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Description
Damn DA and their nonsensical categories! Like the only fantasy categories are "sword and sorcery", "animals", and "manga"? What about all the other types of fantasy? Get with the goddamn program DA! This is less fantasy than humor, but it's not a comic strip or whatever... Ah forget it.

This is one of the pieces I finished a couple of weeks ago for the Circus show this upcoming weekend at the Alcove gallery in Atlanta! I had a sketch that had been sitting around for several years that was a line from the Tom Waits song "Goin' Out West" about "the devil on a leash". Now that I think about it, three of the four pieces I did for this show were inspired by Tom Waits songs! Jeez, I should be sending him royalty checks or something! Anyway, I had been planning to do something with the sketch eventually, and this idea came to me because the guy in the original sketch had a big ol' top hat like my ringmaster here. So I just tweaked the original idea a bit, redefined the characters, changed the background, and abracadabra! A brand new painting!

You may ask yourself, "What the hell's going on in this painting?" Well, I'm not completely sure either, but if I had to guess, I'd say the ringmaster made some kinda deal with a fellow who may have been somewhat untrustworthy, and ended up as the guardian of this troublesome creature. He probably thought he'd make a bit of money off of the beast as a sideshow attraction, but instead, all it's brought him is misery. So now he's going over his options and wondering if he could find some way to , erm, dispose of his little problem. And it seems like the little problem has just realized what his owner's intentions may be. Or maybe the little devil just farted, who knows!

16" x 20" acrylic on canvas

I always learn something new on each painting, and I learned several things on this one.

1) ALWAYS check to make sure your standard sized prestretched canvas's stretcher bars are square before priming and transferring your design.

2) After you realize it's not square, make sure to prime the other standard size prestretched canvas you grab instead of being impatient and realizing when you're almost done transferring the design that you FORGOT to apply the gesso first.

3) Cheap, factory primed canvases do not accept paint well, and the hollows in the canvas make for lots of frustrating while dimples when you paint. Wouldn't have been as much of a problem if you'd put more gesso on there, you moron!

4) I have to paint shiny top hats about three of four times before I get it right.

Description
Damn DA and their nonsensical categories! Like the only fantasy categories are "sword and sorcery", "animals", and "manga"? What about all the other types of fantasy? Get with the goddamn program DA! This is less fantasy than humor, but it's not a comic strip or whatever... Ah forget it.

This is one of the pieces I finished a couple of weeks ago for the Circus show this upcoming weekend at the Alcove gallery in Atlanta! I had a sketch that had been sitting around for several years that was a line from the Tom Waits song "Goin' Out West" about "the devil on a leash". Now that I think about it, three of the four pieces I did for this show were inspired by Tom Waits songs! Jeez, I should be sending him royalty checks or something! Anyway, I had been planning to do something with the sketch eventually, and this idea came to me because the guy in the original sketch had a big ol' top hat like my ringmaster here. So I just tweaked the original idea a bit, redefined the characters, changed the background, and abracadabra! A brand new painting!

You may ask yourself, "What the hell's going on in this painting?" Well, I'm not completely sure either, but if I had to guess, I'd say the ringmaster made some kinda deal with a fellow who may have been somewhat untrustworthy, and ended up as the guardian of this troublesome creature. He probably thought he'd make a bit of money off of the beast as a sideshow attraction, but instead, all it's brought him is misery. So now he's going over his options and wondering if he could find some way to , erm, dispose of his little problem. And it seems like the little problem has just realized what his owner's intentions may be. Or maybe the little devil just farted, who knows!

16" x 20" acrylic on canvas

I always learn something new on each painting, and I learned several things on this one.

1) ALWAYS check to make sure your standard sized prestretched canvas's stretcher bars are square before priming and transferring your design.

2) After you realize it's not square, make sure to prime the other standard size prestretched canvas you grab instead of being impatient and realizing when you're almost done transferring the design that you FORGOT to apply the gesso first.

3) Cheap, factory primed canvases do not accept paint well, and the hollows in the canvas make for lots of frustrating while dimples when you paint. Wouldn't have been as much of a problem if you'd put more gesso on there, you moron!

4) I have to paint shiny top hats about three of four times before I get it right.