I’ve always sucked at drawing characters the Marvel way. I still do! It took me over two hours just to get this far and it’s not even close to being inked. Excelsior!
This afternoon I messed around with Photoshop to try and get a scanned image of an old ballpoint drawing of mine to look, and print out, like the original. I think my adjustments made it look worse. I had to run some errands so I left it alone and didn’t come back to it. Tomorrow I’ll try again and use a different drawing, maybe some line art, and try and reproduce it.
After feeling heartbroken and depressed all weekend about how the mural at Eastridge ended up after the community paint day I went back to Eastridge to take a look at it with fresh eyes. I woke up feeling better today and thought maybe I'd been too hard on myself after what transpired on Saturday. Or maybe it didn't look as bad as I remembered. Nope. When I walked up to the mural my heart sank. So much of the work I'd done up to this point, ruined. I no longer want credit for it or want my name attached to it. It's no longer a fair representation of my work and I feel like having my name on it will only damage my Frankie Mcfly brand.
I spent the day trying not to think about how the Eastridge mural ended up after the community paint day. It was impossible. All I could think about was how much longer it was going to take for me to fix it, and wondering if I'll be compensated for the extra work. I wonder if I'll be forced to leave it as-is. I wouldn't be happy with that. I had been so happy, and proud, to be working on the mural and now I feel the complete opposite. Tomorrow I'll go to Eastridge and have a good look at the mural, talk to the folks at Local Color, maybe Eastridge too, and figure out how we're going to move forward.
Welp, the community paint day, as an event, was a success. There were a bunch of people who participated in painting the mural. Mostly small children, and unfortunately, the mural itself is a bit of a mess now. I think it's going to take me even longer now to clean it up and finish it. I left feeling disappointed so I'm taking a day off, or two, before going back to Eastridge to reassess the situation.
I got to Eastridge around 12:30 in the morning. Long after the mall closed and after the last movie at the AMC Theater let out. After the security guard let me in I pretty much had the mall to myself. After getting getting situated I set up the projector, to trace my design onto the wall. After a few minutes trying to focus the image I realized the projector was not powerful, or big enough, to work. I need a bigger & brighter projector ASAP! Today was lost and I can't come in tomorrow because I'll be working the 31 Skulls event for Local Color, then going to my buddy's show afterwards. The soonest I can be back at Eastridge is Sunday night, if I get my hands on the right projector. I DM'd my buddy Mike, who's got a heavy projector he uses for drive-in movie nights at his ranch. I hope he can let me borrow it! Stay tuned...
All custom & pre-order 1.0 shirt invoices have gone out so it's time to buy the shirts. While I was going through my orders and adding the blanks to my cart I noticed couple styles & colors of shirts can only be ordered by the case. So instead of being able to order three individual shirts I would need to buy 72 of each (216 total pieces). That's a no-go. Then there are a few shirts that are out of stock in certain colors & sizes. Those I'm not surprised by but they're a setback nonetheless. Tomorrow I'm going to search for alternatives, in-stock, and reach out to those who's orders are affected.
It was a pretty boring Sunday, cleaning and doing laundry, until I took my bike out for a ride. I went up a hill, stopping twice, and on the way down the chain came off the chain wheel and my rear brakes were barely slowing me down. I was afraid I was gonna eat shit. Luckily I didn’t fall and I managed to slow down by the time I reached the bottom. I got the chain back on then went home. I got my workout and a scare. I’ll try and figure out the brake situation before I take the bike out again.
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 Let’s see... This morning I picked up a bunch nerf bullets and plastic balls in the backyard that came over the fence from the neighbors over the weekend. I put everything in a box and dumped it over the fence. Later I had a dentist appointment for a filling. Luckily the cavity was small and shallow so I didn’t need to get injected with a numbing agent before drilling. And at night I prepped the paenls that I’m installing at my brothers studio tomorrow morning. The box had a pretty cool typo that I read out loud and made me cry laughing. It was an eventful day. 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.
We went to Keaiwa Heiau State Park this morning and went on a gnarly 4.8 mile hike. It was muddy AF and I slipped and fell on my ass about a half-hour in. I had a few other close calls but still had a great time. Afterwards we got pancakes for breakfast and topped them with coconut syrup. My favorite pancake syrup. Tomorrow we’re going to a different part of the island for a predawn hike and watching the sunrise from the mountain top.
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.
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.
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Frankie Mcfly's
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