Saturday, December 3, 2011

The Day-Dreamer

Hey all! It has been a Very long time hasent it? So much has happened, in such a short period of time. And now 2011 is drawing to a close, but what will 2012 hold? Who knows! That is the most exciting part of life.

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"The Dreamer" watercolour.

I would now like to share a poem I wrote for an unlucky water fowl, a few days ago.
in fact it's almost a sort of apology...

The duck.

I stand in the cold,
Clouds of breath,
Drifting snow.

And on this day.
A truck did pass by, on it’s way.
But as the truck goes, it’s tires
Slip over a duck
Quietly resting in the snow.

Thud.
A dull Crack.
Just another bump in the road…

The bird flounders
As if
Drowning
Flapping its useless wings, straining to break the surface
A strangled quack
Then lies still

The Lamenting wife, wheeled darkly against the bleak sky
Crying out
As her husband died

I made no move
So, I too stood still
I did nothing, though could have tried
But instead I swallowed these heroic ideas
And did not move.

In the snow,
The biting winds,
The duck didn’t even
Bleed.

Thanks for reading! Have a good week.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Ripley the fez wearing tusk-dog meets a rotting rabbit, and Bono.

So last week and this week-end I nearly killed myself with this art project, Of just coming up with simple cartoon concept drawings. But, that's not how the project started, oh no its not that easy! My art teacher, announces that today we are going to make imprompitu (sp?) paper sculptures, that must be taller that 2 feet and must have at least 3 separate contact points on the table. Ok, Sayre Theo and I get to work making by far the most insane, and probably most unstable tower of impossibly folded paper ever in the history of that project (which the teacher had thought of like the week before). The next day, we have to SKETCH ALL THE SCULPTURES, and let me tell there are like twenty or so of these things. Here's the catch though, we had Less than a minute to sketch each one. After these were done, everyone in the class possesed a page of hurridly random scribbles, but to the creative eye, the perfect inspiration for kooky cartoon characters...Which is exactly what our teacher wanted us to do.
So here is the process of my drawings, from scribbles to concept to complete picture.

Sketches.
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Concept.
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Finished product.
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The Rotten green rabbit, little Timmy left him outside for the 'coons, but all he wants is to give you hug...with a knife.
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Ripely, fell into a vat of toxic waste while on post as a guard dog to a reactor in Egypt, he was found by Prof. Spectalular. The professor re-built Ripley with pointless golden robot legs, and crossed his DNA with that of an elephant. The Toxic waste obviously just gave him that stylish Fez attatched to his head.
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This guys name is Bone-o...Get IT?! He's like Bono but a skeleton! (and a cowboy.)

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Makin' Shoes! part 1

One day I was walking the overcrowded streets of downtown Seattle wearing my facourite pair of Ragedy TOMS, when I looked in a shop window. In the display were pairs of nicer TOMS, some of which had rope soles. I cast a glance at my disgracful shoes, a passing policeman was also looking at my shoes.
"Son" he said with a nasaly voice "Those shoes are a complete disgrace! I'm going to have to write you a ticket for dirtying the sidewalk". He then promptly ripped a chunk out of a sleeping homeless mans shirt and wrote up my ticket, giving me a final word of advice, "One more offence like this and I'll give you a KNUCKLE SUPPER!"
I looked at my shoes, then the store window, then the sailors foot and shoe I was holding. An energy efficient LED light went on in my head."I am much to cheap to buy new shoes...."
"Damn right you are" grumbled the homeless man.
"....Then I will MAKE THEM!" I shouted triumphantly flinging the sailor's foot at the nearby hotdog vendor.
Now the people at the mental hospital said I was crazy (and maybe I am) but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to make shoes.

For this Wonderful project you will need...
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A. One pair of shoes that fit. ( Don't worry you will only use them as a giude for sole size)
B. Medium sized rope, does not have to be as coarse as mine.
C. Large twine, preferably slightly hairy as this covers easier.
D. Some kind of waxed cord.
E. Some kind of heavy weight for holding the rope down.
F. Scissors.
G. Large wool needle with a big enough eye to thread your twine through.
H. Shoe Gloo, very useful stuff that everyone should own.

* * * * *

Now that all the materials have been aquired, we can move onto step one of this crazy scheme.
1. Grab your shoe some weights and your thicker rope.

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Then starting close to the middle, you are going to lay the rope down, generally tracing the shape of the sole, but working the coils progressively outwards, until there are three passes.
Like so...

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Remember to keep that wily rope weighted down while you work.

