Draw or be Drawn

jungle

2012-01-26T12:16:00.000-08:00

Now I'm in the jungle.

Instead of temperate rainforest hikes, now it's tropical. Splashing up humid streams, crawling up waterfalls, reminds me of a certain creek on Vancouver Island. I half-expect to see game trails, but there are none. I think all the large mammals were hunted off the island a long time ago.

An hour down the road is the beach - long reefs, warm water. I could swim all day.

I actually have a lot of work to do while I'm down here, which is going to be my biggest challenge. The landscape and the culture is so inviting and distracting. Also, it takes a little more work to get everyday things done (like plan and find food, get around, etc) when everyone speaks Spanish. But for some reason my Spanish is better than I thought, and already improving since I got here. So I hope the 'getting normal things done' part becomes less time-consuming, as I find a routine and my Spanish continues to improve. Also, my major work-stuff mostly needs to be done sooner rather than later, so I'll have more time to explore as time goes on.

**ps. potential thieves in Canada - my house is subletted, so even if you knew where I lived (which you probably don't, because I'm secretive like that), don't bother trying. And even if you did know where my house was and there wasn't a subletter, probably the most amazing thing you'd come away with is a nice pair of rubber boots.

DEET

2012-01-22T22:19:00.000-08:00

I'm going through some old drawings to use for a proposal I'm writing that would put me in the Yukon bush for a month next summer. Painting and drawing and camping for a month straight. That would be heaven. I'm thinking that, even if I don't get accepted for it, I'd like to do that anyways in the middle of some bushy place.

These panels are from a couple weeks I spent near the Arctic Ocean, two summers ago. I did comics like this every day. This comic was from a day I spent out with some entomologists who were counting bugs. There were so many flies that they were wearing full-body mesh suits in the middle of summer. (Twenty-four hours of daylight up there).

I didn't wear the suit - instead, I had a wide-brim hat with DEET sprayed all over it. I didn't need to put DEET on my face - the soaked hat was enough to keep the blackflies away.

movement

2012-01-20T13:30:00.000-08:00

2' x 3' detail of an oil painting I'm working on.

This painting is 4.5' square. I've been working on it for a LONG time, and it's finally getting somewhere. There are parts of the painting I like now. I keep those parts, try to piece the rest of the painting together to fit the parts I like, occasionally discover that the parts I like no longer fit, so paint over them. It sometimes feels like I could keep going, painting over things, forever, but it does seem to head to an endpoint eventually.

The act of painting fills me with a feeling I don't get anywhere else. It's a churning mixture of meditative peace, complex pattern recognition, critical thought, observation, memory, and the constant excitement of stepping into the unknown. All that combined together... I would call it a highly active state of bliss.

I hope painting never becomes a chore to me. I hope every brushstroke continues to be a question, rather than a premeditated statement.

I hope my life keeps going that way as well.

tuna

2012-01-18T20:35:00.000-08:00

Boathouse.

There's something really special about snow on the ocean. I wonder if it's my Newfoundland heritage that makes me like it so much. Coldness mixed with wild rough ocean spray - waves crashing on icy rocks - a monochrome world of black, white, grey, and dull blue.

Both my computers are rendering tonight. That means they're working hard to process animation data into finished-looking frames. Some of these renders are taking 4-6 minutes per frame. This animation is at thirty frames per second, which means it's taking my fairly new and powerful desktop computer 2-3 hours to process one second of animation. Think about that.

And that's not the whole frame - that's just one layer of a frame. I have 4-5 different layers that I'll digitally lay on top of each other ("composite") to create the final frame. Some layers are faster - even so, it probably works out to about 4-6 hours of rendering for a second of animation for this project.

So much of computer animation is time management. It's so easy to waste time if I'm not careful. I have to do all kinds of shorter tests before I start a long render like that, to make sure the final product is going to look right. Otherwise I've wasted days of computer processing time for nothing. This is the case at studios with render farms, but the necessity of maximized processor time is even more apparent when all you've got is a laptop and a desktop.

These poor ol' computers sure do work hard for me. I'm glad they're not live animals, or powered by cats or tuna or something, or I would be abusing them for sure.

...

Tuna-powered computers would be really big.

...

I'm hungry.

data-sized americano

2012-01-17T16:12:00.000-08:00

People in cold-weather jackets and a hair render for a project I'm working on. I've done more work with 3D hair in the last three months than I have since I started 3D animation in 1997. Then again, there was no such thing as 3D hair in 1997.

...

All I've done so far today is:

Start a fire
Eat oatmeal
Read about the conservation of energy and momentum in spacetime
Eat three slices of toast
Look at the internet
Send film to festival
Buy coffee, beer, peanut butter.

I got screwed early because of the internet. I try to stay away from it before noon. Today I wasted a lot of time looking at absolutely nothing.

It's interesting how the best times of my day are always when I'm away from my computer. Very rarely will a Top Five Thing Of The Day be related to the computer.

Whenever I have a "I'm Doing Nothing" day, I reach a crux point like this, where I have to say "The rest of your day is going to be shitty if you keep planning on working and don't get to it. So what are you going to do, write off the day and call it a Day Off, or get to work?"

Today I'm going to work. I have coffee, beer and peanut butter and jam to keep me company. Lets do it.

trespassing

2012-01-04T10:14:00.000-08:00

I try to go for a walk every morning, but the majority of the time I find myself drawn down to the ocean, where I crouch under an Arbutus tree or sit in its branches and watch the waves for thirty or forty minutes.

I'm fascinated by this little bit of shoreline. The strange part is that it's on someone's property, so I'm trespassing every morning when I go down there. There are three houses on the property; two are abandoned and one is the owners' summer home - a ramshackle manor that must be a hundred years old. I draw the houses and outbuildings and remnants of older buildings buried under blackberries in the forest - a brick fireplace with a gorgeous wrought-iron frame, or an old trellis that has collapsed over a dark, rocky stream.

I don't know what I'm going to do in the summer when the owners presumably visit the property. I imagine that I'll come down in the predawn and stick to the far side of the lot, where there's no way we would see each other and where I can feel like I'm respecting their privacy.

I justify my actions by thinking that I'm not causing any harm, and that I really respect and enjoy the land - most of which has probably not been walked across in decades by anyone but myself. I stay away from the manor. I think there's a part of me that just refuses to accept that it's possible to buy land, put a line on a map and say that no one else can go there and enjoy it, even if it's not being used. Eventually, all the enjoyable land would be private property and only enjoyable by the wealthy.

I think about Cancun, where apparently the locals can't put their foot in the ocean without driving for hours because the entire shoreline is owned by all-inclusive resorts.

I think there are laws allowing people to walk and even camp on private property in some European countries. Makes sense to me.

god bless the ivanhoe

2011-12-30T11:37:00.000-08:00

The Ivanhoe is on Main Street in Vancouver, and is right on the border of the Downtown Eastisde*. It has been full of real shit since I first moved to Vancouver in 1992. Not many places stick around like that in Vancouver. I hope they keep serving watered-down beer to people buying and selling stolen goods for many years to come.

An old man wearing a cowboy hat and rubber boots nurses a beer in the corner, mulling and mumbling to himself.

It's always been easy to start conversation in those places, and I always find the conversation gets very deep and personal very quickly. Compared to the rest of the city, which drains and saddens me, I find the patrons of downtown Eastside bars very refreshing. If you even manage to start a conversation in a pub in an affluent area, it will be a lot more superficial. Why is that?

*The Downtown Eastside is a very old area of Vancouver, and one of the poorest areas of Canada. It's well known for drug-use, poverty, slum houses, crime and violence. Main and Hastings is supposedly one of the most depraved-looking intersections in North America. Used syringes litter the alleys, as do lurching crack addicts scratching the ground, hoping to find a scrap more of something. Police cars and ambulances are a regular sight. But on the other hand, there is an incredible level of community participation and activism down there. It feels like a troubled little rural town trapped at the centre of a big rich city. I think it's a gem.

Road Trip to Stuttgart*

2011-12-20T12:39:00.000-08:00

My last short film, "The Perfect Detonator", got accepted to a second major film festival. This time it's the Stuttgart Animation Festival.

There are so many festivals to choose from, and it's hard to know what to pick. My strategy was to spend the first year sending the film only to the top festivals in the world. I chose those by looking at the Academy Awards list of festivals that they draw their Best Animated Short contenders from. If you win at one of those festivals, you're longlisted for an Academy Award. Not that I expect that to happen, but it seems like they're probably good festivals.

I used to have a dream of winning an Academy Award for Best Animated Short; then I realized that the Academy nominates a lot of films that I really don't think are the best of the year. Many of them are more on the easy-watching "cartoon" side of animation, with a simple message and lots of visual gags. It doesn't make sense to strive for a public perception of "success", when I would have to make films that didn't completely represent me to do it. That feels like an empty kind of goal that would probably never make me feel fulfilled. My next film is going to be even less festival-friendly, I think. That's going to be an interesting struggle- to make a film I'm proud of, but knowing that it's going to really challenge the audience.

The best thing about getting into a festival for me is knowing that a certain number of discerning folk appreciated the film enough to think it's worth sharing. That's a huge compliment.

The second best thing is that more people get to see my film. I made it to share, and I love showing it. Getting the film into big festivals means it's easier to get it into smaller festivals, and sometimes you can get the entrance fee waived, so it becomes cheaper for me to share my film.

Also, having big festivals attached to the film's name means I might be able to make better deals with distributors, and they will have an easier time shopping the film around.

*Title provided by Chris Huggins, Master of Wit.

cedar

2011-12-18T11:38:00.000-08:00

I really like the shapes of the branches of big ol' Cedar Trees.

I have a new regular walking route - a 20-minute bikeride up a walking trail, then hide my bike in a little dip just off the trail, cover the bike with my green jacket, cover my jacket with fallen leaves, then follow a small creek up a steep hill.

Tonnes of deer trails, very little underbrush, ravens croaking far overhead. Lots of big ol' Cedar Trees.

two otters

2011-12-16T10:09:00.000-08:00

This morning's sketches.

The majority of my mornings' pages in the last month look very similar to this. The same withered Arbutus tree, a few lines denoting an otter, duck or boat, and a dozen words.

Every morning I sit on the same mossy stretch of stone looking over the ocean. I find it so peaceful and captivating that I don't really feel like drawing a lot. I suppose the pages are a pretty clear representation of where my mind is at.

Here's the page from the day before. The water was moving strangely, like there was a giant mass moving underneath it:

...and the day before that:

I've been thinking a lot about fictional storytelling, image-making, and truth; how stories create myths and are really just one person's opinion. So they're kind of false. Could they potentially be unhealthy if you don't look at them critically? What's the point of a story? Shit like that.

...

Today I saw two bald eagles hunting a seagull. I'm sure we've all seen eagles and seagulls and other large birds chasing each other away from nests and territory, but this was different. They were chasing this poor gull all over the bay, swooping down and pecking at him, trying to fly above him and grab him with their talons, etc.

I'm fairly certain all animals (including humans) have an instinctive meter of efficient energy-use. In other words, we're not going to burn too many calories doing something unless it's going to bring us food and / or help us propagate our genes. These eagles were way beyond a leisurely chase. They were flapping their wings, swooping and climbing more than I've ever seen a bird of that size do. It wouldn't make sense to do that unless they really thought they were going to eat that gull.

I find that exciting because I often see bird carcasses on the bluffs overlooking the ocean, but I've never seen how it happens. Maybe this is how.

The eagles chased the gull around a point, out of my sight, so I never saw the resolution.

...

So was that a fictional story, in a way? Surely my opinion is in there. Am I dramatizing things a bit? Should I be dramatizing things?

etc.

smoke is rising

2011-12-15T12:59:00.000-08:00

Random Sketchbook Page featuring dialogue from the coffee shop.

I don't have much to say on here these days. Maybe I'll just stick to images for a while.

Trails and lists

2011-12-08T10:50:00.001-08:00

This island is covered in trails. I think you can get anywhere without being on a road more than 20% of the time. Some are people-trails, some are deer trails, and some are both. There are some very busy people-only trails, so I tend to stick to the deer trails. Some of the deer trails run fairly close to the people trails, so when people are walking by I have to stop suddenly and stand really still so they don't see me; I'm sure they'd think I was a wierdo, skulking around in the woods.

I'm worried about what will happen the first time a dog smells me and comes to check me out. "Cleatus! Cleatus, come! Cleatus, get out of the bush! What are you doing in there? Oh Jesus, there's a man standing there."

I would scare the shit out of myself if I saw that.

There's a lot of 'No Trespassing' and 'Private Property' signs around the island as well, but forunately I seem to hit them from the wrong side every time. By the time I see them, I'm leaving the 'Private Property', not entering it. That's another advantage to deer trails - they respect the terrain instead of imaginary people-lines.

I have a ridiculous amount of work on the go, but it's all fun. Here's the list:

- Brainstorming and storyboarding a short film proposal (collaboration with myself, a dancer and a live action filmmaker)

- Brainstorming and co-writing a proposal for a National Film Board project that I would co-direct with a documentary filmmaker friend from Bella Coola.

- Finishing a website job; the art is done, now it's HTML hell.

- Doing photorealistic dog animation in CG software, then adding visual-effects-y lines of energy and scent and making the dog kind of turn into energy. This project is with a local interactive video artist. I think it will eventually be a gallery installation.

- Writing proposals for Masters of Fine Arts applications. This is the most fun, I think. I have to write 2-3 potential projects I would undertake. I've come up with about seven, and I want to do them all. That's about a decade worth of intense and exciting experimental work written down on a single sheet. Feels so good to have all that stuff to be excited about. If any other animator-artist read the sheet, I'd have to kill them.

- Doing a 5' x 5' oil painting of a maple tree. Actually, this is the most fun, hands down. It's hard to beat the joy of painting.

Not to mention constant marketing and admin stuff. Good times!

Leaves With No Tree

2011-12-03T12:03:00.001-08:00

If there is one thing that I'm finding visually fascinating these days, it's the shapes of trees.

I love the complicated silhouettes of deciduous treetops in the winter. Especially when there are a few leaves left on them. I'd like to just isolate the positions of the leaves and see what kind of pattern they make.

Hmm.

Lookin' arty!

I like this one.

There you have it. "Leaves With No Tree"

assemble

2011-11-30T10:33:00.001-08:00

Stitched-together cedars for painting reference.

It saddens me to say that there are a lot of things I haven't been doing lately to take care of myself and keep myself happy and balanced:

1) I haven't been listening to my little creative impulses. When I think "I should paint that," or "that would make a good camera shot," I haven't been writing it down, taking a photo, painting, or generally considering the fun and intuitive part of my brain at all. For me, that's killer when it comes to art-making.

2) I've been prioritizing other peoples' projects over my own, because those projects are paying the bills at the moment. The bottom line for me is that money is a tool I use to make my art. If I spend three solid months working on someone else's stuff, I'm making money, but I completely lose sight of WHY I'm making money. I need to be making my art daily. So that's what I'm doing again, every morning. Priority one.

3) I haven't been getting out into the bush. I went for a walk in the bush yesterday for the first time in weeks and almost started sobbing from the release. I get everything from the wilderness - a sense of calm, a humbling perspective, inspiration. I'm a fucking idiot for not doing that.

