My Horrible Disease

Lately I haven't been so active or creative on this blog. Don't despair Netizens, I'm all better. I've been busy dealing with a horrible life-sucking disease that I've been suffering from for the past month.

I have AP Disease. It afflicts thousands of people worldwide at random. Scientists haven't yet found figured out why it affects certain people so severely, while leaving others completely unscathed. They're nowhere near discovering a cure.

What exactly is AP Disease? Its scientific name is 'Artist's Procrastination Disease.'

How and why I came down with AP Disease is a long story, and requires some explanation.

When I first moved to Grande Prairie in January, I had a lot of spare time. And by a lot I mean if I wasn't at work I was at home. So for shits and giggles I took up painting to fill in my weekends.

I've never painted before in my life, but I'd always wanted to try. I'm an okay doodler though, and have a little graphic design experience so why wouldn't I paint too?

I did this for about 7 weeks or so, and have mailed out paintings across Canada (and Oregon). Then by chance I found myself wrapped up in a charity art auction. The idea was to paint one of these chairs...


...to the theme of 'The Four Elements.' Earth, Wind, Water, Fire. They each symbolize something important and profound. But I didn't read the entire email explaining the criteria. I got nearly halfway through it before I decided that I had gotten the gist of it and went back to drinking coffee.

So I got this chair, and conferred with my coworkers as to what I would paint on it. One coworker suggested cowboys.

BAM!

Instant inspiration. Cowboys it was, and I was going to paint a comic on the back of the chair! What did this have to with the four elements? Absolutely nothing, but that's a secondary detail. I wanted to paint cowboys.

So that weekend I sketched out my idea on the back of the chair, and started painting.



There's a big gap in the story here. But basically between me painting the background, and me finishing, there was a lot of swearing and screaming at the project. This stalled me up for a long time and is when AP Disease starting afflicting me. I was getting nothing done because I didn't want to paint horses.

You see, as cool as cowboys are, I can't draw horses. No way, no how, I can't draw a horse to save my life. There's really no explanation for it, but our equine friends are beyond my scope of art. So of course, leave it to me to decide to paint the one thing that has to have horses in it.

I must have repainted the same portion of that damn chair four times while trying to paint a damn horse. Over the past month, some of my most common swears included:

-”F*cking Horses!”
-”God Damn Horses!”
and
-”F*cking-God-Damn Horses!”

I'm a creative writer, not a creative swearer.

Anyway, This thing was due last Friday, May 1st, but I lost so much time on repainting the sky so it looked okay, and fixing horses that I went way over-time and just finished it this morning at 1am, thusly defeating my AP Disease.

This is me at midnight last night with lots of little details left to touch up

So, here's the final photos.



I'm displeased with the comic book lines I painted. I tried taping the lines so they'd be perfectly straight, but being that this was the first time I'd ever done that, of course I screwed it up.

Also, the entire chair aside from the comic part was originally going to be black. I figured this would make both the bright and dark colours pop out more in contrast to straight up Mars Black.

But that would have taken too long, especially since the chair was whitewashed (I was hoping for natural woodgrain) when I got it. To make sure all the spots were covered would have taken more effort than I had inclination or time to give. So I slapped some white latex paint from Home Depot on it to cover up my various smudges of paint all over the arms and seat.


There's also lots of other little things I wanted to do but just couldn't. I swear here for all the world to see, that in ten years if the person who buys this chair wants me to finish it the way I intended it to be done I'll stop whatever I'm doing and paint this chair for them.

Anyway, On May 25th It'll be included amongst 24 or so other chairs painted by local artists. People who can actually paint, unlike me. They'll be sold off and the money raised will go to help improve homeless people's lives. That's a decent cause I suppose. I think I get a tax deductible receipt for however much it sells for.

Although I'm self-deprecating, and even though this isn't a great work of art, maybe it'll go for loads of money for being quirky. Maybe?
Either way, I'm going to take along $40 to the auction just in case nobody bids on it.

This chair is kind of like a mutant baby. I want to get rid of it but I'm strangely attached. So having to buy my own art wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

In conclusion, here's a picture of my palettes with most of the wacky colours I mixed up. I thought it looked kind of cool.