2. This next step will take you by far the longest for the sole construction.
So, cut a nice long section of twine and thread it through your wool needle. Tie the free end to one of the outer sides of the rope coils near the middle. From there its just weaving the twine around the rope (under,over, under...etc) pulling things tightish as you go.

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If you run out of twine, unthread the needle, and cut another piece. Then just tie it onto the loose end on the shoe with a reef knot. Re-thread and continue.
And when you get near the corve of the end, go accros like normal as close as you can get, then start weaving around the curve.

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When thats all filled in, either weave into the middle and tie off the twine, cut a new piece and start on the unfilled half. Or, weave the twine along the side of the sole to the unfilled area, and start again.
You will need to do this for both soles.

3. Well, that didn't take very long did it! So now that the primary of the soles are filled in, you can cut some fabric (flannel, linen whatever) that will just fit in the middle of the shoe.

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Your going to put some gloo, right along the middle, under your fabric.
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Lay down the gloo, and smear it around a bit with a popscicle stick.
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Then your going to want to weight everything down and let ti dry overnight.
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So after the Glue has dried or stopped smelling, grab your waxed cord (thread) and a sharper darning or tapestry needle and get sewing. Basically just stitch the edge of the cloth in the middle to the rope around it. There is no real wrong or right way to do this and realistically any old stitch will work, but I find an X stitch works exceptionally well and looks nice to boot!
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Follow these steps for the "X"!
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And thats it for this first installment. There will be more, but bear with me as I actually have to make the rest of the shoes...as well as document it and write the blog! But it will get there don't worry!
Thanks for reading!

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Who will know the Bluenose in the sun.

Bluenose by Stan Rogers is one of my favourite folk songs right now, and so I painted a black and white silhouette style on canvas, to hang ever so gracefully on my sisters kitchen wall.
Enjoy!

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Sunday, April 10, 2011

Not much is stirring in prehistoric pudding.

Well...its been two weeks since my last long post. Aaaand nothing has really happened since then. Except I went to a jazz festival with the juniors (where I got yelled at by a homeless man on a Vespa), and a rugby game (which we lost but had a "smashing" good time).


Here is a picture of a spanish dinosaur for your viewing pleasure.

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Friday, March 25, 2011

The Grey Skies Over (victoria that is).

Well to begin with we will start this ever exiting journey of shopping, good food, and of course TOMS, with a very bright sunset on the clear evening of Wednesday, March 23. What follows is a Mildly exaggerated reenactment of my drive to Munson Mountain. Viewer Discretion is advised.

I had just driven us from our house, a terrifying journey of espionage, and wicked car chases. A mother whose face resembled that of someone who had died recently, but has most definitely perished someplace cold (which is to say the very least, white with fear), clenched her eyes against the hail of bullets pounding through the windshield. She gripped the armrest hard enough for Lou Ferrigno to think twice about a handshake.
The father. The GOD-Father. Calmly he reached for his German made Scheisse, a ruthless killing machine that happened to smell like old sewage.
"Good thing it's only a rental" he grumbled to the boy with feverish looking eyes attempting to drive the getaway car. The god-father proceeded to blast a gaping hole through the glass in the back, narrowly missing a truck full of puppies.

With the engine on fire and in critical condition the car skidded into the parking lot of Munson Mountian. Suddenly doing a barrel roll. We clambered from the wreckage just in time, as the car exploded in a fiery ball of next weeks groceries and tigers.
No one looked back or covered their ears, instead we simultaneously put on sunglasses in slow motion.

What met us afterwards was not a gaggle of furious Saukerl's( I mean police officers)
but a glorious sunset at Penhenge, only a few days after the spring equinox.


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Let's play count the deer!
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The next day I had rugby at 7 in the morning. It was also the day we would leave for Victoria.
As you can imagine after a shower to cleanse myself of the outdoor sports stank, the house was a flurry of packing, for we were to leave an pick up daddy from work at noon.

Our fine dining dinner.
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A most intense cloud over Keromeos.
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The next important thing (because I can't sit here all night) was the ferry. Not to exclude the rest of the drive, but I slept for a good portion of that and therefore obviously don't remember.
Sliding over the pavement in the van we pulled into the ferry terminal at a quarter to six. Over an hour early for our 7'o'clock crossing on one of our favourite Spirit ferries. The man at the terminal (I will call him Labjeet) said we could get on the 6 O'clock ferry, which was a splendid new double ended job called....
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On the way through, past Salt Spring, a beautiful sunset showed it's coppery golden head around the side of the island. A flock of unruly gulls circled above, squawking down at the absurdly colored apes. "why aren't you grey? Why can't you fly?" they seemed to ask, mocking us be keeping speed with the ship.
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Another thing was that the new ferries do not appear to own a soft-icecream machine. On the flip-side there is a mass amount of tables to play a good game of Dutch-Blitz on.
We rolled off the ferry into a massive stream of cars (not trucks) who all seemed to be going the same way. Judy met us with a large bag of garbage outside her quaint one bedroom apartment, the inside I must say is a chaos of boxes and "stuff".

