I had way too much fun today painting live with the TWC gang (Together We Create) at Viva Calle. I was glued to my mural for hours, getting organized, transferring my sketch, coloring and doing the line work. It turned out a bit wonky, especially the bottom half, but I didn’t mind. It was gonna get torn down and reclaimed after the event. It was exercise in painting quickly, and in a way that bystanders can see and understand what’s happening on the wall during the process. It was also my first time in years using spray paint on a mural and only second time live-painting and vending at the same time. Major learning experience!
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!
If none of that makes any sense to you, I’m sorry. This is some nerdy tech shit. I made a Raspberry Pi Plex Server years ago using the same Pi and an external hard drive and used it till something stopped working. Tonight I thought I’d try again but with a thumb drive. I managed to get the server running on the pi but it’s not recognizing the movie files on thumb drive. After a few hours a gave up for the night. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow.
It took me a couple hours this afternoon to go through all 55 of my homemade sketchbooks looking for selfies and alien drawings. When I was done I had over 200 new pictures on my phone, in addition to the 400 pics taken from my store-bought sketchbooks. I wasn’t expecting there to be this many images before I started digging. Scanning is going to take ffforrrevvverrr!
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.
Today was President’s Day. I went to the movies and had dinner with a friend. When I got home I watched a video on how to properly scan line artwork and took notes. I almost fell asleep watching it. Tomorrow I’ll give it another chance.
I’ve had zines on the brain lately. I sketched this a few days ago and did a little inking on the iPad tonight using Procreate. It’s my first time inking with this app. I’ve been using Adobe Fresco for their vector brush up until now.
I bought a $250 flatbed scanner today. The plan is to scan a bunch of drawings from my sketchbooks and make zines. I’ve been wanting to make a zine for a while and I got a bunch of drawings and sketches I’ve hoarded over the years, many of which I’ve never shown to anyone. I figure a zine is a good way of distributing my art for relatively cheap.
Tonight I inked a little bit of Michelangelo from a sketch I drew last year. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were one of the main reasons I started drawing, back in the late 80s & early 90s. I liked the cartoon so much that I would draw the turtles over & over to try till they sorta resembled the cartoon.
Hiking the Penitencia Creek Trail at Alum Rock Park was relatively easy for me last summer. Before it got really hot. Before my knee injury. Before packing on the extra weight. Today I had to stop and rest multiple times, both ways, where as before I would only sit at the bench at the very end of the trail to draw before heading back. Another ass whooping.
Tonight I went to watch the new Scream movie at Eastridge. The best part was leaving the theater and walking past my mural. I saw, for the first time, the freshly installed placard on the wall. The placard was proofed right after the community paint day, where mostly small kids left the mural looking so bad I didn't want my name attached to it anymore. I didn't want anyone to see the mural and think I painted it. Local Color insisted I keep my name on it so we settled on Designer credit. That's why it says, "Design by Frankie Mcfly, Painted by San Jose Community." This was before my artist friends Elba & Lucia helped me clean up the mural and made me feel proud of it again. I'm finally done with the Eastridge mural! As I've mentioned before, there's still lots more I wanted to touch up but I'm ok with walking away from it now. There was so much that went into the making of this mural besides the painting. There were plenty of stories, some ups and downs and it was a major learning experience. Most of which I've shared in previous posts. Up next is the application of the anti-graffiti coating followed by a placard, and at some point I'm going to be filmed for an interview.
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 had so much fun painting a mural alongside my friends TWC (Together We Create) at Viva Calle this morning and into the afternoon. I was so so focused on my work (being in the zone) the 5 hours just flew by. I painted the EMN sketch I drew last night. I used yellow because it was the paint I had the most of. I wasn't happy with the black paint because it didn't cover well but it looked fine from a distance, and in pictures. I had to rush to get as far as I did before the event ended. I didn't completely finish. The eye with two pupils, at the bottom, didn't get a white fill. I also didn't outline the pink hot-dog shape (with my name) or anything above it. I'm still really happy with the way it turned out. In the end, the panel was taken apart and hauled away. Some day, the folks in TWC, will paint at another event and reuse the panels and paint over them. I knew that going in and was totally ok with it.
