1583 - Year Nine: JSVB In Review

Happy New Year! 

Looking at 2019, I'm deeply concerned.  Up until now, the year 2019 was appropriate for the opening title crawl of the original Blade Runner (1982) movie: the introduction to a deeply philosphical, yet horrifyingly violent futuristic dystopia of decay and sensuality.  Now that I see the real 2019, well, it's different from the movie version.  The nicest thing I can say about it is, "where's my flying car already?"

I've added a ninth column of artworks to my JSVB matrix.  Each column is a year, and each postage stamp is a post.  My output for 2018 was close to that of 2017, so in that regard JSVB holds steady.  The past few years have seen a decline in blogs, and JSVB is no different.  People aren't interested in online journals anymore.  Fortunately, JSVB isn't dependent on likes or user clicks.  It's here to make sure I keep generating artwork, and hopefully that art gets more advanced and enjoyable every year.

In that regard, I've made good progress.  Where 2017 was tentative, in 2018 I followed through with promises to push my artwork in new directions.  The results were positive.  However, the nature of my new projects made for long gaps in between many of my posts, which no doubt frustrated what regular followers I may have.  I've picked up some new clients who are buying my art, so I believe that my new work ethic is paying off, gradually.

Let's take a look at some of the pieces I think have pushed JSVB into new directions:

JSVB Post #1465  "Life Is Like A Box Of Tribbles, Mr. Mulder" - An essay on the happy coincidence of having reboots of two of my favourite television shows on at the same time, but also the pitfalls of nostalgia in commercialism.  The artwork turned out really well, though, a very sentimental watercolour rendition of science-fiction theme.

JSVB Post #1471  "One More Bite..." - A crowd-pleasing tribute to Godzilla!

JSVB Post #1500  "Enterprise Fantasia" - More Star Trek.  The illustration turned out nicely, but what really worked was pushing Photoshop blend layers to their maximum.  The effect is subtle in this piece, and that's the idea: I used something digital and regimented like Photoshop to finally produce something that looks organic and flowing.

JSVB Post #1501  "Movin' To Alberta" - A simple photo with a fair amount of Photoshop.  Posting this spoof picture convinced social media that I really was moving to Alberta in my brand new Ford Expedition truck.  When I say social media, I don't mean the people I know, but rather the computer programs that run our social sites.  Right after posting this, I started getting ads for expensive vehicles, cowboy things to do in Alberta, and for products of a high quality not normally associated with my status as an artist.  Normally, I get shilled for dodgy weight-loss programs and cheap t-shirts with dumb sayings.  So, I learned this: it's good to fool Big Daddy Internet every once in a while.

JSVB Post #1513   "Happy Birthday To Me (9)" - Gosh, yet more Star Trek!?  Under the hood of this picture is a new workflow which has helped me considerably with my projects in 2018.  Painting this picture gave me a lot of confidence to push my work in new directions.

JSVB Post #1519  "G&G 13: Formula De" - A large-format poster with a very heavy emphasis on vibrant colours.

JSVB Post #1552   "Two Worlds"  - A dramatic break from my usual work, I fabricated and sculpted two fictional planets, Mongo from Flash Gordon, and Superman's home world Krypton.  These took a lot of work to complete and they have many flaws, but am I ever proud of how they turned out!  I think this was my favourite project from 2018!  

I learned a lot about craftsmanship in 2018.  People have become more interested in my art, and I am trying to cultivate a clientele.  Art hasn't made me rich so far, but it has started to pay a couple of bills for me.  Better still, the lessons I have learned, the successes and mistakes (brown hockey pucks, for goodness' sake!) have given me a foundation to begin some large projects in 2019.  I look forward to those challenges!  

Thank you for paying attention to JSVB in 2018 and in years previous.  I am especially grateful for those who have chosen to purchase my art!  I hope that people share my excitement for the artwork that I plan to produce in 2019!  

