I went out with the intention to finish hiking the remaining trails at Joseph D. Grant County Park today and being 100% done. I came pretty damn close. I started at the Grant Lake Parking lot and walked almost a mile on Mount Hamilton, where they were laying down fresh new asphalt, to reach the Washburn Trail trailhead. Then I walked to the barn. From there I hiked up to Tamien Trail and got lost at the end of that trail before coming back to Washburn. That’s when it got cold and overcast. I hustled the rest of the way on the Cañada de Pala and Los Huecos trails because it was getting close to closing time and I was afraid my car would get locked in the parking lot over night. Because I was in a rush I slipped coming downhill and scraped my right palm. It stung and got a little bloody but it wasn’t bad. It hurt more using the hand sanitizer when I got to my car. It was past closing time and luckily the gate wasn’t closed. I didn’t want to press my luck so I left. I’m gonna have to come back and do that remaining 1/10 of a mile on the Yerba Buena Trail in a few days and be 100% done hiking all of Grant Park.

The day started off awesome. It started with a walk at Lake Cunningham with my buddy then followed by some day drinking downtown. I can’t hang like I used to because when I got home I passed out and woke up hours later thinking it was the next morning. I’m a little bit hungover but still feeling good.

I also got news that all people, 16 and older, living or working in Santa Clara County are now eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, days before the rest of the state becomes eligible. I signed up and got my appointment set for later this morning.

The website to schedule an appointment is https://vax.sccgov.org/home

Crap! I forgot to post on Wednesday. Here are pictures of the Alaska stencil before getting chalked, after getting chalked and then primed with a white base coat before getting colored.

I missed Saturday’s blog post so here’s a dummy post to fill it’s place.

The day started off with an early morning hike at Grant Park with my friend Martine. I was already running late due to phone issues then I was stuck behind a slow moving fire truck for miles going up the narrow winding road leading to the park. Then the hike was cut short after realizing I’d made a wrong turn and we were headed backwards. After coming home, a little disappointed in myself, I showered and got ready to go shopping. I went to the new Costco Business Center near the house, Office Depot across town, a regular Costco, then to the Safeway back home. I had about half a cart full of groceries and was next in line at the check out stand when I noticed the guy behind me only was buying a single bouquet of flowers so I let him go in front of me. After he paid for his flowers and left I loaded my items on the conveyer and walked up the cashier who said the guy had given her $20 to pay for part of my groceries. How cool was that? And as an added bonus I received an additional $10 discount at the register. What an awesome way to end a long day.

I spent most of the day fixing images I created in Adobe Fresco, on my iPad, then converted to printable formats on my computer. First were these 6 drawings of mine. My brother is going to get them printed and framed. I think they were in RGB format on the iPad then became dull when I converted them to CMYK on the laptop. It took me hours to figure out the best way to select the individual colors within the images, based on how I drew it, and finding approximate color matches. The next problem was when I exported a PDF from Illustrator that I originally drew in Fresco. In the PDF I there were thin lines around every brush stroke that wasn't showing up anywhere else before. My buddy Adam needed the artwork I made for his band's album, "Elysian," minus a the background, to put it on merch. He requested a PDF and I thought it was going to be as simple as one-click. Now I'm reading a 31 page guide trying to understand transparencies because I think that's what's causing the issue. I sent Adam some hi-res JPGs, hoping that they'll work for him, until I figure out how to fix this. I thought computers were supposed to make things easier for us.

Today I prepped the ceramic skull by first spraying it with a clear fixative so the pencil lines don't fade or smudge from constantly handling and applying & removing masking tape. After the fixative dried I masked off everything except for cells I was painting and propped the skull on the wooden bar I'm using as a stand. When I set it down I heard a crack. After painting the first color then removing the masking tape I saw that a pieces had chipped off and stuck the tape. Luckily it only broke into 3 parts and not a million tiny pieces so I glued them back on. I also poured glue inside the skull and let it coat the inside where it broke. That was all for today. Tomorrow I'll sand it down and continue painting. Thank god I didn't totally fuck it up. My Inktober drawing for Day 6 is based on today's mishap. 

Tonight was another one of those nights while working on the new website. I tried doing something that I thought was going to be super simple but instead got pushed back further down the rabbit hole and didn't accomplish shit.  One step forward, 328,752,309,456,723,476 steps back. 

The trackpad on my laptop started acting up about a year ago. I think it's loose or something, you have to push really hard on it to click & drag things. I recently started using a mouse (2nd from left) that I bought years ago till it started bugging out last night. It would automatically double click instead of single clicking and would "let go" of things as I was dragging. I got super frustrated using it. Today I test drove an old Apple Bluetooth trackpad but I didn't like it so I went to Best Buy to buy a mouse I'd been eyeballing for a few days, the Logitech MX Master 3. It wasn't cheap but it's pretty nice and I appreciate the ergonomic design and all the extra buttons. It took a little while to get it synced up and programmed but it's been working fine all day. 

I spent hours today trying to transfer the images from my old blog posts from Weebly to Wordpress and couldn't figure it out. All the videos I watched and pages I read didn't help at all. I was able to transfer all the text but, if I don't figure out how to copy the pictures, most of what I reference isn't gonna make sense. I've been frustrated with this all damn day.

And no one's even noticed...

They've finally booted my ass off the interwebs. I wonder if I can still pull all my old blog posts and move them to my new site without paying an extra month of Weebly. No one's buying shit from me right now so I'm not too worried about the store being down. I wonder what's gonna happen once I publish this post...

I went for a run today. It's been 2 months since the last time. I ran for 10 minutes before my body said "Hell naw" so I walked the rest of the way. I wasn't ready.