I suspect these are all reasons why I haven't been posting on this blog as much. When I'm not posting here, it means I don't have anything to show, or I don't have anything to talk about because I lack perspective on my life.

I love how this blog has become an integral part of my creative life. My public diary.

Strange.

Buffalo Dreams

2011-11-28T21:36:00.001-08:00

Different drawing tools give different drawings. I've been carrying around a red pencil and mechanical pencil for the last couple days, which is resulting in more character design type stuff out of my head, instead of drawing from life.

..

I wish I had some kind of life-coach to tell me what to do, what to prioritize. I have so many things on the go, but I'm not putting myself out on a limb with any of them. It feels dry and a little stagnant. I need to take a lunge at something, but I'm not sure what it is yet. I feel like it's about to emerge, though.

I just want to focus on one thing. I want to say "fuck it" and pour all my heart into some project or dream. Give it to me! Lay it on me!

I've always worked from one Big Dream to the next, and at the moment I don't have one.

Well, that's not true.

I want to paint.

I haven't painted in about three months now.

That's a problem.

Okay.

Lets get on it.

rain island

2011-11-22T20:13:00.000-08:00

(1) I have been neglecting my Key Activities to Happiness (Swim / Bushwhack / Draw / Paint) for over a week now - maybe longer , and it hit me like the Devil this morning. It's amazing how I can feel completely lost if I stop making my own art and / or spending time outside. It's a bad bad place to be. On the bright side, all it takes is an hour of drawing and a blasting cold water dip to put my world right again.

(2) My woodstove appears to be leaking smoke and I'm doing research on carbon monoxide poisoning. My nose is burning but that's not a symptom so I guess I'm okay.

(3) These are the most busy months I've had in a long time, which is why I haven't been blogging. I have a proposal or an application to write every second week with the last one due Jan 15th, and a big project I'm working on with a deadline of Jan 19th. It's absolutely nutty. This coming weekend is the last one where I won't be working for a while.

That's it for now! Once more, unto the breach! Wish me luck!

Studio Mk X

2011-11-14T11:51:00.000-08:00

My new studio area is the best I've had so far. Lots of natural light, lots of room, lots of storage for big canvasses and enough space that I can actually work on big canvasses and have room to step back from it.

This is the tenth "studio" area I've had in the last ten or fifteen years. Goddamn, have I ever moved around a lot.

ps. I lost my camera's battery charger in the move, so I'm borrowing a camera and it takes photos differently so I thought this would be a decent photo without looking at it too hard. And I don't feel like taking another photo that is non-blurry.

wildlife

2011-11-09T13:40:00.000-08:00

My mornings are:
Black-Tailed Deer,
Chickadees,
River Otters (Mother and two children, and another lone Otter in the next cove over),
Ravens,
Great Blue Herons,
Gulls (don't know what kind yet - never thought to look until now),
Brandt's Cormorants (including a juvenile),
Crows,
Mallard Ducks,
the Varied Thrush,
the Northern Flicker,
Maples,
Arbutus,
Douglas Fir,
Cedar,
moss,
rocks,
barnacles,
cold water.

One of the otters ate something nasty this morning and puked all over the moss. Mucous-like gooey lumps of orange-pink.

cat

2011-10-28T11:01:00.000-07:00

While drawing this, I was wiping smears of blood off myself. That cat slashed me across the nose.

I don't understand cats nearly as much as dogs. Is it even possible to understand cats as much as dogs? I haven't had a cat since I was two years old, because my baby sister kept chasing the cat and pulling its tail and it eventually just hid behind the fridge all day, afraid for its life.

I wonder what my parents did with that cat.

Maybe they killed it and put it in a plastic bag by the road, and that's why this cat slashed me across the face.

asymmetrical proportions

2011-10-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time I had a degree in Civil Engineering and a desire to be an Architect.

I still like to think about building and structure design sometimes. Usually it involves a house implanted into a south-facing slope, looking over some water.

This is a transmutation of the shack near where I swim. Incidentally, it is on a south-facing slope looking over the ocean. Two nuns used to live in it, but they left and now there is an otter family in the basement.

The shack has a symmetrical peaked roof, which I didn't draw. I think it would look nice with an offset ridgeline and a long line of windows up there. And turn the covered porch into an extension on the main building, with lots of windows looking out over the water.

Anyways.

leaves and bubbles

2011-10-24T12:25:00.000-07:00

I have a feeling this drawing is somewhat representative of some kind of animated thing I'm going to do in the near future.

This is my thought of the day:

The only way to be the best at something is by doing it according to your own rules. It's very difficult to perform at your highest level if the parameters are dictated by someone else. I believe that most people who are at the tops of their fields create their own methodologies, exercises, routines and philosophies to support their work - whether its athletics, sciences, art, business, or the ultimate goal of Living Life Happily.

I think the word "genius" is a misnomer for this very reason. I think everyone has the potential to be a genius at the things they love the most - but they don't end up pursuing those things, or get sucked into thinking they have to do it the way other people do it.

Einstein said: "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

In other words, fuck what everyone else thinks. You know what you do best. Have the courage to make it your own.

(I'm lecturing myself here - not anyone else.)

(And Singne - don't worry, this isn't a backlash about our genius talk last night. I already half-wrote this blog a couple days ago.) :)

in the brine

2011-10-21T08:59:00.000-07:00

New place to live means new places to swim.

The problem with this island is that the coastline can be privately owned. I have to walk through 3-4 peoples' properties to get to the water, but you wouldn't know it - it's a steep mossy slope with huge stands of cedars and maples. No fences or markers or sign of human presence whatsoever.

I've decided to play it more like a deer, less like a person. I walk quietly down the slope, pausing occasionally to listen and watch for people. Sometimes I hear them and I stand still until I know they can't see me. I pick routes that are out of the line-of-sight of the houses, and make my way down to sheltered rocky cove where I'm invisible to everything but the three river otters who live in a nearby shack.

If I ever get caught, I'll apologize and plead ignorance and do a better job sneaking next time.

You can buy the oceanfront and say the forests are yours, but I'll be damned if you're going to keep me from enjoying the trees and the animals and the cold water every morning.

five pages

2011-10-14T09:18:00.000-07:00

I have three crazy months ahead... deadlines almost every third week, and they're big deadlines for big projects, grant applications, scholarships, or project pitches. So much thinking and idea-refinement must happen alongside serious focussed worktime.

I can see that non-poetic words are already starting to infiltrate my morning sketchbook pages. My mind is having a hard time staying on big abstract thoughts and meditative observations. It keeps jumping to hard-and-fast plans, thoughts of the future, scheduling the day, etc. That stuff is important, but the non-thinking stuff is crucial. That's when my mind opens up, and the ideas and inspiration really start flowing.

Interesting concept: 'it's when the mind isn't thinking that the ideas come.'

stuff

2011-10-06T12:03:00.000-07:00

random thoughts

I've been waking up at 4:00 am for the past few mornings with all kinds of ideas. Instead of going back to bed, I'm getting up and pulling out a notebook and writing down pages and pages of sketches and notes.

I have way too many ideas and not enough time to do it all. I need to focus them down. Right now I have three collaborative projects on the go at once. I'm doing those while drawing in the mornings, organizing my own projects and getting as much exercise as possible. My days are full to the teats!

I can now understand why some big name artists I know have assistants. It's like any business - you can only expand so much if you're creating product and marketing and seeking new projects and doing the other administrative stuff all on your own. Either you gotta slow down, which means you're creating less, or you gotta expand.

But I can only wrestle with the big picture for so long. What it comes down to is enjoying each day, working hard and doing what I love.

. . .

My last short film, The Perfect Detonator, got accepted into its first festival - The St. Louis International Film Fest. This year I wanted to hit all the festivals that the Academy looks at for feeders into their longlist for Best Animated Short Film. I don't expect to be nominated for an Academy Award, but I figure the Academy's list of festivals is probably a good list to go from. SLIFF is one of those festivals.

So that's another thing to do - keep submitting to festivals, update the Perfect Detonator website, etc etc.

Where's my goddamned assistant?

Bathing and Climbing

2011-09-30T14:21:00.000-07:00

Here's where I've been bathing. The 'waterfall' changes flow depending on the rainfall of the previous few days. It better rain again soon or there's not going to be a shower tomorrow.

...

I've heard that learning happens in plateaus - we have long periods where we feel like we're not getting any better at a certain thing, but if we keep at it, we'll experience a sudden jump in understanding. Presumably this is the result of all the time taken in the previous plateau to gather experience, or maybe it's that we have been learning slowly, but just haven't noticed the incremental change.

Yesterday I had a sudden leap of understanding with deer trails.

I follow deer trails quite often, but all of a sudden I'm finding them everywhere - in places I've walked past dozens of times. On my last three bushwhacks, there has been zero wading through Salal, breaking through thorny vines or falling through rotten logs. Instead, I'm walking where deer walk. I still have to crouch and jump and push aside the undergrowth, but there is always a sure step for my feet.

This had led to a sudden leap in understanding how deer live. I stoop through the soft mossy hollows under big trees they use for shelter, pause at the cleared-out spots that give a great view of their surroundings, note the side-trails where they dip down to drink from a stream.

It seems that most ravines have two deer trails - one along the top of the ravine, and one cross-slope trail about halfway down. I would imagine the top one is the most used, and the halfway one is more sheltered from the weather, and a good hidden backup to run along if you spot a predator up above.

All the times I've walked along these streambeds I've looked for signs of deer and never found them. Now I realize they've been up above me the whole time, and probably watching me sometimes. (Most of the cross-slope deer trails give an excellent view down to the streams whenever possible.) This makes sense - since every animal needs to drink from the streams, it would be stupid to walk along them.

I also learned that deer can climb just like mountain goats. Seriously! It's ridiculous.

I followed a trail upslope from a river. It was steep, but doable. Then it turned into a cliff. I was pressed right against the earth, pulling myself up with roots and fern bases and salal steams. The dog and I took a lot of breaks, breathing heavily, sometimes pressed up next to each other against the base of a tiny cedar, figuring out how to manage the next route.

To imagine a deer climbing or descending this route blows my mind. They must run straight up or down at some points, because there's no way you could do it without some momentum, or opposable thumbs to grab things, or a man-friend to push you up by the bum (if you're a dog).

Much to learn!

At the top of the deer trail, looking almost straight back down to the river.

skies brighten to grey

2011-09-29T08:54:00.001-07:00

oil paintings

2011-09-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

Salal in Shadow - 36" x 24" - Oil

Here are three oil paintings I did this summer. They're the first oil paintings I've ever done. I'm very happy with them. I've done a lot of acrylics, and some half-acrylic half-oil stuff, but this is definitely the way to go for me. I love how you can blend and layer the colours, and the texture of the paint. The wetness works for me, too. Acrylics dry too fast for me to moosh them around, and I end up wasting a lot of paint on my palette because it dries up.

More to come!

Summer Maple - 36" x 24" - Oil

I gotta take these paintings outside and photograph them in indirect light with a tripod. The photos are a little blurry, and you can see too much reflection, so they don't really show the depth of the colour. I'll probably post them again once I get good photos of them.

Blackberry on Sun-Bleached Log - 48" x 36"

I'll soon have an online gallery with my paintings, but if you're ever interested in buying something, send me an email.

not my house

2011-09-26T09:23:00.001-07:00

autumn on the mountain

2011-09-22T13:05:00.000-07:00

Swimming Hole and Environs.

The rainy season has officially begun. The skies are grey, views of the forest are filtered through a thin curtain of silvery rain.

I've learned a vital lesson to keep myself active and happy in this weather - immerse myself in it. Jump in some kind of water every day, no matter how cold it is. Put on shorts, take off my shoes and hike through the bush, balance across logs, crawl through game trails and get drenched in the droplets hanging from the ferns and salal.

I've been missing these immersive aqueous adventures over the past few dry months. It's good to be cold and cut and wet again.

En route to the local stream.

Recent bush highlights:

Standing in a rainfall of fir needles on a dry windy day. It was like bathing in Tree.

Deep in a ravine where water falls from the forest canopy long after the rain has actually stopped. Realizing that the sky has cleared, but the "rain" is still pouring over me with the same intensity as before.

Crawling through a pile of logs in heavy rain when the dog suddenly goes crazy and starts running around sniffing something. He never smells deer, only bear. The rain is so loud it's impossible to hear anything more than twenty feet away. Waiting and listening, then following the dog to see what we can find.

The daily skinnydip in a rocky pool on Qualicum River, under an old Maple (shown above), and among crayfish.

Watching the dry streambed fill up and start to flow again.

on the walls

2011-09-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

There are very few things more rewarding that seeing children engrossed in one of my films.

So I finally have my film, Perfect Detonator, on the walls of a gallery with my paintings, including some big oils, watercolours, and "accidental" artwork that came out of the process of creating my film. I'll be posting more of the paintings in the next week or so.

This was my original intent with the film. I kinda forgot about it after all the years of creating the film. It feels good to remember why I did it, and to see the final product.

Framed Production Painting from "The Perfect Detonator" short film.

I prefer having my films presented in a space that is removed from the normal film and TV viewing experience. I don't want there to be expectations of instant gratification or a handy remote to change the channel if the first 5 seconds doesn't grab you. I want people to watch the film, then have a period silence to think about the film instead of being instantly popped into another film or a TV commercial.

The space of a gallery also lets me share my fascination with the process of creating animated films.

I like that people can walk around before and after the film and see all the incidental art that happened along the way. I showed a few of those things on this blog - background paintings that I found interesting, or a series of classically animated frames, done in pen and ink.

Now that I have the show up, I can document it and shop it around to other galleries in places where I really want it to be shown. I'm excited about that.

"French Creek" - Watercolour, Pen and Ink

An important breakthrough for me is that the show is not limited to one side of my creativity - I'm showing all different media and styles, but everything still looks cohesive. I suppose that's because it all came from the same brain. The wider spread of styles feels good because it's a good representation of how my creative process works. I like to jump around with the work I create. This gives me tremendous freedom to use whatever medium I feel like and know that it's going to work with everything else I'm making. My shows will be more like "This is what I've been up to", rather than "This is a series of paintings," which has limited me in the past.

"If Only You Knew" - watercolour, pen and ink

The other exciting part is that the gallery show finally completes my Perfect Detonator Canada Council of the Arts Grant. I can finally start applying for funding on other projects.

on this morning

2011-09-12T12:09:00.000-07:00

Consistently hot and cloudless days. Fewer wasps now than last week. The termites are at peak migration. Plenty of them flying around at dusk every night. The diversity of birds has dropped sharply in the last two weeks. No more Goldfinches, Pileated Woodpeckers, or Northern Flickers. The Stellar Jays are still around, as are the Chickadees and Sparrows. I can't remember if any of those birds stick around this area all year.

The ravens are always around. Quorking in the unseen distance or flying overhead with the wind thrumming loudly through their wingtips.

Sunflower

2011-09-11T12:57:00.000-07:00

Same sunflower, different tools. The first is a 4B pencil and watercolour; second is a brush-pen and watercolour. It's amazing how much more expressive a brushstroke is.

Number One Reason My Quality of Life Has Recently Improved:
I only sit at the computer when I have specific work to do. No more twaddling around on the internet. I think this is saving me 2 hours per day, minimum - not including the interruption of focus I used to suffer from constantly checking email.