Respectfully,

JEFF SHYLUK

 

1581 - "In Slippers, Us"

 - with apologies to William Ernest Henley - 

IN SLIPPERS, US

Out of Black Friday that calls to her
Bright as the sun from heel to toes
I look upon what gods may fear
Lo, my wife's new holiday shoes

In the clutch of Christmas cheerings
Meats minced and eggs a-nogged
She bludgeons my eyes with sequins
Her new slippers must now be blogged

Beyond this place of wreaths and balladeers
Loom toes glittering green and red
And yet the ending of the year
Finds me content and well-fed

It matters not how tensile the tinsel
How charged I am to love her full
No matter the glare from her foot-sill
She is the captain of my soul 

1579 - Balls On Trees

My wife and I saw this cartoon drawn on a restaurant chalkboard.  I decided to turn it into holiday clip-art.  

 

1562 - To Fifty And Beyond

I turned a sketch of my wife into her birthday party invitation.  The party was extremely nice: great food, lovely company, and the BC Lions even beat the top team in the league. 

 

1557 - The Maltese FedEx

Me shipping artwork.  Guess which book this exact quote is from.  If you get it right, award yourself 10,000 Style Points. HINT: it's a trick question.  ALSO: the exchange rate today for Style Points into Real Points is fifty-five hundred million Style Points equals one Real Point. FINALLY: I generally ship with Purolator rather than FedEx. I buy Canadian!  Plus, the courier is usually very good about shipping artwork.

Good luck!  

1523 - Sim Bleak House

Cleaning out his office space, my friend Earl discovered a twenty-year-old disk labelled "Bleak House" with texture files that I had made for customized characters in the old Sims videogame.  Each picture is a flat image designed to wrap around a specific three dimensional digital model.  He sent me this file out of nostalgia. 

The Sims was a virtual dollhouse that allowed you to create or re-create people and move them into buildings of your own design.  In his younger days, Earl lived in a ramshackle old house with his room-mates and friends Ron, Allan, and Carrie.  Earl nicknamed the place "The Bleak House Of Blahs."

One rule of The Sims was that efficiency made the little virtual people happy and inefficiency did not, since their time was very limited and travel across the house to get from the bedroom to the bathroom, and then across the house again to get to the kitchen and so on, would cause them to squander their day's opportunities.  One of the rules of the Bleak House was that you had to traverse the house across multiple floors to get to a bathroom, or around several corners to get into the kitchen, and that the bedrooms were set out as far away from each other as possible. It even had a wildly improbable "Pittsburgh Potty", a freestanding toilet at the end of an open hallway - upstairs. The place had an interesting architecture, that was for sure.  And it was incredibly inefficient, so it had earned the name "Bleak House" by makings its residents miserable with having to navigate its corkscrew corridors and dead-end lavatories.  

Naturally, making a virtual Bleak House for myself was a priority, and I spent many dishonourable hours  running Sim Earl, Allan, Ron, and Carrie through the wringer of destiny.  As karma would have it, I lost all of my files maybe twenty years ago.  And then the other day Earl rediscovered them, hooray!

Sim Earl wore jeans and a Star Trek shirt.  His face was frozen with angry perplexity.  Sim Ron had immaculate groomed hair and never removed his cherry-red supermarket bag-boy uniform.  Blond Sim Allan was forever immortalized wearing nothing but a laundry-greyed towel and fuzzy maroon slippers (one day I had to run an errand out to the Bleak House, and Allan answered the door in this get-up: he would have had to run down switchbacked stairs, sail across the kitchen, dodge past the phone cubby, and accelerate along the main hallway and through the portico to get to the door to see me.)  At least back then he had his hair.  Beautiful Sim Carrie was a strong fitness enthusiast.  In fact, she was simply strong.  I elected to have her wear her electric pink and blue leotard.

As a bonus, we have mildly ambitious me in my 1990's suit, and my svelte wife in tights and a Mickey Mouse shirt.  Why my wife and I have no heads, I am not sure and I don't recall.  

The Sims (and their original character templates) are the intellectual property of Electronic Arts, while Star Trek imagery belongs to Paramount Pictures (a subsidiary of Viacom) and Mickey Mouse of course is beholden to Disney. 

