragon Sumo in high school. I’m not certain, but it was probably in Mr. Helmantoler’s American History class. That was a great class for doodling. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t like it was a boring class, and it wasn’t like I never payed attention to the lecture– I payed close attention, and wrote notes on everything. Mr Helmentoler belived in note taking, to the exclusion of homework, and insisted his students exercise his simple and well-organized form of note-taking, which involved him handing out an “outline” in advance, and us filling in the notes for each topic. It caused me to learn and retain a great deal, and still have enough time to sketch things in the margin.

I am glad that I kept and scanned my doodles.

I kinda wish I had kept and scanned the rest of the notes ;)

Current mood: Only very slightly sore

Last night (read: hella early this morning) I got back from the Ninja Penguin art show. I enjoyed it. It was something halfway between an art show and a party.

The front room was the gallery, and it had a cheezy life-size styrofoam ninja temple on the right wall (I mean the Ninja’s were life size and styrofoam, not the temple) and on the left wall and in various other places were the art displays. Stepping in the door, I practically ran into Bernyce of Le Menagerie, who was wearing, what was by far the coolest Ninja costume of anyone present. You see; guests were encouraged to come in costumes on the themes of Ninjas or Pirates, and many did. There were also a few guys in drag, an assortment of goth costumes, and a couple of 17 year old hoochies (I presume they might have been intended to be “Pirate Wenches”, but my extensive study of Pirate history informs me that it is very unlikely that any real pirate wenches wore florescent-orange hot-pants)

Anyway. Back to the art. This was a “Tangible” art show, which means that you are not only allowed, but encouraged to touch the artwork (Fun art-gallery side-note: If you are ever in the Babylonian sculpture room of the British Museum in London, do not under any circumstance attempt to touch the 3500 year old bas-relief stone murals, for example, to point out an interesting sculptural feature to your sister. Your finger will set of the alarms and summon the guards even several centimeters away from the surface of the stone) But yes! This art you could touch or even pick up. Many pieces employed texture, such as ninja-silhouetted in sandpaper on wood, or a giant pirate skull sculpture with cool sticky-spiderweb eyes, or a ball-and-paddle game with ninja poetry and artwork painted on the paddle, and of course you could actually pick it up and play it. Bernyce’s piece entitled “Sista Ninja” was a mixed-media watercolor, including tinfoil ninja stars, and a ‘Fro made from real human hair. My favorite piece was probably the Julie Keene’s Bunny vs. Squirrel Box … actually that was Ninja Bunny vs. Pirate Squirrel, in keeping with the theme of the show. It was a panel-comic painted on the surfaces of an ordinary corrugated cardboard box, which doesn’t sound like much, but overall shape and layout of the panels combined with Julie’s soft-high-contrast art style made it look remarkably cool. I also was both amused and alarmed by the sculpture that appeared to be constructed entirely of gummy-dinosaurs (you know, like gummy bears except dinosaur themed… at least I think they were dinosaurs. They were so mashed together, they could have been gummy-spongebob‘s for all I know.)

Moving on, the back room was the dance floor. They had a small bar, and DJ’s from Ninja Skillz were playing (technotrancehouse-ish stuff). It had a small party atmosphere that would have disappointed a serious clubber; consequently I greatly enjoyed it. I don’t much like to go to crowded clubs anymore, as there is seldom room to actually have any fun, so this small informal mini-club was exactly what I needed. I had a great time.

Also, I knew from the flier that there were supposed to be martial-arts demonstrations, but I did not expect to actually participate in one. At one point I was sitting there, and listening to these two guys discussing board-breaking (there was a pile of boards on the corner of the ninja temple for that purpose). Apparently one guy intended to break a board, and he wanted the other guy to hold it for him, but the other guy wasn’t feelin’ it. So he says, “How about that guy, up there?” and points up on me (I was at that moment, sitting way up on a ledge where I was probably not actually supposed to be) And so I agreed, after some safety instructions, how to hold the board for him to break it, which involved bracing myself, and holding the sturdy-feeling board up more or less in in front of my face, while he punched through it from the other side. All went smoothly, and nobody was injured.

I don’t have any idea if Penguin Palace plans to host any more such events, or if it was a one-time thing, but if they do, I would be delighted to go again.

Current mood: Optimistic

Tomorrow night, I am going to go to the Ninja Penguin tangible art show. I am hoping it is the sort of art show likely to degenerate into a party. I will write later about whether or not it was spiffy, and if so, how spiffy.