Number Two and Three Reasons:
Waking up close to sunrise and immediately drawing for 1-3 hours. It feels so good to do my favorite thing in the world, right away. It calms me, gives me perspective, and lets me ease into the rest of my work without resentment. By 8:00 pm, I'm pleasantly tired and don't keep myself awake with coffee, working until midnight or 1:00 am. I fall asleep early, looking forward to waking up early because there's something to look forward to.

streams and lakes of the future

2011-09-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

Starting tomorrow, and for the next five weeks, I'll be house- and dogsitting. That means far less swimming, and a lot more bushwhacking. The area I'm staying is very familiar to me, but I don't want to hit the same routes that I usually take.

I'm going to buy a topographic map of the area at a scale that will show the streams, and try to follow as many as I can. Once the rain starts, those will be nice places to check out.

The maps I already have show me some small lakes to tramp out to, as well. Small enough that I can swim around them and get the dog to follow me on the shore.

There are too many thoughts kicking around in my head to get into anything too deeply. By the time I get to blogging, I'm tired of that kind of thinking. The thinking is happening during my long morning drawing sessions, though, so I have lots of non-words things to show.

My new non-computer-wake-up-at-sunrise regime is working like a charm. I can't believe how much more productive I am, and how many more ideas I have.

Qualicum is Hell

2011-08-30T08:44:00.000-07:00

Lots of things going on in this ol' head lately. Instead of trying to write about it, I'll show some sketchbook pages. I think it tells the story well enough.

ps. Qualicum isn't really hell.

camping

2011-08-24T21:25:00.000-07:00

I just spent the last few days camping. It's been a while since I've had good quiet camping time. Not beer-drinking, road-tripping camping, but sit-still, think-and-listen camping.

Several revelations have formed from this brief sojourn:

(1) My contentment is inversely proportional to the amount of time I spend on a computer every day.

(2) I am addicted to thinking. When I want to take a break from work, I will go on the internet and click through links, scanning useless information and speed-reading articles - anything to keep my mind moving. This is worse than useless time - it's actually draining my energy.

(3) When I am looking at a computer screen, I have a lessened ability to form complex thoughts, lengthy threads-of-conversation, and unique points-of-view. In short, I am not using my mind to its full potential when I'm sitting at a computer.

(4) Drawing is meditative and recharges me.

So it's pretty obvious that I need to spend far less time on the computer and more time drawing.

(5) I am going to wake up at sunrise, and stop work at sunset. By doing this, I will be awake and aware at the two most magical parts of the day. My daily routine will be timed by looking at the sun, rather than the clock. So the winter will be a slower time, and the summer will be more active. As it should be. This kind of plan rarely lasts long, but maybe the act of writing it out will give it some solidity.

Onwards!

what's new

2011-08-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

I think it would be a lot easier, in some ways, if my life had less variables to it. It's tempting to get an apartment near a city, get a salary job, go on vacation sometimes, take weekends off.

I can't describe my lifestyle in a general way because I don't know what to relate it to. Also, it changes too often to define - what I'm doing in one month feels completely different than the previous, from place-of-living to state-of-mind to daily routine. It feels like a good way for me to live, philosophically, but it takes work.

Maybe the best way to describe my life is to list some things I've done in the last week:

Figured out how to clear a stripped screw from a steel plate and rethread the hole with a tap.

Oil painted on big canvasses in barefeet outside in the sun. (This is what I'm mostly doing.)

Slept in the back of a truck on the side of the road, watching the moon and listening to owls and a distant house party.

Made notes on Interdisciplinary Graduate research proposals that would merge Ecology, Landscape Architecture, First Nations Studies, Architecture, and Community Planning.

Practiced swimming with a dry-bag containing a towel and camera. While treading water with my feet, opened the dry bag, dried my hands with the towel and took photos. I should just get a waterproof camera. (Photos still on the camera, they're kind of shit, but I'll post some good ones when get them, if I don't ruin the camera first).

Stood shoulder-deep in reeds at sunrise and listened to bugs and a bear crashing through the bush.

Sat on a couch in a storage unit for an hour, reading the rules to an immensely complicated game simulation of the Napoleonic Wars.

Figured out to make my own canvas stretchers and to stretch my own canvas.

Discussed how to make motion-captured Schnauzer installation art interact with an audience.

...

Sometimes it's hard to accept that I'm making a living at this. Funny, that. I guess I've been well-trained to believe that it's not possible.

fuck it

2011-08-11T23:15:00.000-07:00

I've had two problems in the last two weeks with my main computer. It's my work PC, and I don't even have it hooked up to the internet.

These issues have wasted days of work, and it's certainly not the first time this kind of thing has happened. It's so frustrating for my flow to stop so abruptly, with no warning, and with no easy fix. It's not like I ran out of paint or the weather turned bad. The fucking thing just stopped and I don't know how much work I lost.

This frustration has been going on for a couple years now. I'm no longer interested in spending my days on a computer. I'm tired of pressing a button and waiting for a result, sitting still, feeling bored, feeling like only one part of my brain is working at once, while the rest of my brain and my entire body wallows.

I want to be doing work that I never want to retire from. I want to imagine myself doing that work until I'm 60, 70, 80. I want to imagine myself happy and relaxed, not tense and hunched over and needing to stretch my body and mind and spirit.

I certainly don't imagine myself being happy if I'm creating a fucking boot CD at 11:00 pm at age 65 so I can continue working. So why am I doing it now? Life's too short. It's time to make a change.

I've been looking at going back to school to do an Interdisciplinary PhD, through Landscape Architecture and Ecology. (It's a long story, and maybe it'll come out in this blog sometime). I feel like I can use my mind on that, face a lot of challenges, be creative, be passionate, be outside, and make a difference.

Also, I love to paint. I know I will happily paint for the rest of my life - until I'm blind, at least. Then I'll probably write poems.

I may still animate at times, and I may direct films, write stories, create a graphic novel, or do any number of things I haven't even imagined yet. But I think my days of being a 3D Computer Animator are nearing their end. It's time to evolve and grow and move on. Happily.

waiting for meat slabs

2011-08-03T12:06:00.000-07:00

There's a strange coffeeshop in the grocery store near where I'm staying. It's on the second floor, and there are windows that look down over the grocery store deli counter.

If you ever want to practice drawing retired people ordering meat from a top-down perspective, this is the place.

Observations

2011-08-01T14:22:00.000-07:00

In a five or six-year old clearcut: Wild blackberries over a fallen log near sunset.

In my past paintings, I would add little characters and/or cartoon-like elements:

I wanted to have the feeling of a narrative in the paintings - almost like they were a cell taken out of an animated film.

More recently, I've been using little characters to try to embody some kind of "spirit" of the subject I'm painting, if that makes any sense:

Last week I was sitting out in the bush looking at the trees and trying to figure out, "What is the 'spirit' in this scene? How could I personify it with some weird little creatures? Or how could I simplify it down into less brush strokes, to show the energy of the overall scene?"

But I'm coming to realize that there is no need to find anything in a subject, or to add any more than what I am seeing. Every glimpse of sky, every angle of a branch is just what it is, nothing more. "Flow of energy" and "spirit" are constructions of my own mind, and it's unnecessary and false to imagine these things. There is enough 'spirit' to discover in the way the trees stand, or the curve of the stem of a leaf. I don't need to create imaginary characters when there is already so much life and personality and creativity in representing each plant, and how light reveals the world in the moment I'm observing it.

In other words, I'm feeling really good about not making shit up and simply painting the goddamned leaves.

Suckin' on Soap and Salal

2011-07-21T23:04:00.000-07:00

Here's a painting. Once again, it's based off of Salal. Maybe I'll call it Salal Again. It's blurry because I just took the photo in a dark garage.

I don't know if it's done or not, but I'm letting it go for now and moving on. This one's acrylic and oil. I'm also doing watercolours, and some watercolours with acrylic. No restrictions, whatever feels good is what I'm doing. I pulled out the ol' table saw and tomorrow I'm ripping some two-by-fours and having my first go at making big canvas stretchers for some 4' or 5' square paintings. Fun fun. So nice to be using my hands and feeling and moving around to create work, as opposed to slouching in a chair over a computer monitor.

...

I bet I ate something worse than you did today. Wanna bet? How much? Okay, deal. What did you eat? Hmm.. Here's what I ate:

I found a dog biscuit in my pocket and popped it in my mouth, but it was an old biscuit that had been in my pocket and gone through the wash, so it tasted like laundry detergent.

poo trails and painting woes

2011-07-21T01:47:00.000-07:00

I have so much work to do, it's insane. Here's what I have to do in the next six weeks:

1) Many many paintings for an art show in September.

2) Concept designs for a collaboration for an online / interactive thing - due next Wednesday.

3) Sorting through and organizing motion capture data for another project, which includes some technical glitch-figurin', and making things work in three different pieces of software - due two Wednesdays from now.

4) Film Festival Submissions for Perfect Detonator (my most recent short film) - six need to be done by next Wednesday.

(2) to (4) are fairly procedural - I'll know when they're done, and it's just a matter of taking the time. But painting is the big scary one.

For starters, I never know how long each painting will take. I can't whip off a painting in a set amount of time. Some go fast, some take forever. And in the case of watercolours, sometimes I can fuck them up by working them too much, which is what I did tonight.

Also, I need to gather inspiration for the paintings, so in between (1) to (4), I'm spending a lot of time exploring with a camera, printing photos, doodling and trying to give myself open space to think and imagine. That's not especially easy with all the other stuff going on, not to mention that I have to move at the end of August.

...

Something I think I've learned from bushwhacking lately - if you scare an animal in the bush, they usually take a little poo before they run off, so even if you don't see the animal, you can go to where you last heard them and figure out what kind of animal it was. Of the last three times I've scared something in the bush this week, all three times there's been a poo trail left behind. Two deer and one bear so far.

flat blue flat grey

2011-07-18T23:40:00.000-07:00

Here's where I'm swimming these days. Pretty fucking boring. It's a beautiful beach, actually, and apparently the warmest Pacific coast beach north of California. However, beach means endless sand, which means I'm swimming over a giant aqueous desert. There's the occasional seal, some good sized crabs, sand dollars and small fish, but not much else.

I cut the shit out of the insides of my feet trying to climb the pile in the center of that photo. I got up pretty high out of the water, then I started to slip and I squeezed tighter with my feet and scraped them down through a few feet of barnacles before I started to feel the pain and let go.

It's amazing how much colder the water has become over the last two weeks of cloudiness. I wonder how much that's changed the seasonal algae blooms, and all the life they support.

I'm working like a hot demon these days. I have a ridiculous amount of painting to do, which is fun, but on top of that I have a lot of technical animation work, and administrative / marketing stuff to get through, which is not so fun. It's amazing how exercise can almost completely eliminate stress. I'm swimming every afternoon, and going for a little bushwhack every morning.

When I get a chance, I'll post some painting photos. Maybe tomorrow, if nothing exciting happens in the meantime.

undergrowth

2011-07-15T22:37:00.000-07:00

This summer on the West Coast has been somewhat apocalyptic so far, in terms of cloudiness and raininess. I've lived in this area for about thirty years, and can't remember a summer so rainy.

On the bright side, the forest is still lush and spring-green.

I have a ridiculous amount of painting to do in the next six weeks, on top of a fair bit of computer work. So my creative muscles are working hard. To recharge, I'm heading into the forests and forested areas in the mountainous center of Vancouver Island; it's the area I was exploring when I first started writing this blog.

I'm finding a lot of inspiration in the groundcover these days. I like how it kind of flattens out into a two-dimensional pattern. Look at a super closeup of the above photo:

Isn't that gorgeous? Look how the water is all wrapped around the flower. They look like tiny halos.

Here's my bush-buddy, and one of my very best friends. We're down in a creek, and we just heard something walking through the bush up above us, just off the left edge of the camera frame. It's nice to have dog around - a good set of ears, a desire to bark and make himself known. I'm lucky because he takes good commands around bears. He's probably seen about a hundred bears in his life, if not more, and knows when to chase them off or when to stick around.

We went up and checked it out after a while. Judging from some fresh poop I found, it was a bear. I think it was a small one, maybe a cub. Her mother must have been further up the hill. This area is crawling with black bears and deer, which keeps things exciting. I'm not around the seals so much any more (although I do swim in the ocean every day), so it's nice to have some land-mammal wilderness replacements.

trippin'

2011-07-10T23:24:00.000-07:00

sketchbook pages, playing with new brush-pen.

non-attachment poem

a borrowed car
containing everything you need
and a banana,

once again, moving into the Unknown,
learning a new skill:
don't reference the past to define yourself.

you only exist in the present moment.

...

the ultimate test of the new skill

At thirty-seven years of age,
move into a trailer
on your parents' driveway.

rethinking painting

There are leaves, forming a pattern and colours
They are constantly changing because of things like wind and sun
All this is going into my brain
My hand brings it back out, in two dimensions:
This is what I saw, filtered through my Self.

Then I judge what my hand just created
And try to “improve” it –
Make it more pleasing to the eye,
Add a colour there for more interest.
What’s the point of that?
Who cares what my eyes want to see?
Is it more that I think other peoples’ eyes will want to see something more interesting?

Perhaps a painting should not be too overworked.
Watch the image record the image
And you are done.

eleven lines

2011-07-09T11:51:00.000-07:00

A new project I'm helping out with for the next half year involves dogs and motion capture. That's all I'll say about it for now. I think it's going to turn into a gallery installation and possibly more.

...

Some parts of my life are taking a huge swing these days. I'm still doing the same work, but I'm uncertain about where I'll be living. This summer is going to be an interesting mishmash of movement and sleeping-places. It will be a challenge to ride the chaos (which I somewhat enjoy), while maintaining a sense of stability, peace and solitude that is necessary for me to work. I have to flow easily down this stream, let it carry me where I am meant to be, and at the same time find stillness in that movement to observe and create.

...

My sense of consistency, stability and stillness will be maintained by doing the following every day:

- Sketching and writing, preferably somewhere away from my place-of-living.

- Swimming at least once, and doing one other bit of exercise (more swimming, bushwhacking, tree-climbing..)

- Painting.

...

I'm looking for a place to live that has the following:

- Access to Vancouver by bicycle and / or ferry.

- Swimmable ocean water within five-minute biking distance

- A friendly landlord who respects my privacy and right to feel at home in the space I'm renting.

- Access to a yard and / or deck that has some privacy.

- Wilderness within 10-15 minute biking distance.

- Good natural light and space for me to work.

- Quiet surroundings, and nothing to see out the windows but nature.

- Proximity to my family.

That's pretty much all I need right now, laid out in eleven short lines. Bring it on.

long-timey thoughts

2011-07-05T23:31:00.000-07:00

It sure feels good to start finding a regular home routine again. Drawing, painting, administrative stuff, biking, swimming, storyboarding, reading, writing. It takes several days to work back up into a steady work pace, but that's a whole lot faster than it used to take. It took me years of frustration and challenge to get to a point where I could work productively from a home studio.