1520 - "Happy B Day"

Had I not misplaced this image, I would have presented it sooner since it's my 'birthday cake", and my birthday was several days ago.

Backstory: A month previously I'm sitting in our local Chinese restaurant (it's very good, by the way) with my friend Ted.  We're sipping at scorching hot wu long tea served in little white ceramic crucibles that are far too hot to touch.  We look at the menu and naturally the conversation turns toward wondering why the Chinese don't make lasagna.  

We reason out the most likely list of ingredients: marinated barbecued beef, shredded.  Chinese vegetables and peppers for roughage.  Wonton or tofu wrappers to make layers, and cooked tofu on top.  Instead of tomato sauce, black bean sauce.   

Then my birthday arrives, and I'm invited over to Ted's place.  Staggering all belief, he's made the Chinese lasagna we had imagined, and I took a picture of it.  Ted wrote "Happy B Day" using Shanghai noodles.  

Of course since I'm the birthday boy, I get to have the first slice of this new cuisine.  My hosts look at me the way scientists peer through a solid foot of plate glass into a locked test chamber with the subject strapped to a steel table: perhaps after tasting this I will explode or turn inside out, or maybe the house will need to be quarantined.

Honestly, it was pretty darned good!  I'd eat it again. 

1513 - "Happy Birthday To Me! (9)"

Well, another year, another birthday, another present to myself.  This time it's the sexy Lieutenant Marla McGivers from the Star Trek Episode "Space Seed".

Over the past couple of years for personal reasons that are not easy to explain on JSVB, I've developed a strong attachment to this character.  Certainly it's enough for me to try for a well-rendered portrait.

Marla is peculiar.  She only appeared in the one episode, and her treachery nearly kills the entire crew of the Enterprise.  Or perhaps a better way to phrase her actions would be as misplaced loyalty.  

The Star Trek Guide points out that although she is lieutenant by rank, her uniform doesn't have that stripe.  Her duty on the Enterprise was as the ship's historian: she could interpret what the ship found on her five year voyage of discovery in terms of Earth history, which seems to me a remarkably useless skill given the wide variety of strange and alien worlds Captain Kirk discovers.  Mind you, kirk also encounters a few "parallel Earths", but Marla McGivers is never seen to help with those.

She does find critical use when the Enterprise locates the marooned spacecraft Botany Bay: it's a sleeper ship sent from Earth in our time, and it's loaded with genetically-enhanced supercriminals entombed in hypersleep.  Through Marla, we come to understand how Khan Singh and his team came to be jettisoned into deep space.  She sides with Khan in a mutiny that nearly costs the lives of all the crew.  

Marla McGivers is one of the first crewmembers on the Enterprise shown to actively pursue the arts.  She seems to prefer painting rather than doing her regular duties, something I appreciate.   

1502 - "All You Need Is 1,500"

Prominent illustrator Heinz Edelmann was the art director for the third Beatle's motion picture "Yellow Submarine" (1968).  According to the animation director Bob Balser, at the point where the production ran into money trouble Heinz Edelmann said: "I have an idea, we can fill the screen with numbers and it will be very cheap!"  

Today's JSVB post is a screen filled with numbers.  Some time ago around two months back, I had by mistake started to mis-number the entries in my blog.  I'm reasonably certain that I am the only one who cares about this since I was the one who caught the error, and this after a couple of dozen entries had been posted.  

It's not important, except that I like to post significant artwork every 100 posts.  As it happened the Enterprise Fantasia on JSVB Post #1500 turned out well, so I don't feel bad about that entry (click here to see it!).

I drew myself into Pepperland in the psychedelic style of Heinz Edelmann, giving the boot to 1500.  I did have something nice planned for my 1,500th post, but thanks to my clerical error I will just have to share it later.  

1488 - Rose Video

Here's a close-up view of the Rose Video VHS box I mocked up as a prop for a contest entry to visit Schitt's Creek (a television show about a benighted fictional small town).  

