Recycle

The art…

I’ve had this floating around in my head for a while, and now seems like the right time to drop it. Over the last few months, I’ve been poking around and trying to find some news source that doesn’t suck. But why do they all seem to suck? Because they’re more interested in riling people up in order to get their cut of the election gravy train. There’s more than enough blame to go around for the current state of affairs, but somehow the media seems to get a pass for being bought off. Maybe because no one’s reporting on it?

If you’re interested in doing a little further reading, this is a relevant hub…

The key to that article is when it says that it *was* a policy.

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So I haven’t been around much lately. That’s how it is sometimes. The stress of the day job reached a peak about a month ago, and then I spent a good two weeks solid of wanting to scream in the face of anyone who called me wanting something. Hate to say it, but that’s also a normal part of the ebbs and flows of the day job. Then there was that day a lot of us would rather forget about, and this week would have been my mom’s 75th birthday. I’ve been exhausted, anti-social, and usually find it’s better if I don’t try to post something when that’s where I’m at. Things come off harsher than I intend, I often succumb to pessimism and sometimes bitterness, and silence feels better than having to walk back an overreaction to something that irritates me enough to stand in for everything else weighing on me.

I did hit a figure drawing session in Portland a couple of weeks ago. They finally started up the Wednesday night sessions, which is really the only one that has ever worked for me. I’d love to say I rolled in there and crushed it, but that’s not really what happened. I got in some work, which felt okay, but I struggled with the model’s face. I couldn’t even tell you why, and I’m not implying that there was anything wrong with her or her features. I though she did a great job. But you know how there are pitchers who just seem to have a batter’s number for some inexplicable reason? It’s like that. And this is where the years in figure drawing studios make it worse - I know that it’s entirely possible to make a good drawing that is also absolutely not connected closely to the model. Experience has taught me how to put together enough surface gloss to distract from that, and maybe I’m the only person who’s seeing it, but I know when I am not getting it right.

I’ve been debating about posting anything from the session, but I’ve decided against it. I’ll just have to take a crack at it and hope that attending a little more regularly will get me locked in sooner than later. Also hope to get going on streaming on Twitch again soon, I do enjoy that.

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On the socials front, I finally nuked my Tweeter. I hadn’t used it in any meaningful fashion in years, but didn’t want to let the name go and have someone swoop in and grab it. But who cares? I’m giving Blue Sky an honest go, and I hope that it does better than Cara did. Cara was fine, but after a couple of weeks the engagement fell off a cliff, so what’s the point of that? I’m not going to fight uphill on this, I’ll go where I’m needed. I did buy a domain name, clayhol.io, and while there’s just a placeholder page there, I’m intending on putting some effort into something I actually own instead of making money for dorks who are trying to put artists out to pasture. Here’s the links, in case you want to check ‘em out…

https://bsky.app/profile/clayholio.bsky.social

clayhol.io

As for everything else going on, Toni Storm has the most timeless advice…