Finger Fire

Wishing all a Warm New Year

....but maybe not too warm.

Our younger son expressed an intense interest in creating a video of himself setting his fingers on fire (courtesy of alcohol based hand sanitizer, I think) 

I tried to fulfill the wish without any physical hazards.  If this ever happens in real life, it definitely won’t be on the Union Square platform for the L train. But since we will soon be mourning the absence of the L in 2019, it seemed like a nice venue for manual pyrotechnics.

And yes there has been a lack of napkins over the last few days. I dropped into a weird knitting hole for a few days. I volunteered for the “finger knitting” booth at the kids’ school’s holiday fundraising fest (so, so, so many sticky little fingers!) 

The finger knitting thing was not such a gratifying experience, but it reminded of my decades-past previous life as an obsessive knitter. (Three very disturbing facts: I worked at a yarn store. I owned a knitting machine. I hand knit many things, including a sweater that had two realistic cats on it- one of them a calico)

The yarn that I bought to experiment with for finger knitting turned into a hood project (with needles, not intensely annoying fingers)

I somehow couldn’t help myself. Perhaps I needed to prove I could still do it? Or I just reactivated an obsessive compulsive disorder? 

At any rate, hopefully the knitting itch has been scratched. No one will ever actually wear the thing, but there it is. 

(And, did I successfully thwart online face recognition software in both pictures?)

More non-knit things in 2019.... 

Holiday Wrapping

I am always pleased to have an excuse to do some low stakes drawings.

(Thus, really, the whole napkin enterprise.)

I’ve been recently reminded that wrapping paper is another chance to make some quick drawings that don’t have to be good. After all, it’s all going to be cut up and taped together.

The cat and dog are the very important pets of the kids’ aunt and uncle. 

The zombie Santa and miscellaneous dogs, shark, goldfish, and menorah were for the kids.

And mediocre gifts are always bettered by handmade wrapping paper...right?

Perhaps I might consider cutting up all my drawings and taping them on boxes. (Or around socks and t-shirts as they were here) 

It couldn’t hurt. 

But not the napkins of course.

Happy Holidays!

(If you have one, hope your tree looks better than ours!)

Santa Jaws

Just leave some chum under the tree.

Yes, there was a 2017 SyFy channel movie with the title “Santa Jaws” 

It was part of “Sharknado Week.”

I have not had the pleasure of viewing it, but the synopsis says that the main human character is a teenage boy who wishes that he didn’t have to spend the holidays with his annoying family. He draws a wish fulfillment comic titled “Santa Jaws” with a magic pen which somehow manifests a real shark determined to kill his family members on Christmas. He and his older brother try to prevent the shark from eating the family... because even if you do fantasize about eradicating your relations...you probably don’t really want them to end up in the stomach of a shark wearing a Santa hat on its dorsal fin.  

In summary, this napkin does not resemble the movie. 

But perhaps, any holiday season, it is always good to be reminded that, no matter how strained the relationship, almost no one actually wants their family to be eaten by a CGI shark. ....even one driving a sleigh.....or Rudolph the Red Nosed Shark

Homemade Wrapping Paper

Homemade Wrapping Paper:

Not quite half-assed....maybe almost a quarter?

When the gifts are not inspiring, one can always make an effort on the paper...(or just give up and draw on a napkin.)

In the olden days, when my sons were runny nosed small children, if I hauled out a giant sheet of paper and some paint, they would enthusiastically pitch in.  Now that they are adolescents who know how to blow their own noses, no such luck. 

So this was all me, sad to say. But let’s just imagine how good it could have been if others had been involved.  

I am going to cut it up into pieces and wrap small uninspiring items it it, so perhaps that will be an improvement?

Krampusnacht with Terrors of Christmas Past

Krampusnacht With Terrors of Christmas Past:

I read that Krampusnacht is celebrated on the evening of December 5th in alpine towns in Central Europe. Krampus, long before the recent horror movie of that name, is Santa’s nasty doppelgänger, the semi satanic guy in charge of the bad children. 

While I have never seen a Krampusnacht (night)  or a Krampuslauf (run- a street parade with people in Krampus masks) the costumes and masks one finds picture of online are quite nice, and certainly far more interesting than boring old Saint Nick.

And who is behind those masks? I added in a couple of characters from the claymation holiday specials that disturbed my own childhood- “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” and “The Little Drummer Boy.” Because we all know that banal insipidity lurks behind true evil...or maybe just conspires with it?

(This was supposed to be a donation for a holiday benefit, but it went unframed yesterday and is therefore still at home with the rest of my failed donations)

Holiday Themed Weirdness and Failure

Every year when the need to donate something for the holiday benefit “Deck the Walls” for the New York Academy of Art rolls around, I am seized with temporary delusions of drawing capacity.  “Deck the Walls” features a whole lot of small inexpensive (maybe holiday themed?) works by the students faculty and alumni of the school.

The NYAA is a place where aspiring artists go to be taught by people who really know how to draw and how to teach drawing. 

There is instruction in painting and sculpture also of course, and I am a person who teaches sculpture. And I might even be a person who took up sculpture because my drawing wasn’t really all that good. Can’t remember that far back now.

But I like to continually pretend that I know how to draw, mostly hoping that continual pretending will lead eventually to actual capacity.  (Most often, I do an end run around this topic by drawing on absorbent paper products.)

Like all previous years, this time, I started out optimistically, with low expectations, just planning to knock out something silly and inexpensive...and then somewhere along the way I started to get self conscious about the silly concept and the less than stellar drawing. 

But here it is on social media. Maybe I will work up enough chutzpah to actually donate the drawing to t

This image is a les- interesting-than-hoped spin-off of an image of a kid’s Santa and Reindeer costume- one of those where the wearer’s legs go down into the reindeer portion and the Santa body is a weird floppy stuffed doll sitting on top.

I now realize it is disturbingly similar to a holiday donation from two years back- Zombie Santa with Rudolph the red nosed skeleton.  That one found no takers-  despite the novelty of it being a napkin in a frame. You can see it at the above link if the description was enticing...