Dear god I need to go to bed but........I don't want to, even though I'm fading and I have class in the morning. But no test. Just learning all about rational expressions, hey. Hey! I aced that algebra midterm from yesterday hoo hoo hoo!....even though I felt like a dog shit in my head. I cannot believe that I am actually......ahmmm......enjoying math. How inconceivable is that?! I love languages, it's another language, it's about synonyms and puzzles, what's not to love right? ha hahaaaa

So I tackled another drawing-painting. Rather than leave it as a plain ol' pedestrian slice of life (nothing wrong with it, but if you know me, you'll know that I like the drama), I wanted to amp it up a bit. I snapped a photo of a couple ladies out front of The Kiva (locally owned grocer serving up lots of natural goodness and then some), a busker, and some dude doing I don't know what. One of the ladies is one of the owners, I thought that was cool. And I was there the day before, when the other owner was planting the flowers around the tree.

Okay, so. The ladies turned into children. Surprise! I'm notoriously unskilled and unpracticed at drawing small people. And I thought okay, one's pointing, the other should look awed or Oh My God or something. What could be over there? The Apocalypse? I wanted a strong light/contrast. The guy sitting on the planter under the tree could be Some Intelligence - his car is there with the black windows. The big tree in front of Kiva reminds me of one that might come alive and eat you (Poltergeist?).

But......even though there are goodies galore......there are too many goodies. I need to isolate the, uh, variables! The kids. I tried, by putting the strong light on them. But there is too much to look at and subtract from them,  you know? Maybe I should risk totally effing it up and make all the darks darker and eliminate some of the detail and values, to emphasize the strong light and washed-out (destroyed?) world on the left.

Here's the thing, it's pretty big.

This is the size of it:

It's big by my standards anyway. Everything's relative. I could noodle around with it some more working on details......or I could do as I suggested to myself and darken it up. Or, I could do another painting. Hey there's an idea.

I like this portion, it's not as chewy (in an overwhelming way):

How many hours did I spend doing this? Hoo hoo hoo........many. A dozen probably, including the photo finding and layout. I'll sell it. For.......(whipping out my algebraic formulas)......an even grand.

ps - Instead of drawing on monday when I was singing tales of woe, I watched Shaun of the Dead. Why did I pass this over?! I totally dismissed it. Oh how wrong I was. This movie kicks serious zombie buttocks. I laughed so bad. Please go see it if you haven't. Off you go!