Now that I'm back onto my own work, I feel a strong "voice" emerging from this ol' soul of mine. I suppose it's always been there, but I think it's gained focus and confidence, especially over the last couple years. My art will still be diverse (maybe even more so than before), but it is coming out with more intention and less hesitation than before. More referencing my own reality than anyone else's. More ideas and thoughts and experiences to draw from, I suppose. I suppose it's about living a rich and balanced life as much as it's about making a lot of art.

I don't mean to say I'm awesome, and I certainly don't mean to say that my art is awesome. I'm simply making an observation about my personal growth. And learning and growth is what it all comes down to for me - making art is (hopefully) a byproduct of those experiences. A recording of what's going on in life.

I think this blog has played a big part in focusing my thoughts together, defining my truths and recording my observations. On top of drawing, painting and animating, Draw or be Drawn has become another important creative outlet for me. I hope I keep writing it for a long time to come. Maybe for the rest of my life.

Thanks to everyone who reads this blog. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't feel like people occasionally stopped in for a peek.

swimming calculations

2011-07-04T16:51:00.000-07:00

After three months on the road, I'm finally home and settling in. The studio is cleaned up and I'm just about to start painting.

Swimming is getting good. Now that the winter storms are gone and the water is warm, the big challenge is distance. I'm back onto my goal of swimming from Gabriola Island to Entrance Island this summer, with a double-seater kayak as an escort.

My daily swim is going to be lengths of my local cove - from the point to the pub and back, multiple times. I need to do that three times to make up a kilometer, which is the distance to Entrance Island. I can easily swim one kilometer in a pool, but it's a different story with the waves and cold water sapping my energy away. Also:

Even at the best tides, I need to assume that I'm at least swimming perpendicular to a 1 knot current. I swim about 1 knot on average over long periods of time, so the water will be dragging me at the same speed I'm swimming. I need to aim for a different point than the island, and hope I hit it with the current. That also means I should assume I'll be swimming 1.5 km instead of 1 km. Maybe best to be comfortable with 2km, because the water will be colder and rougher out there.

I'll need to get a good marine chart and talk to some locals about this before I try it, obviously, and I have a lot of training to do to hit 2 kilometers at 1 knot in rough ocean. Eventually I'll probably start training by swimming a bit further out (but not in the shipping / fishing lanes, and not in the strong current areas).

I'm also having a hard time gauging when my body is getting too tired to swim. I don't know what that feels like. Next time I'm in Vancouver I'm going to hit a pool with a lifeguard and swim myself to near-exhaustion so I know what the signs are.

Off to paint..

last day in the city and my bitterness doth overflow

2011-06-28T11:27:00.000-07:00

Nomadic-hobo style Festival Submissions. Cuttin' DVD covers with a knife at a coffeeshop with my backpack and shit laying all over the place.

Look at this guy sitting to my left. There were only two other people in the whole fucking coffeeshop when he came in, and he sat right next to me. (It's a wide-angle lens, so objects are closer than they appear.) I just don't understand some peoples' insensitivity about personal space. Every time I look at him, he pretends I'm not there. Fuck, dude, you're sitting three feet away from me, and you've even pushed your table closer to me so you have to be about one foot from me every time you reach for your coffee. Have you completely blocked out my presence, or are you stupid or what?

He had no idea I was rotating my entire laptop to shine my webcam at him to take his photo. I just don't get it. Does he live his whole life like this? He would be a shitty soccer player if that was the case. For the sake of the gene pool, I just hope it's a general survival mechanism for some people in densely populated areas to block out their surroundings like that.

I wish I had to fart right now, just to see if he would smell it.

negative space

2011-06-26T17:11:00.000-07:00

I love the view from my sister's place. It makes Vancouver look like Norway or some shit like that.

I've been living out of a backpack for three months now. First the Yukon, then Vancouver. At first it was strenuous, but I'm starting to get used to the lifestyle. Humans are nomadic creatures. It is our natural way of being. Babies will only rest when you hold them and walk with them (or simulate the motion by rocking them), because that is how our species prospered for 99.9% of our history - walking, walking, in our mothers' arms, from one place to the next, as our families hunted and camped and slept and walked again the next day. When we are babies, we're not so indoctrinated to forget that nomadic lifestyle, and we require it.

It feels good to move around the city carrying everything I need, and nothing more:

Backpack
4-5 T-Shirts
1 Longsleeved Shirt
3 Pairs of Socks
2 Pairs of Shorts (usually wearing one pair)
1 Pair Underwear (I overpacked - underwear is not necessary if it's summer and you're swimming every day.)
2 Camp Towels (quick-drying, thin and small)
Tent
Sleeping Bag
Thermarest
Sil-Tarp (super lightweight small tarp)
Bit o' Rope
Toiletries
Leatherman (multitool)
Knife
Sketchbook
1-2 Reading Books

...Normally I would pack food, a campstove, a pot, a mug and warmer clothes, but since I'm in the city to work, the rest of the pack is taken up by

Laptop Bag containing:
Laptop
The Economist Magazine
2 Thumb Drives
1 Backup Drive (1TB)
Mouse, Mousepad, Headphones
Digital Camera
Assorted cables to make these things talk to each other.

The dance project is finally finished. Super fun, super challenging and very inspiring. I worked with some great artists who I know I will work with again in the future. The experience has left me with a strong desire to create my own performance pieces. More like performed short films that are edited on-the-spot, combined with sound / music. We'll see.

The incredible thing about creativity is that you don't burn out on it. The more you're creating, the more ideas you have. I guess it's like exercising in a way. If you run every day, you're going to be able to run further and further with each passing day. On the other hand, it's also healthy to have periods of rest to give your muscles a chance to grow and heal.

I think that sometimes we hold on to ideas because it's the 'big one', because we fear that there will be no 'big ones' to follow it up. I don't believe this. There is a bottomless well of inspiration within us. We're only restrained by our own fears; by not consistently exercising the muscles that put ideas into action.

My mind is brewing with ideas for my own work and for collaborations. I'm stoked to get home and start painting.

The only thing missing is some serious bush time. I love to draw people and buildings, but my heart and my inspiration comes from the wilderness. I'm planning a week-long trip along some uninhabited bit of coastline somewhere, to get my head back into my painting-space.

home

2011-06-19T21:04:00.000-07:00

Swimming in the ocean is my daily rite of manhood.
Its wildness forces me to accept and understand my own wildness.
When I am surrounded by its power, it's potential for violence,
My own violence drains away into humility and awe.

I believe that my body now craves that daily battle,
The water burning every inch of my skin,
Fighting the terror of unseen teeth in the murk,
The imagined cramps, riptides,
Drowning far from land.

Too many days without it
Makes my stomach twist,
People feel too close, I get angry,
Yearn for danger, conflict, and physical challenge.

Now that summer is here, I find that a simple dip is not enough. The warmth of the water is a disappointment. (Warmth is relative - I still haven't seen anyone else swimming on the beaches.)

I try to make every swim a challenge. I like it when it's windy and the waves are high. In Vancouver, I would swim far out from the beach, trying to overcome my fears of currents, big boats, sudden cramps, drowning.

One night last week it was too late to swim in the ocean, so I went to a pool at UBC. There was thirty minutes until closing time. With a lifeguard on duty, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to test one of my worst deep-water imaginings. What would happen if I cramped up badly. Could I swim it out?

I swam as hard as I could for fifteen or twenty minutes until my side cramped up, then my right leg. I glanced back at the lifeguard to make she was watching. Yes, she was watching - trying to look calm, sort of staring past me, well aware that I was now struggling - swimming oddly sideways, kicking with only one leg and treading water with my arms.

I tried to give her a calm smile and went about my business. It took me a few minutes of deep breaths and slow movement to swim it off, then I was fine.

Good to know.

(Last thought - I think it's bullshit that Aquaman is depicted as a hairless, fatless young man. Like every other sea mammal, Aquaman should have a healthy layer of either hair or fat or both. That would be way cooler.)

ceilings

2011-06-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a review of Plaything, the dance show I've been working on. Come check it out this weekend or next, if you're in Vancouver. Now that the show is rolling, I can start thinking about my next projects.

Since I first started doing fulltime art about a decade ago, my overall career pattern hasn't changed much - tonnes of big ideas, some frustration that I'm not doing all of them at once, a broad range of interests, all reigned in by a fanatical desire to organize things into schedules and lists.

The result is a tonne of pages of dreams and "TO DO" lists taped on my walls and strewn across my desk.

They go something like this:

NEXT MONTHS' STUFF

June

Market Perfect Detonator Film - website, mailing list, continue festival submissions, send out copies to contributors etc.
Check Motionbuilder / Maya for quadripeds
Talk to Joyce about Mexico etc.

July

Dog installation gig.
Solo camping / sketching week.
Start painting for Sept. show.
Check Banff deadlines.
Start jamming next film for BravoFact.
More PDet submissions.

August

Painting mania for September
Bravofact refine
PDet Fest Stuff.

September

Art show
More dog installation gig
Dogsit
Document paintings for portfolio.
BravoFact submit.

October

Dog installation gig.
Find and contact galleries across Canada and internationally for painting
P. Det show

LATER IN FALL

Next film (quickie)
P Det Submissions Ongoing
Ramp up painting / gallery hunts. Combine with trip(s)?

...

That's all I got for now. Lots to do, always changing. Part of me wishes I could plan further into the future, but I've learned that things change too fast to go much further than 6 months. New ideas and opportunities will arise, other ideas will fall flat, timelines will change. It's an interesting way of making a living, I'll tell ya. You gotta be a bit philosophical about the whole thing, I think.

riots

2011-06-15T23:48:00.000-07:00

I was going to write some stuff about the riots in downtown Vancouver, but then I looked at some nice photos of bright green trees and lush West Coast rainforest, and now I don't really give a shit about the riots.

I will say that I'm excited to have had my first douse of teargas, and that I don't really think the "riots" are a big surprise, or worthy of indignation. What do you expect when you hype up hundreds of thousands of young adult males, unite them under one "tribe", dress them up in the same colours, get them drunk, and set them loose downtown? The male Homo Sapiens is not a peaceful animal - it never has been, and it never will be.

Young adult male readers of this blog - do you remember doing stupid shit when you were young? If so, try not to get all righteous on the Esteemed Rioters - if you were in the same situation, years ago, it might have been you.

larvae and mothers

2011-06-12T11:31:00.000-07:00

I like the Northern Flicker. My parents have always had bird feeders and they often attract a good flock of Flickers. From my early teens to now, I have probably had a hundred conversations with my mother about what the Flickers are up to. (Not to mention all the other birds.)

"Those Flickers! They make such a mess of the seeds."

"The Flickers just hog the whole feeder. See them lording over it, keeping the other birds away? Look, Jason, see?"

Northern Flicker. Not my photo.

Anyways, I just watched a Northern Flicker picking at an ant nest between the cracks of a concrete patio. Deftly flicking aside the dry soil and never missing the exact spots where huge chambers of ant-larvae were stored. Munching up the rich white rice-like larvae like turkey dinner.

I kinda miss my mom this morning.

I see her often, but I wish I could be with her right now, standing in their kitchen, looking out the window with her while she washes dishes, talking about birds and the weather and the bears and where she's been walking these days.

the weekend

2011-06-10T22:24:00.000-07:00

The Weekend

people talking
more people talking
wishing
missing dreamtime
wanting to fade back into nothing
to drown in salt water
also
a damned fine hockey game

watching the hockey game,

watching people yelling,
getting drunk enough that they struggle to care,
look at him - he's forgotten about the game,
until everyone starts shouting,
he joins in with a whoop,
not knowing what happened.

don't pretend, friend.

...

I have been in the city for five days and I am turning into a grumpy, sour, unpleasant turd. Stay tuned.

two threads crossing

2011-06-10T00:28:00.000-07:00

DOWNTOWN VANCOUVER: A few days ago as I was walking across the street, a man in his late forties staggered towards me on the crosswalk, asking for help. He was moving too slowly to get off the road before the traffic light changed, so I held his arm and coaxed him to the sidewalk.

Jeans, no shirt, well-tanned, thick belly and chest, strong arms, old tattoos. He said he thought he was having a stroke.

"I've had two strokes before. My blood pressure is through the roof."

I tried to help him breathe slowly and calm down, called another guy over to call 911, helped him sit on the ground when he felt faint. He had a vacant look in his eyes, and when I held his arms I could tell something was really wrong. His pulse was going crazy.

"Just relax, brother, you'll be okay."

I don't know how many people walked past this guy before I got there - ignored him because he was shirtless and dazed and looking unwell. I saw three people pretend not to see him before I got to him.

The ambulance eventually arrived.

"So you feel like you're having a stroke? Have you had a stroke before?"
The man said he had two strokes before.
"What have you been doing today?"
"I've been drinking rubbing alcohol for the past week."

At this point, the emergency people said I could go.
I squeezed the guy's shoulder before I left.

"Take care, brother."
He looked up at my face and said, "This guy... this guy helped me."

I treasure those chance connections, those moments when the backdrop of the big lonely city disappears and the focus closes in on two people closely interacting for a short period of time. Two humans reaching an understanding, communicating about the most basic, important things with no falsehoods layered on top.

Then the moment ends, we disappear separately into the masses of people and our individual stories continue on from there.

at least I can hear birds now.

2011-06-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

Out the bedroom door. Once I'm back in late June, I'm home for a while. This door will be wide open, and my feet will be shoeless, for 2.5 months straight.

I have two sleeps at home, then I spend the next two weeks in Vancouver without a break. I'm completely drained, and just hope I can recharge my soul somewhat in the next fourty hours before I head back into the big city. I have the place to myself, and I'm not going to do anything but sleep and swim and read. And rotoscope 4,000 frames of dance.

The novelty of working in Vancouver has long worn off. The noises and buildings and masses of people are a nonstop assault on my senses. I'm finding it hard to get my head away from all the stimulation, to get some perspective. Even now that I'm home on this quiet island, my nerves are still frayed, I still feel like punching people in the face. My back is sore from stress, I'm eating shitty food, not drinking enough water, and I haven't slept enough. My life isn't balanced, I'm not taking care of myself, and pimply rosacea has broken out on my face.

Fuck yeah. How's that for the romantic life of the artist?

Good night.

the root of it all

2011-06-03T09:06:00.000-07:00

At my first job as an animator, I did a lot of overtime and really wanted to please people (and myself) with good work. A lot of people worked long hours, but you were never forced to do it. One evening, at quitting time, I told one of my co-workers I was staying late, as usual. She packed up to go and as she walked out the door, she said to me something like,

"When you're lying on your deathbed, are you going to look back and think 'I'm really happy I stayed and worked extra hours that night?' Or do you think you would look back more fondly on the couple hours you spent outside in the sun instead?"

I think that one comment pretty much closed the door on my long-hours-studio-animation career.

Since then, I've used the "lying on the deathbed looking back on my life" image many times to make all manner of decisions. Thanks, animator-lady-with-the-red-hair-whose-name-I-can't-even-remember-any-more.

Here's another deathbed tidbit that really gets to the root of it: A dear friend of mine is a nurse in Whitehorse, Yukon. She's seen a lot of births and a lot of deaths. She observed that one of two things happen in the last moments before someone departs their body: Either they become completely content and at peace, or they die stricken with terror, fighting and wrestling, literally clawing and grabbing with their hands to try to hold on to their physical body.