And of course the next day is downtown day!
The first order of business was to shrug of the aura of damp sea air that kept whipping through town. After that it was the challenge of finding me some TOMS from last season, that actually fit. This is much harder than you can imagine, and after three stores (and a few Australian shopkeepers) there was no luck. By now we are famished and proceed to the most delicious restaurant in all of downtown Victoria (let alone the world)
And of course without question it is Pagliacci's! I had the cream based tortellini (sorry no picture!) and many, many slices of deliciously warm bread.
Sitting across from us, and slightly to the left, sat a young girl. She was probably no more than 7 years of age. Typically small children cannot finish there food, the same principle could be applied if I were to eat say....an elephant. After the girls half eaten pasta was cleared the pretty waitress brought out what I perceived to be as the largest piece of chocolate cake ever. It was probably around TEN INCHES TALL. And had layers of chocolate mouse the same thickness as the layers of cake. The little girl's jaw dropped in pure disbelief. "How can I Possibly EAT all that?!" she wondered, yet managed to achieve. Obviously I was quite envious.
But instead I got to eat THIS!
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Which is a chocolate from Roger's, but even more specifically this!
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The 125th anniversary chocolate. Awesome.

Soon we were on our way, trundling down towards the tall ship masts poking out above the wharf. What else but the Swift Eh?
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Apparently, with our incrediblely good timing, we had just met the swift fairly soon after it had come in. Skipper climbed out to greet us as did Matt, and even Niki stuck her head out to shout a hello.
Y'know what Robyn? All of them said, after the first greetings "Your missing one. Where's Robyn?". We chatted for a while longer, Matt wants El Gringo Loco to visit the Swift this summer, and has some new penny whistles. Skipper asked about the mandolin. All seemed right dandy. Even the sun came out.

The next thing to do was to actually find my shoes. The final store was a Kayaking shop next to Capitol Iron. I took some pictures on the way back to the parkade.

An interesting art piece.
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An interesting tree. Look at that woman's face!
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Spring has sprung....at least in Victoria.
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Eventually we make it to this kayaking store. They only have the green TOMS botas, but we ask for the black ones anyway. The guy says "I will go check the back". This usually means that there is nothing but they want to get your hopes up. Then destroy them.
The man came back "I have an 11.5 and a 13"
"In what?" I ask bewildered. Surly not last seasons boots?
"Black of course!"
Surly indeed. I pounced on the box like a Mexican on a burrito. Or like a feline that pounces. Stuffing the glorious shoes onto my feet. I don't care if they are a bit long I will take them! I then announced my thoughts verbally to a surprised mother.
TOOOOMMMSS!

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It's true that you can always find more room to stuff some dessert down your neck, for we were truly Un-hungry, and we still went for the traditional beacon hill drive in Icecream.
After receiving our tall, tasty (yet very fattening) cones we walked up the hill to the summit. A strangled cry halted us in our tracks, preventing us from ascending the massive slope ahead. It was a (gaggle?) peacock, of the preening prancing male full of hormones kind of bird.
There was one bird whom I suspect to be an adolescent, who ran around like a demented thing, skwaking and making a general racket.
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This view met us at the top.
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A grey sky over Victoria (and washington). Had it been clear the view would be even more spectacular.

On the way down the hill there were these...
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And these....
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And waiting at the bottom was the most spectacular burlesque dance ever to be seen....by a peacock. That's right folks I received a striptease from a ground locked fowl.
The dancer waited until I was comfortably seated on a splintery log, then started with the bottom,
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He then carefully turned, revealing his face, and a peek of the green feathers at the side. Just enough to keep us interested, yet not giving it all away. A crowd had started to gather, pointing at the private fan dance I was getting....From a peacock.
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Finally after much teasing and waiting, the REVEAL!
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After that we ended back at Judy's, where I proceeded to start this post. It has now been well into the third day of writing and it is finally done.
This concludes the longest blog post i have ever written!
Enjoy the pictures and have a good spring break!

-Brendan-