Photos of Dogwood Trees, As Samples for Direction on Dying Cover

To whoever may have stumbled on this post:
These are not intended as a normal post for general viewing. It's really only of interest in respect to a drawing I'm going to do for the band Dying. Just so you know.

To Dying:
So I've kind of picked some different "styles" of trees here and was thinking you could pick one or two so that I have a really general idea of which way to head. If you can't decide or don't want to or whatever, I'll do it. I'm kinda leaning to #2 (graveyard tree) and #8 (by old fence). I thought you might be interested in the syle of fence that's in #8, too, even if you don't like the tree. Unless you guys just particularly like one of these trees as is, I will probably rearrange the photo that gets picked in Photoshop somewhat.

Anyway, get back to me on that FriendFace thing.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

"The Wheel of Time" Videogame (Just a Thought)

I want a new, updated, next-gen "Wheel of Time" video-game! I loved that old one, from 2002, or whatever it was.

God, I loved that game. And I miss it...

Bring it back!!!

What's Up With "The Stars Are Out Tonight" by David Bowie?

Let me say, first of all, that I have a long history with Mr. B. It's not a history like some people I have known. For fuck-sakes, I was born the year Ziggy Stardust came out. But, it's a long history nonetheless.

Today, I really, really wanted to make a Facebook post saying, "It's official, 'The Stars Are Out Tonight' is now one of my favorite songs, ever."

But, I stopped.

Why? Because last night, or the night before (I can't remember which), I read the lyrics.

I have a bad habit of not comprehending lyrics by listening alone. I am, always, most moved by music. But, I hear a certain line or word, here or there, in conjunction with the music, and I am completely struck. I heard the words that begin the song. "Stars are never sleeping. The dead ones and the living."

I, very naively, was reading this as a line about real stars; not famous "stars." I'm kind of always thinking about human life in terms of cosmology and billions of years. But, I heard, [interpretation] "The real stars are never sleeping." It made me think of how, when a star dies, it becomes something else; a white dwarf or a black hole. It's still there but in a different form. Stars, it seems from our limited perspective, never really die. They keep on in some different form. (I also misinterpreted some other lyrics to my own chagrin, I later noted.)

Getting back to the original point somewhat, my favorite songs of the past decade-ish have been "Time to Pretend" and "Common People." Two, solidly, populist songs, with pretty clear, very solid lyrics. If you read them, you understand them, pretty much instantly.

"The Stars Are Out Tonight," is strange to me. The lyrics make me think of the "everyman," or the "everyhuman." I got so moved by this song, that I looked up the lyrics; an act that is uncommon to me. I was confronted by words that were not what my lizard brain had heard. I assume it was my lizard brain. David is singing about stars like they're other people. He is watching them. He is following them. I read things I was not expecting at all. I went back to the recording. It moved me still; even more, actually.

I returned to the lyrics. What am I not seeing here? Something is moving me like the mythical block of Sisyphus being moved. What IS IT?

"But I hope they live forever." I can't get that line out of my head.

This song reminded me from the start of the two songs I mentioned earlier. Musically, I can make it fit. Lyrically, I am lost. [I just hit the back button for the third time in a row this sitting. This is still after listening to this song several times only a few hours ago. This song is literally keeping me up at night. I can't go to sleep because all I want to do is listen to it.]

{I would like to interject here. I don't think I can mentally, or physically, finish this post right now. I don't have the answer. But, I hope someone does; let me know, please. I will continue this post tomorrow, when I am a little less tired, etc. But, long ago, I wrote the following bits, so I wouldn't forget where I wanted to end this. I will still, I think, end this with these words.}

I still don't know the answer to this puzzle. But,

A DEVO Doodle by Mark

Hey DEVO fans! If you haven't already, you should really check out this!

Mark would apparently doodle on the boxes of the reel-to-reel tapes they were recording on. This is the box containing the tape for "Working In A Coal Mine."

DEVO! I salute you!!!

I would do a lot for one of those shirts. They sold some sort-of like em fairly recently and I did want one of those but they had print on em. I want one just like that! Think I need to make one....

New Drawing #3: Beginnings

Progress! I have two more drawings started. I started really working on the one tentatively known as "#3."  And here's a photo timeline so far.

FIRST! You must play this while reading:

Step 1: Stare at blank page until eyeballs turn red and pop out of skull. It seems this is a very real problem for lots of budding artists; no ideas. I seem to have too many, a problem that, while being a problem, is a much better problem to have. I need a team of college art-student interns.

