not falling down

I will probably never love another episode of television as much as I love Battlestar Galactica, season 3, episode 9, “Unfinished Business.” And not just because it has images like this:

I’ve spent at least the last year and a half (actually, more like seven years, since my undergrad Drawing I class) being obsessed with this limited-tone art style. I called it “rotoscoping” once, and Lisa and Will jumped on me because there’s no animation involved, so I have to admit that it’s actually what people call “tracing.” But selective tracing.

As was likely very obvious to anyone in my family, and as I only realized yesterday, my playing around with tone is blatantly derived from my uncle John’s painting and wood engraving work, especially his portraits of my grandfather (which he often combines with layered collage). Mr. Olmos there has some features similar to his, like the disappearing eyes which Ian and I inherited. I hope I get to look that craggy eventually. Right now people are still asking me what my major is, despite the obvious gray in my hair.

I almost forgot to mention that this is the first thing I’ve ever inked with the brushes I bought in 2003, and although it was a lot slower than my usual pens, I completely get why cartoonists get so excited about it now. There’s a feeling of dynamic control over the line weight that you just can’t get with pens, even the brush pen with which I inked a lot of later Xorph strips. (Not that there are actually any distinct lines in the finished images below. Good.)

So I made a picture and it’s a wallpaper if you want it: the images below link to 1600×1200 and 1600×1000 (widescreen) jpegs. There’s also a browser-sized version if you just want to zoom in a bit.

PS Can Battlestar Galactica be back on now plz

Update 2008.01.26 0001 hrs: Naturally, UJ has a much more cogent post on the subject (the art, not Battlestar), along with one of the portraits I was talking about.

Oh yeah! I got a car! It’s a little black Honda Fit (yes, I know you’ve never heard of it) and, three hundred miles in, I love it more than I will ever love my children. My children, for instance, will not get thirty-five miles to the gallon on mostly-vertical Garrard County roads. They’ll be lucky to get ten.

I told this to my uncle Dennis, who reads this blog, and he immediately asked whether I had painted a big “FUCK YOU” on the side of it. I said: not yet!

Today I posted the 1001st story in Anacrusis, and I wanted to do something a little different for the occasion: an audio story, read aloud by a startling array of generous people. I thought the hardest part would be actually asking them to read the silly little thing without cringing, and the next-hardest would be the actual mixing process. It turns out that the hard part is not being able to use all the material from everyone for the whole thing. They were all so good!

Thanks to Robert Baker-Self, Maria Barnes, Amanda and Jon Brasfield, David Clark, Amanda Dale, Kevan Davis, John Dixon, Holly Gramazio, Josh Hadley, Sumana Harihareswara, Stephen Heintz, Catriona Mackay, William O’Neil, Leonard Richardson, Kristofer Straub, and everyone who’s had a kind or critical word to say about Anacrusis. Let’s do this again when we hit 10,201.

Ever wondered about my mental self-image, as a lifelong Kentuckian landing in London for the first time, back in March? Uncle John provides.

How have I not written about this yet! My uncle John has returned to blogging, and he’s busily winning merit awards with his fantastic collage pieces, of which I own two, which means I am also a winner.

UJ wrote a fantastic response to my “Christ of the Barricades” challenge, and Will wrote a prequel to Beloit, saved here from the LJ feed:

Tarnished as it is, the dirty chrome armour of the Heliocrashers shines as they blast through the wall: Erythrophobia zaps at a guard, but canon says that sonoluminescence doesn’t cause bubble fusion. So she punches him through a wall.

The other ‘crashers are covering her while she sets a charge against the generator’s critical weak point when canon oozes out of a grate and tears Erythrophobia in half. The charge doesn’t detonate because canon says they use fusion to fly, not fight: instead, her top half flies into a duct and her suit’s failing containment does the job just as well.

And then there’s stuff like Sumana’s MC Masala, which… you know about MC Masala, right? And Leonard is getting the kind of rejection letters most of us would kill for, for a story you will (when you get to see it) kill to have come up with.

There’s no unifying characteristic between the amazing writers with whom I associate, no New School or Movement, even though I keep trying to assign one. I guess I’m just going to have to publish all you guys?

My Uncle John brings news of Sigurdur Petursson’s official food supplier.

My cousin Bruce came home Friday, for the first time since his kidney failed and he suffered acute pancreatitis. The survival rate for the severity of his illness is, they say, almost as bad as it gets. Bruce is a statistic (the only good kind).

I am ashamed to admit that while I wrote to Bruce, I never made time to visit him in the hospital in Indianapolis. My life experience has taught me to dislike and fear hospitals; I know that’s nothing next to what Bruce must feel now. I’m just glad he’s home.

I’m glad to say that Bruce’s condition is improving. My uncle John is closer to the situation and has more info, so I’ll direct you to his journal instead of just repeating his entries.

I finally convinced one of my relatives to get a blog! My uncle John, about whom I’ve written before, has already started things off on the right foot with a post about how bad for you blogging can be. I wholly support this!

I’m hosting somebody else’s blog now! This makes me really excited!

Well, actually I host two: Jon, King of Former Roommates, started his songwriting journal back in December and then forgot about it. You’re fired, Brasfield! Hand over your badge!

I should go ahead and make the co-opted Crummy Standing Offer here: If you are part of my family (and this includes more than just my relatives) and you want a place to keep a journal, I will gladly host you.