. . .

That pretty much lays it all on the line for me. Everything I do in my life is just a lead-up to that final second in my body. It's about finding a way to exist, even for one moment, without fear, without attachment, with complete acceptance, and surrounded by love.

. . .

I saw a great article yesterday, written by another nurse who has spent years nursing the dying. In her experience, the most common regret anyone has on their deathbed is:

I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

Every male patient she nursed (and many women as well) said

I wish I didn't work so hard.

Rounding off the Top Five Lifetime Regrets were:

I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

I wish that I had let myself be happier.

fuck you, neil young

2011-06-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

shitmix combination of the last day's work with a map I made for a tourist

Sitting in a starfucks listening to their goddamned soundtrack -

"old man, take look at my life
I'm a lot like you"

Besides my parents, I've never had many (any?) mentors in my life, and I've never really had any ideas of a life-model that would fit me - unless you count the thoroughly unmodern life-stories of painters I admire from the past fifty to three-hundred years.

But I recently had an idea that seems to work - my mentor is the Vision of Myself as an Old Man.

I imagine being a happy, relaxed, probably eccentric old man, hopefully still physically active, probably more scars on my body than I already have. Wearing shorts and barefeet and philosophizing and painting in a quiet, natural place with trees and sun and birds chirping.

This is the dude I want to talk to when I'm trying to figure out my life.

Since my discovery, I've made little comic-dialogues with him/me. His wisdom is not exactly mindblowing, but I guess it helps give me perspective. Mostly it comes down to "Don't worry about it," and "Stop thinking and relax and just be present."

The comics usually end with Old Man Jay giving me a hand-drawn knowing grin - a wordless signal from the ol' sumbitch to let me know that everything is going to work out all right.

unintentional haikoo

2011-06-01T08:44:00.000-07:00

While biking through Vancouver yesterday, I had a writing-thought about how cyclists are the masters of the urban streets. But now I don't feel like writing about it.

Instead, let me elucidate my mental state with a bit of impromptu poesy:

covered by a dull blanket of greyness
the overcast bullshit sky

ask and ye shall receive...

2011-05-28T16:31:00.000-07:00

...the hard part is figuring out what to ask for.

I asked for "boats" and lo, the boats have arrived!

Someone once told me "It takes about a year to meet friends when you move somewhere new." I've found that to be true in the past, and I'm seeing it happen again. I should have known that most people would have boats on this small island, but it never really became apparent until the past few weeks, when I finally got home, winter is gone, and everyone is talking boats. Here's what I got:

- Fulltime access to a 14-foot aluminum skiff with a 6-horse motor - just across the street. Perfect for fishing for salmon, rock-cod, ling-cod, and crabbing, on the kelp beds and around the smaller offshore islands.

- A buddy with a 34-foot yacht (sailboat), who also builds boats, and is excited to take me out on the water any time. I love sailing.

- Another buddy with a big motorboat (haven't seen it yet) and a cabin on a smaller island down the coast, who is happy to take me out fishing, or drop me off on an island for X days, any time.

My most exciting offer, and what I really asked for:

** A small one-man racing dinghy (sailboat), just across the street, that I can take out any time!

I learned to sail on a small dinghy about eight years ago, and did it for two summers. I haven't done it since, but it's burnt a little heart-shaped tattoo on my memory-sac (what?), and I am bitchin' itchin' to get back out there. I will still swim every day, but I fantasize about mastering the currents and the tides and winds in a little boat, surfing on the whitecaps with it, flipping it in big wind, and dealing with all the other fun shit that comes with being in a boat alone.

plaything

2011-05-24T21:54:00.000-07:00

Rehearsal of "Plaything" in an upstairs rehearsal room. We're not working with the set yet.

The rehearsals for "Plaything", this dance project, are getting fast and furious now. Wide-open playtime is narrowing down into refined ideas. Soon those ideas will be honed into clockwork-precise timing, and a fifty to sixty minute-long show.

I have some fun new software to learn that lets you mess around with video live during a performance. Quite a bit more animation to do. Some sound synching.

Here are some major differences between pure animation (film and TV) and animation with live performance:

- Live performance never really solidifies until the last couple weeks. So there's a lot of going back and adjusting timing. In film and TV, your shots are usually done when they're done. This means that animation for live performance tends to be less refined. You can't make 100% sweet-ass character animation, because it might change at the last minute.

- Animated shots in live performance are usually way longer than in film and TV. I often have to do several 3000-9000 frame (3-5 minute) scenes, along with some shorter ones. The scenes are usually simple, though, because other stuff is happening at the same time.

- Working with live performance is a hell of a lot more fun than film and TV. You're working with people who enjoy experimenting, who are creating their own work (so they're delighted, not bitter), you never work more than 5-6 hours a day (except for the animator, who pulls heavy overtime, as usual), and you're working with people who have a huge and diverse range of skills, from acting to dancing to rigging harnesses to puppetry to composing music to construction and lighting and costume design.

- Every performance is a reinvention from the ground up. Nothing is a given, nothing is standard. You're never trying to make your work look like something that's already been done - quite the opposite, in fact. You're always trying to push further and do new things.

This involves a lot of risk-taking, and it's a delight to be taking risks with a whole posse of people at the same time.

dumptruck in the face

2011-05-23T19:39:00.001-07:00

Vancouver drawing from last week. I like to write down my dreams. There's always something to read into them. Lately I've been having a lot of dreams about my old high-school buddies, and it always involves violence. Maybe it's because I don't see them much anymore.

A drawing from today, because the whole idea of this ol' blog is to do an image a day. Although I haven't been posting daily, I have been managing to draw every morning. It's keeping me sane. I haven't been managing to jump in the ocean every day, but when I do it's a fine fine thing. I've been in once already today, and I'm just about to head back in right now. The water is cold, but warm enough for me to huff around in for a few minutes without a wetsuit before my fingers start to hurt. Maybe I should just wear wetsuit gloves tonight.

Tomorrow morning I'm back in Vancouver. Fuckin' lotta movin' around these days.

my faded self

2011-05-21T18:23:00.000-07:00

Image from the multidisciplinary dance collaboration I'm working on. There are other things happening at the same time, but this is a part of it. Next week I'll take photos and show more.

Five days ago I went to the city feeling like a wolf, taking up space, moving freely. Leaving this morning, I felt withdrawn, like my self had holed up deep inside somewhere.

There's so many people and so much noise in the city that I find it difficult to have a long thought, or a calm thought, or an empty mind. So all the deeper stuff that makes me "me" is faded away a bit. I wonder if that holds true for other people in the city.

Maybe individuality needs silence and time and space and a bit of a void to create itself in. Maybe it's just me.

...

A highlight of the week was sitting on the cliffs that overlook Wreck Beach - Vancouver's nude beach, and a bit of an oasis from the city. (You used to have to jump a fence to get to the cliffs - now you have to jump two, and the paths are overgrown.)

When I was going to University at UBC, this is where I'd go to find some quiet time under the trees, and feel calm and grounded. That was when I started to re-learn how important solitary time in the outdoors was to me. I knew it when I was a child, but I forgot it during my late teens.

It was a beautiful sunny evening, with the familiar light wind from the southwest that is so common to Vancouver on summer evenings. Later, when the sun dropped below the horizon, the air quickly cooled and the breeze picked up and blew hard and steady.

Fifteen minutes later, the temperatures had equalized again, the spring air was perfectly calm, and I sat under the totem poles behind the Museum of Antropology.

Powerful old spirits carved from cedar, staring out into the stillness and the warm night.

harry potter

2011-05-17T22:08:00.000-07:00

Here's my image of the day. Like it? I knew you would!

I don't have a scanner or a camera on me and I don't feel like showing anything from my 'puter work tonight.

The above pages are a quick comic I did this morning - recording a conversation I had with a girl at the Starfucks near where I'm staying. This is pretty much verbatim:

SCENE: In line at Starfucks. Two ladies, mid-twenties, are ahead of JAY in line, talking to the cashier. The FIRST CHICK orders, then it's the SECOND ONE's turn to order:

SECOND ONE: I just want a glass of water, actually, because I slept with Harry Potter last night.

JAY looks up from the book he's reading while in line.

JAY (Amused): You slept with Harry Potter?

SECOND ONE: Yeah! I woke up, and I was like, "I slept with Harry Potter!"

JAY: Like, the actor who PLAYS Harry Potter, or a dream?

SECOND ONE: No, I slept with Harry Fucking Potter. His brother - he looks just like him and he has photos with him. I had sex with Harry Potter.

JAY: Okay, so you didn't sleep with a fantasy wizard-boy! You slept with the brother of the...

SECOND ONE: Yeah! I slept with Harry Potter!

FIRST CHICK: Oh my god, are you going to tell everyone?

SECOND ONE: Yes. I'm going to tell them he performed clitoral stimulation with his magic wand.

By now we are outside. I'm sitting at a table, drawing (writing all this down), and they're sitting nearby. No one else is around.

SECOND ONE's phone rings:

SECOND ONE (answering phone): Hi, I just had sex with Harry Potter. Yeah! Well, his brother. No, for real, yeah! No, seriously! In real life they're genetically related.

JAY cackles.

SECOND ONE (still on phone): I met D-Rad's bro, and I slayed him.

JAY (laughing): You are fucking hilarious. I feel like I'm watching a Seinfeld episode or something.

FIRST CHICK: Oh my god, now random people are, like, listening to you!

SECOND ONE (to me and the person on the phone): No, this is for real, though. He sounded just like him.

etc.

She was so excited, and happy to share it with the world. It was pretty awesome. Made my morning.

Postscript: Kelsey's comments below are worth reading. Especially the part where it turns out that Daniel Radcliffe is an only chlid.

grunting sealions

2011-05-15T21:39:00.000-07:00

I did two swims today.

The first was a full-body wetsuit long-distance swim. Judging from google maps, I swam about a kilometer. It's about 800m out to the island I want to swim to this summer, so I figure I need to be able to swim about 4km before I try it, because there will be a lot of current.

As I was stepping into the water, two sealions cruised by at a distance of about 10 meters (the width of a two-lane street). Yet again, this is the closest I've ever been to these animals. The distance keeps on closing, and I'm trying hard to keep cautious about it.

They dove after staring at me for a while, and I waited 2-3 minutes for them to resurface before I swam out. I never saw them resurface, which always scares the shit out of me because I imagine them just sitting there under the water, watching me.

(By the way, the sealion colony is out at the island I want to swim to, so I'm expecting a full-on-nightmarish experience once I actually do try that swim. I'll have someone with me in a boat though.)

While swimming across my usual cove, a seal came up close - again, closer than a seal has ever come while I've been in the water. I think it's the same seal I always see, and I'm afraid she is getting too comfortable around me. This time she literally swam alongside me, watching me with her big black unblinking eyes. She was about 10m away as well. Every time she dove I had a bit of a panic - I think I would literally shit in my wetsuit if she nudged me. I freaked out a bit when I saw movement right behind me, but it was my own foot.

From now on, I'm bringing my swimming goggles out with me. This "no visibility in the lower hemisphere" bullshit has got to stop.

I now realize I will have a wilderness encounter every time I enter the ocean. It's always different, and it's always a huge rush.

Today I thought to myself, while swimming, "If you keep doing this every day, it's only a matter of time before something dangerous happens, or you have a big scare." Then I thought, there are probably ways to maximize the time before that happens, but I don't know what those are yet.

For the moment, I just act like a seal - stay alert, pop up high and check the far horizon in 360 degrees fairly often. Maybe the goggles will help too.

I went down for a naked swim at sunset tonight and something big splashed in the water behind me just as I was taking off my clothes. It sounded big like a seal, and the ripples were big, but seals don't do that. Big salmon or something? I don't know. I thanked the gods for letting me be so close to these creatures, and slipped in.

tao sledder

2011-05-14T23:11:00.000-07:00

I got permission from the dance company, MACHiNENOiSY, to talk about the show I'm doing and show as much as a like, "As long as I don't say the show blows", which it doesn't. It's a fucking good time.

I'll probably be showing a lot of stuff from it in the next month, cuz I have a lot of animation to do for it, and it's going to occupy a lot of my creative time (although I'll still draw every day to keep my own vibe flowing deep underneath.) I still don't want to give too much away, though, so I'm mostly going to show rough works-in-progress n' shit like that.

The show is called Plaything, and it opens at the Scotiabank Dance Centre in Vancouver on June 18th.

I'm in high-gear animation mode - that familiar cramming feeling where I have 40 hours of work to do, and 30 hours to do it in. I have an unwholesome buttload of work to do before I head back into town on Monday. I enjoy the pace - it forces me to solve creative problems quickly, not to linger too long on decisions - trust first instincts and move on.

The beauty of this kind of work is that the animation is only one part of the whole. I'm not animating an entire scene. For instance, in the scene I've shown above, there will be a dancer and a puppeteer in there as well. (The right image has a stand-in for the dancer). It requires a different mindset than regular animation. This totally fucked with my head on the first performance I worked on, but now I love it.

I love this scene because I'm working directly with children's drawings. I think children's drawings are some of the most amazing illustrations out there - before I even started this project, I've had children's scribble-gifts to me pinned all over my studio wall. I love that kids' drawings are so random and spontaneous and joyful. Just like children are, I guess. Most of the time.

So for this scene, I'm trying to be just as spontaneous and joyful and random. Something I want to do in my life and art anyways, so there you have it.

concussion discussion

2011-05-13T21:44:00.000-07:00

Cramming animation and biking and swimming for the next three days before I head back to Vancouver. I'm really enjoying this animation. Kid's drawings coming to life for an upcoming dance performance I'm collaborating on. I'll write more about it tomorrow, barring more wildlife encounters or philosophical breakthroughs or random dinkishness.

grey sunset with orca

2011-05-13T09:48:00.001-07:00

Drew this on the plane coming back, in preparation for six weeks of work in Vancouver:

But I get a few precious days on Gabriola first. I wrote the following last night, fingers still numb from swimming in the water:

sunset prayers

the sky was like a big simple watercolour wash -
light grey on top, and darker grey-blue on the bottom.
smooth lapping water, calm at low tide.

climbing out, I took in mouthfuls of saltwater
and blew them out into a mist - hoou! hhoo!
my usual tradition, makes me feel like a sea creature, standing tall.

while drying myself off i see a distant spot in the water.
I keep watching. this time i hear a big breath:
hooooouuu.

now a dorsal fin, pointed straight up, a lone transient orca.
he takes quick dives, only under for a few seconds
before the fin re-emerges, larger and closer every time,
hoooooouu.

a nearby seal hears it now, and moves in close to land,
closer than I've ever had a seal swim towards me.
his back is to me, we're both looking out at the water,
watching the fin pass by.
hhooooouu.

there is so much power and meaning in these wordless encounters.

more faces

2011-05-10T00:52:00.000-07:00

Just figured I'd draw more of my faces to see what happens. I think it would be pretty hilarious if this is all I draw for the next 2-3 years, and it's all I show on this blog.

Tomorrow is my last day in the Yukon for a while. Over a month house-sitting, hanging out with two beautiful dogs and countless humbling vistas, constantly-changing skies, hissing quiet winds. Eating snow, drawing and not-drawing, hanging out with old friends, making new friends, and solidifying medium-length friendships.