[Nota bene: The process I'm showing here starts after all the setting up lights, photographing, posing, rethinking, photographing, putting the lights back up that fell for the third time, posing, photographing, importing, looking, black-and-whitelizing, cropping, looking, comparing, re-cropping, level adjusting, editing, looking again, flipping, re-comparing, deciding that I picked the wrong photo completely and starting over.... Which leads to the following.]

Step 2: Printing. And then reprinting because the printer I bought for thirty dollars is a piece of crap. Damn you Canon! You always do me right, except with printers.

Step 3:

 Step 4: Start with the parts of the drawing that are completely black and big.

Detail showing tracing.Yes, I said tracing.

Detail showing earliest defined areas and a bit of.... tracing.

Step 5: More dark areas, some less so.

Detail of Step 5

Detail of Step 5

Detail of Step 5

Detail of Step 5

We'll pick up with step 6, I think.

Czech out more of my art at Burning City Studios Facebook page!

Sketchbook Scan: The Great Betrayer

Here's a sample page from my sketchbook. It's not completely typical. It was one page in particular that I really wanted to make sure didn't get lost. More to come.

Brass Turtle Has Breakfast: New Drawings and That

Started two new drawings tonight. By started I mean, I cropped and edited the photos and printed bits to trace out important bits. And that.

I've been digging through old sketchbooks. They're full of good stuff. I used to think that I needed to scan them for my own use; and I do still think that. But, I now think that I need to scan them and use them as art posts. Tons of stuff in those and they're only good if taken as a whole; that is, sketches and text all mixed up, with notes and water stains and all.

Here's a bit, only trans-typed (ha, a word) and not scanned.

"Archeology Revisited

In between Jacksonville and Sherwood, AR, there are some soybean fields. Several decades ago, a land-fill was started beside these fields. As a kid, I watched the land-fill grow from a tiny hump to it's present form-a large hill. I thought about the hill + the fact that it is not constructed as hills usually are (plate tectonics) but is, in fact, a giant hill of human trash. It seemed just amusing at first but eventually it occurred to me that this was, in fact, a sort of accidental time-capsule. In a way, it is analogous to Indian and Celtic burial mounds. However, instead of holding a treasure of gold and silver, it holds a treasure of human history; waiting for future archeologists."

I really wanted to change a few things, but I did not. That's verbatim.

Still, it's much better viewed in hand writing with the sketch that's there and all.

Now, go buy a hot-dog from that guy on Dickson and stuff it down your gullet in a squirrel-nervous frenzy, sitting by the spring that no one knows about that is 40ft away from the hot-dog stand.

Here's a Twinkie-Weiner Sandwich!

New Drawing... (part two of a one-part series)

Been working on this drawing and posted this pic to FB two nights or so ago.

And, tonight, I did some more work. And here is the result; still not-quite finished:

See more of my art at Burning City Studios!

"The Devil's in the details." -Harmie Bernaind Pichbisquick, inventor of the pancake.

"Find an alternative to your job." - Keith A. Miller

Burning City, Art, and Stuff...

I realized not long after deciding to wrangle all these internet tools into doing my bidding that I was missing a big part of it. I wasn't missing any internet tools, but part of my creative work; namely, my artwork. I decided it was essential that I try to promote both at the same time, somehow. Since I started this endeavor thinking only of music, of course everything is named for that; Mr. S this, Oh The Glamour Music that. The whole time forgetting my long-standing idea of my umbrella company which is Burning City Studios.

Burning City as a name has it's start with a drawing I did in high school art class, using up all my art teacher's personal oil pastels. It was of a stylized semi-destroyed city similar to the one in my Facebook cover image above. [That, by the way is an edited photo of a large painting in oil and oil pastels.]

Burning City seemed like, and still does seem like, the perfect name for my projects' goals. And, I'm sure, many other people would think the same thing about their projects; 'set this city on fire.' Figuratively, of course.

[So, just talking about this made me realize that I need to make some changes, possibly. New Twitter account as BCS, new email, etc, so I went abroad for a few.]

**We now return you to our regularly scheduled program.....**

Burning City Studios is the name of the 'parent' company. Underneath that would be: Burning City Records, Burning City Graphics, Burning City Lightworks, Burning City Photography, Burning City Chinese Adoption Services, etc.

So, in an attempt to start the process of potentially making this idea more than a figment of my imagination, I have started a Facebook page:

Burning City Studios.

I have long-since abandoned all hope of recovering what I was going for with this post and will now submit to your button-clicking desires....