A few things I learned:
Today I worked on the sponsorship packet design for Local Color's 31 Skulls fundraising campaign. This was a first for me. I've seen them before and recently learned more about them. Organizations use them for fundraising. They have different levels based on contribution amount, each with different perks for those who choose to sponsor events. I had a little involvement with the actual content of the packet but I handled all the design. I did have to look at a few examples to get an idea of what to do. I'm waiting on the team at Local Color to get back to me with edits and to finish writing out all the content before the board members start sending them out to potential sponsors. I hope this makes us lots of money!
I'm behind schedule on the skull I'm painting for Local Color's fundraiser, 31 Skulls. I spent most of the day trying to decide what I was going to draw on the skull. I was torn between the Eyes, Mouths & Noses motif or the brains I usually draw. I also tested out different markers, paints and brushes.In the end I went with EMN using oil based markers. I'm also a day behind on my Inktober drawings. I't's day 10 but I'm on drawing 9. I drew this chunky demon guy marching along.
I went on a 7.4-mile hike this afternoon at Alum Rock Park. It's been a week since the last time I hiked, and I wanted to get a workout in before Viva Calle tomorrow. Viva Calle is a public event where they block off city streets from cars and open them up for bicyclists & pedestrians. They also have activities at different locations along the route. Tomorrow will be my first time participating, and Tonight I spent a couple of hours learning how to remove my bike's rear wheel and replace the inner tube. It had been sitting with a flat tire for months and waited until the last day to fix it. Hopefully, my bike doesn't fall apart on me tomorrow!
It's been almost 2 months, and I don't know why I waited this long to let everyone know that I took a contract job with Local Color as their Communications & Development person. I've been working with the amazing staff on the weekly and monthly newsletters, social media posts, and upcoming fundraisers. It's been a learning experience for all of us and I'm slowly starting to get in a groove. This is a paid gig till the end of the year but I'm also volunteering my time & services, like in a couple weeks, I'll be DJing & MCing their Estate Sale, to help artists in residence sell artwork before moving out of their current building. It should be a lot of fun and I hope a lot of people show up to support!
My new job has me in charge of sending out it's two newsletters. The small one goes out about once a week to less than 100 people and the big one, the monthly newsletter, goes out to 1000+ subscribers. I've already sent out a few of the smaller one but the big one, the monthly, will be my first. And because there hasn't been a monthly newsletter published since April, this next one is gonna be chunky! The deadline to get everything submitted is at 5:00 PM tomorrow, so today I worked on getting everything formatted in preparation. I'm a little nervous but I really can't wait to get it over with and get started on next one.
A couple friends and I got up early Sunday morning to hike up to Maple Falls at Nisene Marks State Park in Aptos. At least that was the plan! I printed a map I pulled from the park's website and soon learned that it wasn't very helpful with the poor/lack-of trail markers at the park. We made our first wrong turn early on and were able to get back on track with a little help from runners & bicyclist. Further along we made another wrong turn onto a trail that wasn't on the map. After a while I started getting suspicious and when we came upon a dirt road I knew were definitely off track. Because the climb was so steep we decided not to go back the way we came. We hiked further north a bit before taking the dirt road back to the parking lot. It was still a great hike and we had a blast even though we didn't see the waterfall. My friend and I also got stung by wasps. Me, once behind the ear and a couple times on my chest. My friend, on her finger and on her back. But like I said, we still had a great time. Next time we'll be better prepared and actually make it to the waterfall.
Today was all about trial & error as I worked on the surprise gifts for the 1.0 custom & pre-orders. Plan-A didn't work, neither did Plan-B, now everything is riding on Plan-C. I'm almost done. The gifts and t-shirts are being mailed out Monday. After people receive their orders and see the surprise I'll post the finished products as well as process pics. The gifts are gonna be so much cooler than the actual shirts and I can't wait to share!
I got an email this morning from one of the two t-shirt vendors I ordered blanks from saying that 7 of the 9 shirts I ordered from them weren't in stock. Is kinda pissed off but didn't have time to argue, nor would it have helped the situation. I spent the rest of the day emailing back & forth, looking for alternatives and contacting buyers. I think everything is good now but I really doubt I'll have the shirts ready by this Friday like I originally intended.
I'm only waiting on a couple email replies to order blanks for the 1.0 shirts. I didn't it would take this long. I didn't account for any delays, like the minimum orders or shirts to be out of stock. Now it's getting really close and I don't know if I'll get them printed and in hand before vending on First Friday on August 6th. Fingers crossed!
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Frankie Mcfly's
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