I will miss the shit out of this place, like I always do. And as always, I will shed a tear or two as the plane takes off and I get my last glances at the gorgeous untamed wilderness that extends for a thousand kilometers in every direction.

Up next is six more weeks away from home. I'll be living and animating in Vancouver, finishing off this dance collaboration that's been on my plate for a while.

Just as important - I'll finally have other peoples' faces to draw instead of my own. Watch out, coffeeshops!

Watch out, Salish Sea! We need to have some serious re-introductions, my old friend. Twice a day? Whaddaya say? Lets fucking do it - swimming season is ON!

faces

2011-05-09T10:28:00.000-07:00

I draw people all the time, but it's rare that they look like the subject. I'm okay with that.

People often ask me to draw them. I never do it. I have a fantastic ability to make people look emaciated, creepy and old.

I don't see the point in drawing someone so photo-accurately, although I think it's a great exercise in observation and proportion. I am looking at your face and my pencil is drawing what it sees. Your image has been filtered through my eyes, my brain, my creative intuition, my fingers, and the lead / ink / paint, and this is the result.

There's a bizarre kind of introspective loop that happens when I self-doodle like this. How much of the drawing is direct observation, and how much is a projection of how I feel about myself? It's kind of fascinating shit. I bet you could spend years just drawing /painting your own face and make some pretty deep discoveries.

new paper

2011-05-06T22:49:00.000-07:00

I like the new (old) sketchbook I just got into. The paper is thin and crumply like parchment.

Nothing creative is happening for me lately. The last three weeks have been a complete void of imaginative thoughts, and that's been difficult for me. Maybe this is supposed to be a recharge time. Lots of walking and fresh air empty thoughts is good, probably.

I wasn't even drawing for quite a while there, but I'm back into the sketchbook for a few minutes every morning, at least. The routine of drawing, even when I don't feel like it, is crucial to maintaining my sense of purpose, and, by extension, my happiness and possibly even my sanity.

It feels like I have a bunch of words or poems calling me from the back of my head, but I keep ignoring their rings and not listening to the messages. Maybe I should stop trying to work tonight and just sit down with my sketchbook and a cup of coffee out in the dark.

drinking urine

2011-05-05T12:13:00.000-07:00

"Drinking Urine" is the name of my new band. Do you like it? We rock pretty hard.

Welcome to my world.

Do I expect too much from myself, or am I actually really continually falling away from my dreams?

Speaking of dreams, this was on the previous page of a half-finished sketchbook I just started into. This was a drawing of a dream I had years ago. I don't remember the exact details - just that a girl was sitting in a chair and tied to a lone tree, and no one wanted anything to do with her. The part I clearly remember was that she seemed completely at peace.

yukon sounds

2011-05-02T12:13:00.000-07:00

It's a windless morning.

When I stop walking and the dogs are far over a ridge, there is perfect silence.

Once in a while I may hear the distant chatter of a squirrel or a few notes from a far-off songbird, but nothing else.

After a minute, my ears readjust and I hear a faint popping hiss.

Maybe it's the static of my ears,or the sound of snow melting, or trees stretching.

I don't think it's my ears because I can clearly recall the silence of the deep winter, when I lived up here, and there was no sound at all.

In the middle of the night I'd step out from my cabin and walk way out on the frozen lake that was my extended front yard. The lack of sound was overwhelming.

The soundlessness, the uninhabited moonlit ice stretching to the horizons, and the aurora borealis overhead.

I will never forget those winter moments. Gloved hands hanging down at my sides, hood pushed back so I could hear nothing but my own breath. Those were some of the the most humbling, spiritual, profound moments I have had in my life.

This goddamned place - once it takes your heart, it never really lets go.

devolving pleasantly

2011-04-30T15:58:00.000-07:00

The days are getting long up here in the Yukon. The sun rises before 6:00 am, and sets at around 10 pm. All that sun means the snow is melting fast, which means I'm walking longer distances because I'm not wading through shin-deep snow as often.

Yesterday it was warm enough to wear shorts. The reduced weight, increased freedom of movement and the hot sun really boosted my energy, and I jogged along the slopes with the dogs. The underbrush cut my shins up, but it was worth it.

So today I figured I'd go one step further and hike in bare feet. I love wearing bare feet, and don't usually wear shoes between now and mid-September if I can help it. By September the bottoms of my feet are almost as calloused as a dog's paw.

I access the hills through a narrow, shadowy canyon, and I underestimated how much snow is still down there. My feet felt like they were on fire by the time I got through the canyon, and I really had to take my time on the first twenty minutes of climbing after that, because my feet were completely numb and I probably could have cut them open without knowing it. I was moving too fast, and it was tiring and frustrating and painful.

After a while, though, I started to remember how to bushwhack barefoot - to take long, careful strides like a caribou, picking a footplace before transferring weight. To travel on game trails, which are already worn. This means using my hands more - sometimes to crawl under low branches, and other times to hold onto trees so my feet aren't always taking the weight.

It's an extremely meditative way to move - probably because this is how the human animal moved for hundreds of thousands of years. Feeling the plants and rocks under your feet, thinking about foot and hand placement, moving more slowly, but at a steady, deliberate pace. It makes me feel even more connected with the land.

It definitely takes a state of mind, though. On the way back down I started thinking about other things and before I knew it I was wading through thorns for about twenty minutes.

If I did it every day, I know my shins and feet would toughen quickly. But at the moment I don't think it's worth it, because that long snowy canyon is really tough. We'll see.

My film premiere at the Dawson Film Festival was plagued with technical problems, so it was disappointing and I don't consider it a true premiere. I think it's a good thing - the film was obviously meant to premiere elsewhere. No blame on the Dawson Film Festival, though - it's still my favorite festival in the world, and I hope I can go back again next year.)

dawson film festival - day 1

2011-04-23T21:14:00.001-07:00

Dawson City, Yukon. Up near the Arctic Circle. This is my favorite community of humans on planet earth.

They say "Truth is stranger than fiction," and the term applies here more than anywhere else I've been. The show "Northern Exposure" seems kind of like this town - but the series is nothing compared to reality.

Today I spoke with Caveman Bill about the depth of the river ice, as he was hauling a sled across in the bright arctic sun. Half the town, including Bill, lives on the other side of a river, and has to pick across carefully during this time of year, when the ice starts to thin. There is a town-wide lottery on when the river ice will break - a wire is rigged from the ice to a firebell, and the whole town hears the ringing when the ice finally shifts and cracks and carries downstream. Then the people in West Dawson are stuck on one side or the other for a few weeks until the ice chunks clear and the ferry is put in the water.

(Caveman Bill actually lives in a cave, by the way.)

There are a tonne of artists and filmmakers up here. There is a writer's residence, an artist's residence, a credited art school, and a great gallery with a very savvy curator who brings in work from across Canada and the world.

There are still gold mines here, and the dirty gamblin' miners that come with them. The Trondek H'wechin First Nations is here, with all their rich history and spirit tied to this land. There are dog sleds, trappers, rough-looking dudes in cowboy hats who haven't seen another person in months, scowling in the dark corners of the bars, including my favorite place in town, "The Snake Pit", which has two sides so it can legally open early in the morning for the breakfast drunks, and close late at night for the regular drinkers.

Last time I was here, they had a weekly lottery where you put money in a pot for a peg, put your name on the peg, and hammered it onto the river ice. Then they took a helicopter and hauled a snowmobile with a mannequin on it high above the river and let it go, to smash down on the ice and explode. The person whose peg was closest to the biggest chunk of snowmobile won the pot.

There is the 'SourToe' shot at the Downtown Hotel where I'm staying, where you can take a shot of your favorite booze with a real human toe in the shot. The toe has to touch your lips for you to pass the test. (Fuck that.)

Today at the film festival I got to see a documentary I worked on a couple years ago, called Cry Rock, by my friend Banchi Hanuse, from Bella Coola. It's about her reluctance to record her mother's stories. Her mother is one of the last remaining Nuxalk elders who knows the stories and the language of their people. It's the second time I've seen the film in its entirety and it's the second time I was blown away by it. Brought to tears by it's importance.

Imagine living in a place where your language was created, and the only place where that same language has been spoken for thousands of years. Their word for "rock" doesn't just mean any rock - it means the rocks in that town, in that valley. Imagine your creation myth being about that mountain across the water. Imagine the encyclopedia of all your stories and knowledge and beliefs being passed on by word of mouth, from generation to generation. It just blows my mind.

I am very honoured to have worked on that film.

Today I learned that there's only two Trondek H'Wechin people left who can speak their language - who know the thousand-year old stories and lessons and words of this land around Dawson. Today someone told me about a place up in the mountains behind Dawson, which us whiteys thought were "nameless wastes", and was given the name of a explorer in the days of the gold rush. It's actual (Trondek H'Wechin) name is something like "The Last Place to go When There is Nothing Else Left".

I don't know what the lady's point was in telling me that, but with a language left with only two people now, there is something poignant in that. It was enough to bring tears to both of our eyes.

unholy

2011-04-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

an unholy mishmash of different things I'm working on at the moment. I tried to layer enough on there that I'm not giving too much away, because these are all collaborations and not strictly my own work. I'm learning a lot of new software these days, which is giving me neat ideas for my own projects.

This image is a pretty good representation of my state-of-mind, as well. Way too much going on, way too much computer stuff, and a distinct lack of drawing and painting action. Long daily walks are the only thing keeping me sane.

Today I'm headed up to Dawson City - another six hour drive North of Whitehorse, and quite close to the Arctic Circle. My animated film, "The Perfect Detonator", will be showing at the festival there. This is the first time the film will show to an unbiased audience. That's not entirely true - I know quite a few people in Dawson. But still, body language does not lie, and I'll get an idea of how people really feel when I'm sitting in the audience with them.

I really have no idea how people are going to react to my film, and I have no big expectations. I know I put my heart into it, and did my best, and I'm personally proud of it. Now it's just a matter of turning off that sensitive creation side, and throwing it out to the world as much as possible.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm nervous. Gah! First festival for The Perfect Detonator!

the surroundings

2011-04-19T17:12:00.000-07:00

If that ain't purdy, I don't know what is. Look up the south slopes and you'd think it's all easy-going...

...but if you look behind you, the shadowy sides are still covered in snow. It's fun to climb to the top of a snowy incline, knowing that the other side is going to be warm and dry.

More purdy. I think one of the dogs, Freya, is starting to get the hots for me. She keeps giving me long looks - constantly hoping for a little eye contact. She's eyeing me right now from across the room.

This happens to me way too often with dogs, both male and female. I get dog-humped way too much. I wish I knew a way to turn off a dog, I would do it all the time. Maybe if I made retching sounds or something.

They are pretty hot though.

sky

2011-04-18T13:09:00.000-07:00

Four pages of stuff - initial character designs for myself, and notes for a scene in a dance collaboration.

I've been going on progressively longer walks up through the back hills of the place I'm house-sitting in the Yukon. There's a hill with a radio tower on top, and that's my goal for today. The radio tower means it's the highest hill around, so there's probably a great view from there. I'm sure there's a service road going up to the tower, but I'll stay the hell away from that. Besides, my vibe is that it's on the northeast slope, and I want to stay on the south slope, where there's more sun and therefore less snow.

The tops of the higher hills are covered in a blanket of snow over my knees. It's hard work hauling around up there, but usually I can find some moose tracks to step into to make it a bit less work.

Most people don't realize that most of the Yukon is in an arid climate zone - there's not a lot of precipitation throughout the year, so the snow doesn't usually get too deep. In the summer it feels like a cowboy movie up here. Dry air, sandy ground, lone pinetrees, the shadows of clouds rolling across long slopes and valleys.

The dogs know two of my whistles now - "Come Here" and "We're Changing Direction". One of the dogs, Freya, is incredibly intuitive. She almost always knows exactly where I intend to go, and when I get to a landmark I've been aiming for I usually find her stretched out in a patch of snow, waiting for me.

I want to figure out how these dogs were bred to track, but to do that I need to find some fresh tracks first. I found what looked like a 2-3 day old deer track, which seems weird because I didn't think deer wintered up here. Maybe they're already coming up from the coast. I don't want to get the dogs onto squirrel tracks, or we won't get anything done - there are squirrel tracks everywhere. I saw some fresh rabbit tracks too, but didn't think about calling "the girls" over.

finding focus

2011-04-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

I'm having a hard time focussing on my work. I think it's because I have to switch over to non-painting again, and I'm really enjoying painting. I left my house a week ago, and I've only done a day's work since then.

I have a couple exciting collaborations to work on, but I still can't get myself to start.

I work well when I have a good routine, and I need to find one here. I think it's going to go something like this:

Morning - paint and doodle for my own fun.
Afternoon - walk the dogs
Evening - work on collaboration stuff.

Yesterday I did the morning and afternoon stuff. Maybe today I can make it through the whole routine.

I miss my daily trips to the coffeeshop to draw people. Maybe I should bring my sketchbook and camera on my walks. But I really don't want to be weighed down by things bumping around in my pockets.

The temperature dropped overnight, and now it's snowing hard.

signs

2011-04-14T23:07:00.000-07:00

I've had dogs around for almost my entire life. They've always been mutts, but there's always been a good portion of sheepdog in the mix (i.e. Sheltie or Border Collie.)

Sheepdogs are very smart and active, and very attentive to their masters. In the bush, they'll stay pretty close, but they're bred to herd, so they will gladly chase any little creature that's willing to run away from them.

These hunting dogs I'm sitting are a whole different story in the bush. This is what they're bred for - to range in the distance and find shit.

It already feels like we're some kind of three-person organism scouting over the topography. It feels so amazing to be bouncing down a long slope with one dog on a far ridge, checking out what's happening in the next draw, and another dog far to the front. I don't know how to describe it. You can just tell they're naturally scanning, and I feel like the nerve-centre of the operation, dictating our direction and watching the two dogs for signs of something out of the ordinary. It feels very natural. Like dogs and men have evolved to co-operate for thousands of years. Which I guess we have.

Just over the first line of hills behind the house I'm sitting, I found a long gully that was covered in moose scat and old tracks. The moose tracks look like huge smooth-sided snowshoe tracks, because the original print has melted outward in the spring thaw.

Some big old bugger spent a while there this winter - sheltered out of the cold wind, munching on sapling-ends and rooting for ground plants and whatever else moose do. I'd like to find out how often moose shit, on average, and go back there and count the poo-piles to get an idea of how long he was there.

Near the tracks, about two feet off the ground, the the bark of a poplar was torn and scratched right to the wood underneath. I imagine the moose had an itchy scalp or leg and itched the crap out of it on that tree. Who knows.

I also found a few piles of old porcupine poo on the south side of a hill, where the snow is starting to melt. I wonder if he hung around longer on the warm south slope last fall, or if that whole hillside is marked with sign.

The wildlife up here is spread fairly widely because it's so hard to find enough to eat. Also, signs stay preserved for a long time because of the dry weather and relative lack of insects and microbes that break things down. For those reasons, you see animal signs far more often than you see animals. When I lived up here I learned to really enjoy finding signs like that. It's as rewarding as seeing wildlife, if not moreso. It's fun to follow signs and think and imagine the story behind them.

backyard

2011-04-13T17:59:00.000-07:00

Here's the backyard of the place I'm house-sitting.