I do own a copy of the first and only Cabin Boy movie, although it's on DVD and not videocassette.  I bought it from a Blockbuster store that went bankrupt, just like Rose Video. 

1472 - Godzilla! Godzilla Lives!

I had my Godzilla print made up and framed.  My wife holds it for me to take the picture.

I rushed to get the image to the printer, since it takes maybe a week to get it back.  "I'll have it done in an hour," the printer says.  There are 320 shopping days until Christmas, but for my printer holiday spirit seems to be all year 'round!   

1465 - "Life Is Like A Box Of Tribbles"

Please click to embiggen.

Fan artwork for television shows, especially ones that mix together different franchises, are always so uncool to me.  Unless I'm the one making the artwork, then it's brilliant.  

With that out of the way, this month I find myself in the happy confluence between two of my all-time favourite shows, Star Trek and The X Files.  The context of each program excites my imagination: both are smart, inclusive shows with a lot of nostalgic appeal.  

Emphasis on "nostalgic".  Certainly aware that there is a large built-in audience who has watched decades of this programming, television producers also seek to give the viewers something new.  The trouble is most everything new has already been done, and Star Trek and the X-Files have attempted to pursue new frontiers while remaining tethered to the concept that launched them in the first place. 

Star Trek: Discovery has been entertaining, but it's not the Star Trek I want to see.  Violent, often gory, definitely not a show I choose to share with my family, Discovery charts a dark, mean-spirited and morally ambiguous course through yet another interminable space war.  The production values are far above any other Star Trek show, the look and sound of the series makes all the older Trek shows seem like stage plays by comparison.  The acting is normally sharp and the writing makes frequent smart call-backs to various interesting and surprising story beats, so that later episodes for the most part seem to stand on the careful foundation laid down by earlier adventures.  But: it's not Star Trek to me.  It's some kind of militaristic soap opera where the characters find themselves trapped in relationship minefields as often as they are ensnared by science fiction munitions.  And the characters themselves for me range from annoying to loathesome almost without exception.  Yes, it's amusing to see what will happen next to the Discovery, but I also feel that Star Trek would be better off if the ship remained lost in space.  I want to see a Star Trek episode where the ship and crew genuinely trek.  I'm tired of fictional war stories, especially when I know the outcome. 

The X-Files is the opposite side of the coin.  Built into the X-Files is the greatest character duo on television since Kirk and Spock.  Again, yes I find the new X-Files episodes entertaining, but it's not the  X-Files I want to see.  Confusing, indirect, the X-Files has become a show impossible to share with anyone outside of the fan base.  Agents Mulder and Scully have become ciphers of themselves, having faced the same perils over and over again so many times.  The dangers are all iterative but hew to the same truth: the world is doomed, alien intelligence may or may not save us, and only Mulder and/or Scully have the key to unlock all of the clues, if only Mulder and/or Scully were not mortally wounded in hospital and/or being protected by extra-terrestrial shadow agencies.  Knowing that the narrative is hopelessly bound in knots, individual episodes often become flippant or experimental, sometimes with memorable results, sometimes not.  Then there are episodes devoted entirely to exposition, forty-four solid minutes of Mulder and Scully telling the audience what has happened to date.  X-Files hasn't really changed in that regard, not since the movies were released.  

So, I find myself wishing for Star Trek: Discovery's production values and writing, with the strong morality and conviction of Mulder and Scully.  I guess that's why I gave today's JSVB artwork the flavour from Forrest Gump:  sophisticated computerized visuals coupled with geek nostalgia.  The trouble is Forrest Gump for all of its virtues just isn't all that good of a film, at least not to me.  There is a reason why sentimentality and high-tech storytelling don't mix: the harder you work the recreate the past the more you squander your future.  

I certainly don't mind having good choices for entertainment on television, but I'm also ready to leave some of the shows I've loved in the past behind.  I want to be a patron and not a demographic. 

1453 - Zhora's Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all JSVB readers, from the Shyluks and Zhora!