I took the day off from protesting, watching police brutality videos and constantly checking the news. I wanted to work on Eyes & Mouths after a few days off. I looked to see what I had to ink next, lots of straight lines & almost perfect circles, then practiced on a separate card. I was super rusty and wasn't feeling good about my lines. After a while I decided not to work on the main piece but to keep drawing on the cards. The only thing I drew that I kinda liked was my Cells pattern with little pupils all looking towards the center. Simple but good practice. Tomorrow I'll try again and hopefully finish the piece.

A few days ago I started using a fresh Copic marker and today as I was warming-up I saw a little thread hanging from the tip. I pulled it, thinking it was lint, and it turned out to be the nib itself. It was damaged and I made it worse by yanking it. I was pissed off at myself. I tried cutting with an X-acto knife what I had pulled but I couldn't get it back to normal. Afterwards I didn't want to use the marker anymore and I didn't have any extras. I thought I wasn't gonna be able to work on my piece for a few days till I got new markers delivered. When I went on Michaels.com I saw that the store closest to me had black Copics in stock, and was doing curbside pickup, and had a coupon for 20% off the order. I ordered a couple Copic markers and a Pentel brush pen and they were ready to pick up in less than 30 minutes. I lost a couple hours, total, trying to fix it and picking up a replacement it but it was better than losing a few days waiting on a delivery. I don't know if Michaels stores have been doing the curbside pickup the  whole time during the pandemic, or if they just started doing it, but it saved my ass today. And this is not an ad or endorsement, shopping at Michaels is usually pretty disappointing.

Today I worked on Eyes & Mouths for a few hours after taking 4 days off. I spent the first hour warming up by drawing on the back of an envelope and a couple cards before putting ink down on the actual piece. I must have still been rusty because still I fucked up a few lines.

My work requested some recorded mixes of music I'd play at weddings, that's quick-mixed in & out of. I tried a few days ago and couldn't do it. My mixes fell apart after a couple songs. I feel that most music I play at weddings sounds better when people are dancing to it. Without an audience, most wedding dance music feels flat to me. Today I tried again but used a few songs I wouldn't normally play at events, focused on what makes me dance and had fun with it. It took a long time to choose the songs and listen to them to find the in & out points. When I finally recorded it it took me two tries to get it right/good-enough. In the end I made this 13 minute mix that starts in the 60s and works its way to the 2000s

1. ​California Dreamin' - Mamas & The Papas
2. My Girl - Temptations
3. Cecilia - Simon & Garfunkel
4. Uptown Girl - Billy Joel
5. When I Hear Music - Debbie Deb
6. Now That We Found Love - Heavy D & The Boyz
7. What Is Love? - Haddaway
8. Boom Boom Boom - Outhere Brothers
9. Fergalicious - Fergie
10. Low - Flo Rida

It was a nice day today so I set up the DJ rig in the back porch with the intent to record a set. The goal was to record a mix of songs I'd play at a wedding and quick-mix in & out of each song (not play the whole thing.) My plan was to mix and record different sets based on decades starting with the 60s. I listened to, and prepped, a bunch of music before mixing. Because I'm used to playing full songs at events I had to listen to the music again and find points to mix in & out of. That took a lot of time and when I was ready to play none of my mixes were sounding good. They'd fall apart after 2-3 songs. It was really frustrating and in the end I had nothing. I didn't even have fun. I might try again tomorrow with different music and not quick-mixing. 

Rot. In. Pot.

Today my little aloe vera plant finally bit the big one. This morning I saw that the last leaf I was trying to revive was half rotted away. The plant was a gift from my friend Amanda. She gave it to me in August and apparently I've been overwatering it since then. I sketched the bone plant drawing after the first leaves fell off in February and digitally inked it tonight to commemorate Planties short life and long drawn out death.

Nada damn thing.

Today I finally put some ink down on my Brains/Guts drawing. First I tested out a few different markers and settled on a Sharpie for the broad lines and Micron Graphic 1 for the thin lines. I did all the Sharpie work tonight and erased the pencil marks. Tomorrow I'm going to go thru with the Micron to sharpen all the creases and use Pro-White to fix any mistakes.

I went LIVE on Instagram again tonight and drew this dude. I prepped music from my "60s & Older" playlist on Spotify before hitting Record. I learned from last time to check my phone every few minutes and make sure I'm still broadcasting. About 15 minutes in I saw that I was no longer Live and there was a message saying I got booted because of the copyrighted music in the background. I skipped whatever track was playing and hit record again. I was able to broadcast for 30 mins before the video stopped again. I think that's the limit. I fired it up one more time and was able to finish my drawing. The first 15 minutes are gone but you can watch the rest on Instagram (@frankiemcfly) till tomorrow night. I watched the playback and realize it gets kinda boring just watching me draw. If it wasn't so late I'd be talking while drawing. I also need to figure out a way to read the messages while I draw. The rig I built holds my phone 2 feet above my desk and I need to stand up and check that I'm still broadcasting. I want to be able to check the status and respond to comments without stopping what I'm doing. Hopefully I'll have that figured out and make it more entertaining next time.

I shot my first Instagram Live video today. I built a rig to hold my phone over my desk to record myself drawing. I made an hour long playlist on Spotify of 80s music because I read Live videos go up to 60 minutes but my video got cut off around the 30 minute mark. I freestyled the pencils then inked it with Sharpie and Copic markers. I finished it by coloring in the inside shape with a yellow highlighter but no one got to see it. Next time I'll plan for a half hour video.

Follow me on Instagram to catch the next one @frankiemcfly