The homeowners have a whole network of trails along the ridges and canyons back there, but the snow is only halfway up my shins, so off-trail walking is totally bearable. When it gets up around the knees it's too hard without snowshoes or wide cross-country skiis.

Two two dogs I'm sitting are big Gordon Setters - Scottish dogs bred for hunting and tracking. It's a total thrill to wander around these ridges with the two dogs. They range far in front of me and to the sides, most often out of my view. Occasionally I see them trotting along the opposite wall of a ravine, or dashing far ahead on a rocky shoulder where the snow has blown off. Then they'll rush up to me to say hi, and run off again.

We're still working out a way to communicate where I'm headed. I like using whistles because it's easy to do and travels far and doesn't sound as invasive as shouting the dogs' names. These dogs are fast learners - they already know my "I'm turning in another direction" whistle means something. I'm not sure if they know exactly what, yet.

Apparently there is not a lot of big wild mammals in the area shown by the above photo, and by the lack of tracks I saw today, I would tend to agree. Apparently a moose comes down here every spring (she's already come and gone), and one of the dogs was attacked by a wolf a few years ago, but not much else.

If there's any big wildlife, I have a feeling they travel on the other side of the big ridge. Animals aren't stupid - they know where humans live and they like their peace and quiet. Why walk around in a area that's been well-marked by territorial dog-stink when you can stay on the other side of the hill and hang out in peace?

Tomorrow I'll head over to the other side of the hill and hopefully not interrupt any animals, but it will be nice to check out the lay of the land over there and maybe see some tracks.

yukon walkin'

2011-04-11T18:47:00.000-07:00

About 10 km outside Whitehorse City Limits. Down there are the 'burbs.

The first time I entered the Yukon, I was walkin'.

I hiked the Chilkoot trail, following the footsteps of the Klondike prospectors up a valley from Skagway, Alaska, and over a steep pass called "The Golden Staircase":

At the top of this climb a small cabin is perched on the ridge. Falling steeply behind you is the United States, and the gentle glacial valley sloping down ahead is Canada and the Yukon. A Canadian Flag flew on the cabin, and a park ranger sat out on the porch whittling a stick. "Welcome to Canada", she smiled, and kept on whittlin'. No ID required on this border crossing.

It was the proudest entry I ever made into this country, and it was love at first sight with the Yukon. At the end of my two-week visit, I flew home to Vancouver and quit my job and moved up here soon after.

Maybe it's because of my means of entry into the Yukon, but one of the biggest attractions of this place to me is the walkin'. Unlike the cliffs and dense rainforest of the West Coast, the mountains are low and worn, and there is very little undergrowth. You can literally head off in a direction and walk straight, for as long as you want. Pick a mountain and walk to it and climb to the top - easy as that.

I also love that there is plenty of wildlife up here. From elk to bison to grizzlies to wolverines to caribou to wolves, coyote, lynx, martens, moose and more. And you see this stuff fairly often (and their tracks n' shit even more often).

Walking up here is like swimming in the ocean down south. You're completely immersed in your surroundings, because you need to be, because there's a whole lot of animal action taking place around you. And, like swimming down south, you're pretty safe if you use some common sense.

Among other things, I'm going to be house- and dog-sitting for the next month on an acreage just north of Whitehorse. The dog owner is an ex-olympic biathlete, so I know the dogs are going to be fit, which means I'm gonna be walkin' - and I can't wait.

nothing is true

2011-04-09T21:52:00.000-07:00

Oystercatchers got funny beaks and bright red eyes!

Strange weather today - everything was still and heavy and silky-grey. The sky felt like a big blanket draped over the horizons and drooped down low overhead. I think it must be low pressure or high pressure in the air or something. I wonder if some weather is due to come in.

Even the Oystercatchers, which are famously shy, didn't bother flying away and sat on the rocks, staring at me lazily as I walked by. The river otter, seal and sea lion all swam very close to shore tonight - as did I.

For my entire childhood, all I drew were animals from Robert Bateman books or wildlife encyclopedias. I feel like I'm going back there again for some reason. I wonder if I'm unlearning all the art I learned. That would be fantastic. I'd love to start back again with children's scribbles and make it up all over again.

a few leaves go a long way

2011-04-08T21:55:00.001-07:00

Just finished this painting. This is the kind of delicacy I was looking for in these "Spring Bud" paintings I've been working on. The trick was to change my mindset. I had to treat every little piece with lots of attention, and put down each line and each brushstroke very carefully. If I get big and spontaneous, it doesn't look as soft and light.

I did a few other things very differently than I usually do, as well. Lots of learning.

Sometimes I hate that paintings are always such a struggle for me. But maybe that's a good thing - I think I'm always pushing the edge of what I'm comfortable with. I never know what I'm going to end up with. It's always a bit scary-feeling, because I can spend a lot of time on a painting and the wrong move (with watercolour) will destroy it. I have to ride the line between small methodical steps, and bigger instinctual decisions.

Goddamn, it's addictive!

Here's a bigger pic.

now and then

2011-04-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

Sloppy ocean at sunset last night. I was standing out in the splashes with my pants rolled up when I noticed an immature bald eagle hovered right over me, wings outstretched, looking out to sea. It was really low, and stayed there for a long time. Low enough for me to notice his eyes, and the way his long feathers were stretched out like fingers. Long enough for it to feel like a powerful good omen. Thanks, eagle.

Today is another gorgeous bright spring day. Bugs are hovering over the salal like little faeries. My window is open. A raven is croaking in the far distance. Big dopey bumblebees are bumping around outside the window, looking for a good place to make a summer home.

I'm headed north to the Yukon in four days. It's hard to imagine it could be any better than this, but I know it will be beautiful.

hot mammal party 2011

2011-04-07T00:12:00.000-07:00

morning ferry ride

I did some mulching today for The Old Farmer on the Other Side of the Island. It was supposed to be a two-hour job, picking up the branches that fell in storms over the winter. But Old Farmer felled two giant trees yesterday, so I have to go back and mulch all the branches from those trees as well.

Imagine packing a large bedroom floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall with huge branches, twigs and bark. Then imagine feeding each individual branch through a flowerpot-sized hole lined with ultra-loud dull metal blades that spin and squeal and rip and bang and whine. It kinda sucks. But it's nice to be outside, I guess.

I went for a sunset skinny-dip tonight, and after I crawled out of the water I heard a long low belching sound around the edge of the cove. I thought it had to be the sea lions, so I put my clothes on and snuck quietly around the rocks to check it out.

I didn't see anything, but the water at the head of the cove was really pushing around in the tide. That kind of current means a lot of nutrients moving, which means lots of plankton, which means lots of fish. You could just feel the life underneath.

So I waited a few minutes, and a sealion surfaced. Then another. Then a mass of them approached from further down the coast. In the next half hour I saw a total of at least a dozen sea lions! Probably more. They were surfacing at high speeds, smashing out of the water together and spreading their fins, then pounding back down again with a huge splash. Some would come up some slowly and give out ultra-low belching groans. I think there must have been a lot of fish-eating, but it felt like some kind of mating action was happening too.

Solo sea lions were passing closer to shore, right in front of me, watching the big hubbub from a distance. The real party was about 60m offshore - I think there was between three and seven sealions out there. Then another raucous sealion party approached and made several loud farty noises at the first party as they passed by. It was quite the scene.

I climbed the bank to head home and looked back at the darkening sea. The whole coastline was pockmarked with the heads of sealions. I think I was very lucky to have decided on a quick skinny-dip instead of a long-distance wetsuit swim tonight.

conversations and trees

2011-04-06T08:47:00.000-07:00

overheard conversation, and overhead tree

I haven't been posting much because I haven't been drawing much. I've been fixin' up my website ( www.gogomax49.com ), and starting on a website for my film, and getting the film ready to send out, and other write-y think-y things.

Today I'm headed to the other end of the island to do some mulching for an old farmer I worked for last summer. I miss getting out there and working hard, and I'm happy that he called with a job. I'm looking forward to working for him again this summer - shovelling in the rain, long bike rides across the island, tired but strong. It's amazing how regular exercise relieves stress. I never really realized that until last year.

Mulching involves pulling around a huge gas-powered nastybox, starting it up, and throwing in branches that have fallen off the trees over the winter. You get a fine organic mulch that you can mix in with your garden soil, or layer on top of the garden.

Mulching is loud and violent. This is the device Steve Buscemi used at the end of Fargo to dispose of the body - remember the leg sticking out? Sometimes a branch gets stuck inside and I have to turn it off and get my hand in among the mulching blades and pull it out. It makes me cringe.

I don't especially like gas-or electric-powered tools like that. I would way rather use a handsaw than a circular saw, and I would way rather use an axe than a chainsaw. Those power tools just feel like they're more than we need. It feels like I'm giving the gods a big "fuck you" whenever I start a chainsaw. That probably doesn't make sense to most people. Most guys love that power shit, but I prefer using my own body power to do stuff. It feels so good to hand-split huge rounds of wood and know you did it with your own hands. I fantasize about building a place in the bush one day, using only an axe, a hatchet, a saw a hammer, a mallet and and chisel.

Anyways, today it's Chainsaw and Mulcher, but it'll still be fun.

nighttime thoughts

2011-04-02T02:02:00.000-07:00

My favorite sound is the sound of wind moving through trees. If I had to be more specific, it would be the sound of wind moving through evergreen trees at night, when I'm alone. I'm not exaggerating here. This isn't like Facebook bullshit where everything is the "best ever". I've thought about it a lot and this is actually my favorite sound.

We always think of wind as "blowing" - which makes it sound like it's being forced or pushed. What's actually happening is the air is flowing from high-pressure areas to fill up lower pressure areas. In my mind, it's more like the air is being drawn-in, or sucked, than blown out.

I think it makes for a nicer image, as well. It's like a long steady inhalation. Relax your mouth open and draw in a nice slow breath. It's like that. Relaxing. Your lips are like the canopy of a forest.

I also like to imagine that the trees gather something from the wind. Kind of like how barnacles use their little fronds to gather in plankton from the water. But more like the cilia in our guts. Trees feel like giant filters on the surface of the earth, combing and cleaning the air as the planet takes a long, slow breath.

fart locker

2011-03-31T23:34:00.000-07:00

This guy is at the "let it sit for a day" point. A few more touches, mostly cleaning up the background, then I'm calling it done.

Hot summery day today. Bare feet, shorts and t-shirt weather. Didn't get much done besides a couple hours of doodling, and fixing the neighbour's fence. Finding any excuse to get outside. Lots of biking, but no swimming.

The seals were down the beach this afternoon, barking up a storm. I couldn't see them, they were just around a rocky outcrop. By the time I got my bike and snuck down there, they were gone - someone was walking their dog and I'm sure the dog scared them away.

Here's a great term I heard today - used to describe someone's butt: "Fart Locker". It's especially funny if used to describe a hot butt.

i.e. "Luke Perry has a fantastic fart locker."

spring

2011-03-30T21:49:00.000-07:00

Every spring I get completely wrapped up in the buds on the trees. My favorite are the ones that haven't opened yet. So much potential just waiting to explode.

One of my big challenges as an artist is saying "yes" to ideas that my logical side wants to knock down. For the past few Springs, I've been dying to paint delicate little paintings of fresh branches and buds, but I've shied away because it seems boring - like something old ladies would do. This year I'm saying "Yes" and "Fuck It" and painting them. Above is a work-in-progress of cherry blossoms from the front yard. I'm having fun. I like where it's going, but it's not delicate enough. I have plenty of reference photos of other buds, so there's more to come. It's kind of like a documentation - a nature study, more than anything else.

I've never noticed the explosions of Spring like I have this year. Some things, like the changing air, are subtle, but the animal kindgom emerges in an awesome roar. In the past few weeks I've witnessed some fantastic things:

- At least one hundred dolphins massing around a ferry, surfing in the wake, gorging themselves on the herring that move up the Salish Sea at this time of year.

- Tens of thousands of gulls at Qualicum Beach, also feasting on the herring. The beach was a blanket of whiteness. Mingled in were all kinds of fluffy little baby gulls.

- After months of silent nights, an explosion of sound from the forest - hundreds of frogs all singing at once. I went for a bike ride and they were all over the road. Water from my front tire kicked up into my bike light like a constant trail of white sparks.

- Mouse shit all over the basement, again after months of no mouseshit. It was everywhere. I've already killed six mice - one per night for the last six nights. Sorry guys.

- Yesterday, a sudden explosion of starfish at the low tide line! The day before there was nothing, now the entire tide line is dotted with pale orange blobs. Their legs are only partially grown.

- Five or six lambs in the sheep pasture down the road. There was only about a dozen sheep there before - that's a lot of lambs per year!

Life is powerful. I can just imagine the blooms of plankton and insects and other stuff lower on the food chain that these animals match their migrations and births with.

It makes me wish I was more synched up with that global cycle of life. Us humans pat each other on the backs for our farms and cold storage and preserved foods - but, in doing so, we've distanced ourselves from that seasonal connection to the land.

But I don't think we've lost the connection. It's inside us just like it's in every animal. We just need to give ourselves the time (and place) to listen.

probably a worthwhile story to read.

2011-03-29T20:55:00.000-07:00

storyboards / designs / doodles - maybe just for fun, or maybe they'll turn into something.

I was going to write something about all the huge explosions of life that mean Springtime on the West Coast - but I have to relate another sea lion story instead.

Last time I swam was 4-5 days ago, and I had a pretty close-up encounter with a sealion. It was a bit scary, so today I was more careful and swam later, after I thought the sealions would have passed. I also swam across a cove, inshore and a bit shallower than where I've seen the sealions before.

I was 2/3rds of my way back to my side of the cove - about 100 m from the rocky point where I enter and leave the ocean on this particular swimming route. The sun had just set, the sky was grey, the water pocked with rain spatters, and the smooth surface was just starting to ruffle from a breeze that was shifting from the south to the southeast.

I'm always looking out for sealife, and up until this point there was nothing but a few ducks and gulls in the far distance.

Then the fucking sealions surfaced - about 30 meters away. Two of them came up and looked at me, and went back down again.

I started talking, knowing they could hear my voice through the water. "Fuck off, sealions. Seriously, don't fuck with me. I'm a person. Stay away." Trying to sound as foreign as possible and hoping the sounds didn't make them horny or anything. I wasn't as scared as last time, and thought, "Shit, maybe I can get used to these guys like I'm used to seals." I hoped that they got scared and took off, which is what I think happened last time.

Then they surfaced again, a little closer. One came pretty far out of the water to take a good look at me. A huge mane of gold-and-brown fur, and an absolutely massive girth, even where his shoulders were. This was a fucking huge animal.

Something like this:

Looking online at photos, he had the proportions of a bull. His shoulders were not slim like the females.

The animal's size, and the colour of the hair, made me feel like I was looking at a marine version of the Grizzly.

If my adrenaline was pumping when I first saw them, it was going doubletime now.

The two sealions were swimming to the same point I was going to. They swam ahead of me, but kept surfacing and watching me. I kept talking, partly to seem foreign to them, and partly to calm myself. Once they reached the tip of the point, they waited around and watched me. I swam more inland of them, but i still had to close distance with them to get to shore.