1452 - Year Eight: JSVB In Review

January 1st was the starting date for JSVB, back in 2010.  Now I have eight years' worth of material to peruse.  Each year in the matrix above is represented by a column of coloured squares and bits.  Each square is a JSVB post.  Last year, Google changed their archive format, so the rightmost two columns look a little different from the others.  

2017 represents the very first year I've ever managed to produce more than the year before, by a margin of four posts.  I'll admit: 2017 was a struggle.  My health and stress level aren't great, but then I'm no different from everyone else in that department.  There were some wide gaps where I didn't post, as JSVB has dropped a little as a priority for me.  

Even so, I managed to create some pieces that I am proud of that people liked.  Here are some favourites of mine from the past year:

JSVB Post #1338  Of Chimps And Villains - A nice little bit of cartoon foolishness, inspired by my friend Earl.

JSVB Post #1357  Vote For Jeff - 2017 was heavy with April Fool's pranks.  One was a political flyer that does everything wrong in a political flyer: a grinning picture in a suit, a six-point plan (should be five) of platitudes and empty phrases, meaningless illustrations and an endorsement that was not legitimate.  Also awful fonts like Comic Sans and Papyrus.  The final sin: a picture of a check mark in a voting box.  These are the things that candidates do when they don't know they will lose.  Still, I do have the promise of two votes I can count on, and not from my wife, friends, or family - just my vote and a guy in Winnipeg.  Others have responded to my political ambitions by sending me the end bit of Apocalypse Now where Colonel Kurtz whispers  in agony: the horror... the horror...

JSVB Post #1362   Destroy Planet - A Photoshopped illustration with a hand-drawn Death that seems to capture the feeling of 2017.

 JSVB Post #1371   Mayor TV Podium People - I did a number of these small banners for my friend Greg Moore's Facebook page, advertising his MayorTV show.  Mayor Moore plans to retire in 2018.

JSVB Post #1379  The Girl With The Gerbera Daisy - This is my personal favourite from 2017.  It was something I saw in real life which I took the time to copy into my sketchbook and then rendered out as an illustration.  A really, really good illustration, that probably only I care for, but at least I know how good it is.  I nailed it! 

JSVB Post #1382  Happy Birthday To Me (8) - I like doing these Happy Birthday posts because I get to satisfy my own weird ideas.  This time, I accompanied James Bond/Maurice Binder imagery with Shirley Bassey style lyrics.  "Goldenass" (JSVB Post #1283) was a helpful early version of this artwork. 

JSVB Post #1384   BBQ'AN - I made myself into a tribute to the movie poster for Logan, which was an absolutely terrific show.  Photoshop made me look good. 

JSVB Post #1388 Crow With A Croissant - This has proved to be a favourite with JSVB viewers.

JSVB Post #1400  Sean Bruises His Shin - This was my blockbuster post for 2017, a wacky combination of Japanese woodcut art in the manner of master Hokusai melded with the Internet meme of my friend Sean bruising his shin while his cat watches.  And I even wrote a haiku to make the whole thing work.  

JSVB Post #1404   Illuminating Girl - I only had four JSVB posts in August, but this Art Nouveau themed line art carried the entire month.  This little illustration turned out amazingly well. 

JSVB had a large spike of viewers from January to June.  When I started to take time off from posting in Summer,  I squandered those viewers and my blog fell back down to its normal rate of a few hits per day.  Well, that's on me, of course.  I wish I had paid closer attention to JSVB in the hot months.  Now things are much slower, and I wonder at what new things will happen in 2018.  

I am grateful to the JSVB readers who purchased artwork, and I do enjoy having people follow my blog, as cranky and oddly-fashioned as it and I can be.   Let's look back on the past with wisdom and forward to the future with keen anticipation!  

Respectfully,
JEFF SHYLUK

1451 - The End Of 2017

Well, here we are at the end of another year.  JSVB was started January 1st 2010, so I have eight years' worth of material to recall.  Tomorrow, I'll collect the items for 2017 and provide a retrospective look at that year.  