Once I was about 20m from the shore, I lost sight of the sealions around the rocky edge of the point. Right at that moment, one of them started barking. AAAOOOU AAAOUU AOOOU AAAOU! I lost it and swam like a hot bastard to the rocks, pulled myself onshore and ran inland a bit. I imagined one beaching behind me and snatching me like I've seen Orcas do with seals.

The sealions swam away, and I let out a hoot and paced around to work off the adrenaline, grinning like a demon. Now that's livin'!

Besides the size of that big ol' bastard, and the fact that I was completely defenseless, blind to their movements, and out of my element, a few things bother me about this encounter:
(1) There were two sealions, and I'm afraid they're a mating pair.
(2) I don't know how territorial sea lions are. If that was a bull, I don't know if he's going to get pissed at my proximity.
(3) The barking was something I've never seen them do. This was definitely a direct interaction with me. My presence was significantly affecting their behavior. They were scared or defensive or something, but they weren't simply running away.

This has gone a little further than I'm comfortable with, so I think it's time to do some reading before I jump in tomorrow. Things to learn:

(a) what does it mean when a sea lion barks?
(b) when is their mating season? how territorial are they?
(c) are there any incidents of sea lions attacking people?

Nutty times in the briny deeps. I wouldn't trade it for the world. But I don't really want to die out there either.

hot hot hot

2011-03-24T23:34:00.000-07:00

this painting is really close to being done.

Tonight's swim was a little stupid on my behalf, I think.

A tugboat was pulled a huge log boom right offshore, but there must have been a mechanical problem - the tug was barely moving and the whole thing was slowly drifting in towards shore. I didn't swim much, just lazily kicked out and watched as a fast aluminum boat roared up from Nanaimo (the nearest port), and pulled alongside the tug, presumably to help out somehow.

The stupid part was that I knew this was the exact time of night when the sealions cruise past, and I had kicked out right to where they usually pass by - further out than I usually swim in the winter.

I sensed movement to the left, and turned just in time to see the tail of a sealion diving and coming straight towards where I was.

I swam back towards shore so fucking fast - I had no idea I could swim like that. Huge back strokes, kicking my legs like I was biking up a mountain, and trying to breathe and push as steadily as possible, not erratically like a wounded animal.

I was doing the backstroke so I could see behind me, and the sealion surfaced about thirty feet away from where I was when I first saw him. Thirty feet is really close when you're talking about a carnivorous sea creature the size of a pony.

He brought his head about 2-3 feet out of the water and gave me a look and dove again.

I have a deep instinctual fear of large things in the water underneath me. I think it might be some primordial thing that all humans have - which is why the Jaws movie is so scary. Even a log under the water freaks me out. So this sealion action was no fun.

Every time I've seen the sealions, they surface very frequently, almost like you'd imagine a sea serpent. Every 5-10 seconds they resurface, then slide back under, revealing their long back and tail.

This time, as I swimming back to shore, the sealion did not resurface. I imagined that it was approaching me, or watching me from under the water. The waves were about two feet high, and I just imagined seeing the full body of that big ol' bastard bearing down on me in one of the rollers. I've seen what a seal can do to salmon, and I have no doubt that a sealion would kill me with one bite, no matter where he bit me.

In record time, my feet hit ground, and I stood and watched the waves, breathing heavily, but never saw the sealion again. I don't know if he checked me out under the water, or just submerged and ran like hell, like I did.

Either way, the whole experience gave me a good bit of perspective for what I'm doing out there every day.

And it reminded me that I'd really feel better with a diving knife.

(Also, the tugboat got fixed and made it away from shore).

it gets so real sometimes / who wrote my rhyme

2011-03-24T00:09:00.000-07:00

armoured bear doodles for B.

A few-day visit from two friends - one is the dancer who I'm collaborating with, the other is her son, "B". I have no idea how old he is. Seven? Nine?

I love hanging out with kids like B, because I get to talk about stuff that buzzes through my head when I'm doodling:

- What kinds of weapons armoured bears should have.

- The common misconception that ninjas are masters of face-to-face combat. They're assassins! Masters of disguise, and hiding, and dealing a single deadly blow. Infiltrators! (I was very surprised at B's knowledge of ninjitsu.)

- Whether light power armour is better than heavy power armour.

Important stuff.

spring swimming

2011-03-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

morning wait for the ferry. headed into town to teach a class at emily carr today.

Last night I had one of the best swims of my life.

I put on my wetsuit and went out at sunset. The sky was grey except for the horizon, where the sun was poking out from the clouds, spraying a glorious dull gold over the water. The ocean was still.

Four sea lions were lumbering past in the far current, raising their dragon-snouts into the air, and exposing their backs and rear flippers like serpents as they submerged. I've seen single sealions out there before, but never four. They're huge creatures - 300 to 900 lbs in weight. I'd hate to get too close to them, but they seem to be more into their own thing than seals. They maintained a slow steady course parallel to the coast following the tide into the sun.

The sea lions scared the seals further inshore than usual, so I had a seal swimming pretty close to me the whole time. I'm way less freaked out by them now, but I still think I'd feel better if I had a diving knife, in case they start getting too comfortable around me and try to play with me and hold me under water.

When I was way out in the water, looking back at the rich greens of the treed shore, a flock of geese burst over the horizon and flew straight overhead, honking loudly. It started to rain a bit, and I lay on my back relaxing in the current, watching the droplets explode and make delicate ripples across the surface of the water.

On the way back in, I watched a river otter lay on his back and suck on some giblets he was picking off the bottom of the ocean.

It's so amazing to be surrounded by such a density of life. The land-equivalent would be stepping into a 3-acre meadow and seeing four black bears, a deer, the geese, and a fox, all within half an hour.

To be immersed in the water with these creatures, feeling the same currents, tasting the same salt, watching the sun set together, equally conscious and wary of each others' presence... to be thinking of nothing but these things, and the movement of my body and the timing of my breath...

If there is such a thing as heaven, I can't imagine it could be any better than that.

fishmen

2011-03-20T18:03:00.000-07:00

Went for a nice long swim today in my full-body wetsuit. The water is noticeably warmer - I can dunk my head and not gasp for breath, and the whole thing doesn't have the intensity of a survival situation any more.

A huge flock of gulls massed overhead; two bald eagles; the flock of homing pigeons over the far trees circling their coop at my neighbour's farm. I let out a big hoot at one point, and it freaked out a seal that must have been watching me from below the surface - he came up about fifteen feet away and gave me a "WTF?!?" look, and splashed back down so fast that his tail popped back up in the air. (Usually they slip gracefully under the water by looking upwards and sliding under.)

I'm extremely happy to be getting out there again. I'll be up North in the Yukon for 5-6 weeks, so I'm going to miss out on the real warming period, but by the time I get back in early May, Swimming Season Shall Begin!

nature-lovers post

2011-03-18T22:26:00.000-07:00

This one's getting close. It's a bit busy right now, but I think it will feel more solid once I fill in some of the negative space between the leaves. I'd like it if the bottom felt like one solid mass of colour - which means I'll have to make the silhouette interesting and well-defined.

I'm starting to like where this one is going. The pink stays. I might try to make the top part as realistic and volumic as possible, to contrast with the flatness and graphic bits.

Morning Walk:

Springtime on the West Coast is subtle but thrilling to me. In the shadowy understory of this rainforest, buds are bursting open into shimmering clouds of bright green dots - tiny leaves emerging from the Salmonberry thickets. The moss on the forest floor is iridescent with fresh growth. Streams are swollen and overflowing, forming murky pools among the roots and ferns, or mucky marshes where skunk cabbage will soon appear.

The world is so filled with amazing things - I think you could spend a whole lifetime on one acre of land and never get tired of the change and the variety you'd see.

painters I love - part I - Piet Mondrian

2011-03-17T21:58:00.000-07:00

I want to occasionally share with you some artists that inspire me. I may be factually incorrect on some of this, and that's fine. This is about my personal reality as it relates to the artist. If you want the "real" facts, there's plenty of places to find them.

PIET MONDRIAN grew up in the early 1900's, probably. He started by painting things realistically. Mostly trees:

What I love most about painters is watching their evolution. Watching them learn and grow, and seeing their thoughts literally projected onto the canvas.

So Piet realised that painting every single branch was a pain in the ass. He started trying to dissect the tree, to understand it's components - to simplify it into the essentials:

I think he was probably watching Picasso and Braque blow peoples' minds with the whole Cubist thing, which really pares down a subject into simple shapes. Then you can get free and innovative with the open space between the shapes. So he jumped onto that exciting way of thinking.

So this is a four-year period so far. Look at how much time and thought he put into just trying to understand the shape of a fucking tree! I love that. Pure intense focussed visual and intellectual exploration.

So far he's been following other peoples' styles, but working them in his own way. Then he has some crazy revelation that only he will ever really understand:

This is called "Ocean and Pier." What? Awesome! Piet's on a roll, he's got all kinds of ideas now. Here's a town or a building or something:

This is starting to seem really intellectual and personal now. Yes, he's still trying to make a pleasing and balanced composition, but he don't give a shit if someone is going to want to hang it on their wall.

Now there's no subject-matter whatsoever, and not even a variety of shapes. This is a pure mindfuck of colour composition. I can just imagine him stewing away at this, trying to balance it nicely but also give it life and movement.

A unique thing about painting as an art form is that you're working out a problem, live. You think something and you try it and that brushstroke is forever recorded. If you wipe it off, some of the paint still remains and your thought is still a part of the painting. So a painting is just one big map of a thought-process. I think that process is really evident in Mondrian's work, because he throws out pretty much everything except the basic elements he needs to solve a problem.

Case in point- This is Mondrians's longest phase, and it's what most people associate with his work:

I'm sure most people think "This is incredibly boring, and pretentious and intellectual. This is what I hate about abstract painting. Is that even art? I could do that."

And I would tend to agree with you. I have no idea why these paintings are so famous. But here's what blows my mind about them:

This dude spent TWENTY-THREE YEARS painting hundreds of paintings that look almost like this!

If you ever see them in a gallery, you'll see that some were whipped off pretty quick, and others were slaved over - getting just the right colour of white by putting other colours underneath - and mixing and layering colours oh-so-subtly to get the right red / yellow. The compositions are all different, but every single one of them is white, with black lines, and the primary colours filling some holes. They all had dry names like "Composition 27" or "Composition with Yellow."

Twenty-three years of his life.

It's like he zoomed in on the smallest portion of a "compostion" that he could, in the hopes of at least trying to master this small and simple combination of shapes and colours. But every one looks different. I get the feeling he was trying too hard to control and intellectualize things. It makes me think he was probably a serious dude, and in a rut, and not fun to hang out with. And he was getting sick and old, too. Not long left in life.

Then he started hearing Jazz music and moved to New York, and after so many years of painting the same thing, he went "BOO-YAH! THE FUTURE IS NOW, BITCHES!"

"Broadway Boogie-Woogie", the last finished painting of his life. You know when you've been in a funk for a long time and you finally break free, and you're like "FUCK! Why have I been acting like such a dry-heave for so long?!?" I get that sense of excitement and energy in this painting. It's especially amazing because he was really sick at the time.

"Victory Boogie-Woogie" - unfinished. Turned the fucking canvas, and died. Just take a look at that painting for a second. I don't know about you, but I see a lot of joy and music in there.

. . .

These last two paintings are why Piet Mondrian stands out for me. In the last days of his life, he was still working and thinking and trying. Even on death's door, it's possible to have this kind of huge energetic exciting breakthrough. I think he died happy.

Everyone's life happens as it does, but I can't help wondering what else ol' Piet would have painted if he got over the hurdle of those years of painting the same zoomed-in compositions. This also inspires me not to get in a rut. To keep pushing and taking risks.

Scroll back and look at where this guy went, in his mind, over the period of his life. It's amazing to watch someone's growth, visually, like this. It's not just about one painting, it's this recorded process of intellectual evolution and growth that makes a painter interesting to me.

throw a tire iron at your leg

2011-03-16T23:52:00.000-07:00

First pages of my next film, superimposed on top of each other. I don't know how long it's going to be yet, but I have a good start that feels very emotional and real, and that I can draw from a lot of personal experiences to create. Ideas have been percolating for about a year now, but this morning I had a big breakthrough that sets up all the characters, most of the tension, and gives me a rich world that I'm really excited to create.

So I didn't sleep outside last night, but I think I have a few good excuses:

(1) It was pissing rain.

(2) I had to wade into a six-inch deep puddle to put my bike on rack at the front of the bus to get to Horseshoe Bay, and I was wearing runners so my shoes and socks were soaked up to my ankles.

(3) *ahem* I seem to have come down with a case of the Hemorrhoids. *ahem*

It didn't seem worthwhile to sit around on cold wet pavement with soaking wet feet and a posse of The Hemmies partying on my backdoor. So I got a room at the Travelodge and ate Pho and watched ghost story TV shows instead.

Day 1 of Hemorrhoids wasn't bad. I was like, "What is with all those H535 ads? They make it sounds so terrible! This is nothing!"

On Day 2 (yesterday), all the ads suddenly made sense. Painful distracting itchiness. My arse was all I could think about. I did a lot of research online, hoping to the gods that Hemorrhoids Aren't Forever. Fun fact: We -ALL- have hemorrhoids all the time! Sometimes they can get inflamed though. Beware.

Day 3 (today) its pretty much gone. Maybe it was a sign to not be an idiot and get some sleep instead. Strangest goddamned omen I've ever had.

City Camping III - Extreme Limitz

2011-03-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

No pic today. Instead imagine this:

Ugly orange lights over a slick wet road, with traffic hissing by. Rain is pouring down in a torrent, streaming off the awnings. In three minutes, this coffeeshop is closing down and then I'm out in the bullshit.

I wanted to rough it overnight with just my jacket to keep me warm, but I'm really waffling on that idea now. I already feel lonely and tired and without a plan.

I guess it's nice to feel that sometimes.

But I can't shake the feeling that tonight is going to suck.

So tempted to book a motel but I just can't bring myself to bail on my plan.

sound

2011-03-14T21:04:00.000-07:00

sound kitchen studios. my film is not this green in real life.

Today was a fun dance-creation workshop until 8 pm. Lots of good play time with more exciting and creepy discoveries. I actually felt nauseous watching one bit today, which is a good sign. Things are starting to solidify into more serious talks about set construction (which I love), and finalized animation. The whole thing is nonstop invention, collaboration, and fun.

Then I had a late night at Sound Kitchen Studios where Sound-Engineer-Chris puts the finishing touches on Perfect Detonator, my next film. The film is done! I love working with professionals who really care about quality, and know their job inside-out.

I'm super ramped up on coffee right now.

Staying at my sister's tonight - but tomorrow is going to be City Camping III - Extreme Limitz!

I have no camping gear whatsoever this time - just my rainjacket, bike, and laptop bag. I'm not going to make the last ferry home, and I don't feel like staying at someone's house, so here's the plan:

Bus to Horseshoe Bay (where the ferry leaves the next morning), and go super homeless stylie - wander around all night trying to stay warm, maybe find a dry spot under a tree to curl up. Maybe buy some vodka to help myself sleep.

No idea why I enjoy this kind of thing. Just the challenge and the variety, I think.