 I'll see you in 2018! 

1448 - The Starbucks Effect

Did you see any nurses on Christmas Day?  Were they cranky?  

I discovered that nurses (and by extension many essential service people) were ornery at work on Christmas.  Union labour gets a substantial bonus to work on this holiday, and a sizeable number of workers don't celebrate Christmas, yet the ill cheer was unilateral.

Then I also discovered that all the Starbucks coffee shops were closed for Christmas.  The nurses were irritable because they had headaches from caffeine withdrawal.  

"Could you not make your own coffee on Christmas?" I asked, naïve as some twig-legged fawn in an old Disney movie.

"Ghrrrahrrr!" was the reply.   

 

1444 - Hostesses/Mostesses Redux

My wife brought me to her Christmas party with her friends and co-workers.  Hot friends and co-workers, I'll be honest.  We had a great time!  I adapted the sketch from the last time we went to that Christmas Party (yes, I make sketches of parties I go to) to account for one of our hostesses thoughtfully dressing up as a reindeer for the photo booth. 

See the previous sketch from JSVB Post #1182 by clicking here.









 

1425 - "Abbey Groaned"

Introducing "The Deadles": from right to left - George, Paul, Ringo, and John, celebrating their hit Hallowe'en single "Abbey Groaned".

This is likely the best photo I have of our Hallowe'en display for 2017.  In past years I've taken to posing plastic skeletons in evocative ways.  I figured with four skeletons, I could recreate Abbey Road with the Beatles.  Our neighbours seem to be thrilled with these dioramas, and our renters at least tolerate them.  Nobody under the age of thirty seems to remember The Beatles, but even though the kids don't understand they appreciate the effort.

Some kids are scum-sucking deviant motherless uncultured pea-brained visigoths, though.  The neighbourhood watch security cameras caught a dozen hooligans knocking down this display and ripping the heads of the skeletons, meaning that we had to make a trip to the hardware store to get replacements.  The original display had the Beatles' poses exact to the inch, the replacement version is more haphazard.  Also, the Volkswagen is on the wrong side of the picture.  

So Hallowe'en 2017 isn't going to be all that joyful for us, or for our neighbours up and down the street who  also had their things vandalized.  

As improbable as it seems to me, someday those hoodlum lunkheads will grow up, find mates and reproduce, and so will spawn neighbourhoods of their own of an ilk even stupider and more destructive, and the cycle of driving out to the hardware store to find replacement decorations will renew. 

Here's a couple of my previous skeleton poses: please click here and here  to see them.  Also, please click here to see another JSVB version of Abbey Road.  

 

1413 - "We're Nearly Famous"

   My wife and I are on television!  We're face-painted and costumed for a football game between the BC Lions and the Ottawa RedBlacks.  This clip lasted about two seconds, and we had no idea it existed until some of our cousins started begging us for autographs.   Well, they were laughing about it, but they did spot us on TV before we knew that we had been broadcasted internationally.

   I ended up photographing the television screen for this keepsake.  It's worth mentioning that it was a very good thing I had painted my face, otherwise I would have been green.  I had a really bad stomach virus that day that kept me from eating much more than dry toast, and this on an excursion where free food was included.  

   The image is courtesy of TSN, however since it's us, we retain the rights... I think.  Who knows?  The catchphrase "We're Nearly Famous" is a twist on the ultra-renowned slogan of my friend Earl, "I'm Nearly Famous!".  Thanks, Earl.

   Might as well check in on the old Personal-Fame-O-Meter.  Last time I did this was back in 2014.  Has my personal fame changed?  Let's see:

Nope.  Oh, well.  Funny how some of the other non-JSVB entries have changed since then.

1410 - Domestic Bliss

   As I worked it was a beautiful sunny day, and warm, luxurious light poured in through our glass patio door.  I looked up from my task and saw what you see in this picture.  I snapped my wife's photo without her being aware of it.  

   Simple, sweet, sunny, cluttered, lucky, loving domestic bliss.