1525 - Re-Lion On Photoshop

My cousin's family in Edmonton sent me a very sweet picture of themselves:

Even a casual observer will notice that the baby doesn't look particularly happy, and that some of the colours in the image are not right.  Fortunately, I'm good with Photoshop.  I made the proper corrections and now the baby is much happier:

Much, much better.  

1518 - "Monaco Formula One"

Here is the finished Monaco Formula One artwork.  This piece is poster-sized, 24"x36".  I used the colours from my colour test as samples to create the larger image, which in turn was painted over my upsampled photobash of Monaco.  Or put another way, I painted a big picture using a small picture as the source.  

I've really been to Monaco, years ago.  I remember the bright, sunny, vivid colours, and that it was powerfully expensive so we only stayed there for an hour or two.  It seems so strange to me that people can live an a place like Monaco: with its wealth, royalty, and roguish mystique, I recall it being more like a fantasy playground for the world elite than a real community.   

1509 - 2018 NHL Chicken Jerseys

Another year goes by, and I end up fabricating NHL jerseys for our television-watching chickens just in time for the playoffs.  Neither Washington nor expansion team Las Vegas have been to the Stanley Cup since I started making shirts for chickens, maybe ten or fifteen years ago.  So, I present the Las Veggas Golden Yolks and the Washingthen Chickenals.  My playoff bracket has the Chickenals beating the Golden Yolks... maybe in Game Six?  

1508 - He Who Predicts

Here are my bracket picks for the 2018 NHL playoffs.  I realize this would have been more entertaining has I posted this at the beginning of the playoffs rather than at the end, but I did not believe that I would have predicted the entire bracket!  I also know that if I had put money on this, I would have won a fair pot.  This bracket was just for bragging rights, which I am exercising today.  The last couple of times I put real money down on the playoffs, I never made it out of the first round.  

So, it looks like I have the Washington Capitals to win the Stanley Cup.  My guess is that Alex Ovechkin will be on a mission to hoist the Cup now that Sidney Crosby is relegated to watching the games on television just like the rest of us.  

 

1492 - Easter Blessings, Blue Jays Style

Easter this year coincides with the opening days of baseball season.  I was watching the Yankees take it to the Blue Jays when the camera panned over the packed crowd at the standing bar above center field.  Did I see what I just did see?  Fortunately, I could use the PVR to go back a minute and freeze the frame.  I ended up taking a photo of the television set with my camera to be able to send along this picture.  Of course, it's really bad to rebroadcast in whole or in part any major league baseball game without written permission. 

1476 - Little Sign Of Horrors

So my wife is becoming more interested in making crafts.  She is swift at crochet.  Now she wants to make miniatures, and to help her out I bought some tiny tools she can use to make interesting projects.  

"I want to make this (a recreation of the infamous advertisement featuring the nefarious Saskatchewan Roughriders football team that had been placed next to the sublime home stadium of our courageous BC Lions) into a billboard for our friend Ted's N-gauge railroad," she says.

"Engage N-gauge!" I reply.  "If you build the billboard, I'll do the graphic so it can be printed properly."

So she made the billboard, and did an amazing job!  It's 1½ inches long and including the supports about that high as well.  She made it out of popsicle sticks and balsa wood.  The image I had to work from had vertical slats that detracted from image quality, so I decided to fabricate a new one.  The pretty girl model had a number of poses online, so I chose one and sampled the typefaces and colours used in the original.  This is what I made:

Then we cut out the image and pasted it onto the billboard.  It was a true husband-wife collaboration!  I thought the billboard would look more realistic with lights, so I snipped some wire paperclips and dabbed glue onto the ends to make bulbs.  When the glue was dry, I added a touch of silver Sharpie ink. 

  And that's the whose sordid story of how a couple of BC Lions season ticket holders ended up with a Saskatchewan Roughriders billboard in miniature.  Later on this year, we'll discuss how those same Lions went on to win the 2018 Grey Cup! 

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.

1380 - Stanley Cup Birds 2017

Two new chicken-sized Stanley Cup jerseys for 2017: no self-respecting chicken would ever wear a Penguins jersey, though.  One of the chicken brothers has been temporarily replaced by a penguin.  I had to break a promise to myself that I would never ever make a chicken-style Pittsburgh jersey, since I really do not like the Penguins, least of all their captain Crosby.  The last couple of times the Penguins made it to the final, I found excuses not to make their jersey.  Hopefully, the Predators will find a way to win the Cup this year!  

1367 - Grapes On Grapes

Art imitates life imitates sports imitates art again.  I snapped a photo of Don Cherry in Coach's Corner wearing the same outfit and holding the same pose as his Cold-FX bobblehead doll.  My wife, who is holding the doll, asks which one is the real bobblehead.  

 

1366 - Bucket Of Losers

Here is a bucket of the teams that failed to make the NHL playoffs this year, in chocolate form.  The playoff-bound teams are featured in my chocolate hockey bracket, sort of like an advent calendar for sports fans.  I include this photo in an effort to pad my JSVB post count. 

1365 - Chocolate Bracket

Canadian Tire, of all places (a home improvement and auto parts store), sold bags of Hershey's chocolates in the shape of hockey pucks, each chocolate labelled with an NHL hockey team.  So my wife and I bought all three bags since they were marked down to a dollar each: the chocolates' best-before date was last month. 

Then we made a chocolate hockey playoff bracket.  The winners advance and the losers get eaten, kind of like what the Aztecs used to do. 

I am hoping for Calgary, but I figure Washington versus Anaheim will be the final.  

1301 - World Series Chickens, 2016

I've just finished watching the 2016 World Series, the historical match-up between Chicago and Cleveland that saw the Cubs finally break their cursed losing streak.  I can't recall a final game that had more twists, turns, and intrigue.  

Our couch chickens couldn't look stranger than in their highly improbable jerseys for this match-up.  Now that W.P. Kinsella is pacing the dugout with all the baseball gods and legends, I suppose anything is possible now.  The chickens sport all new jerseys for the Clevel-hen Chickians and the Chickago Cubs, with egg insignia where appropriate.    

 

1255 - San Jos-Egg Sketch

The 2016 Stanley Cup came and went this year without much regard from my house.  It featured a team I care little about playing a team I'd like to see dumped into a deep sewer. The sewer team won, of course.  

Still, since the San Jose Sharks have never been to the Cup before, I needed to draw them a chicken-themed logo.  I made a small pencil test of how a shark can be converted into a chicken.  It looks more like a sharp moose.  

I wonder what the new Las Vegas NHL logo will look like chickenized.  How long will it take for them to reach the final round of playoffs? 

 

1251 - Seattle Sunburn, a.k.a. The Red Claw

We went to Seattle to take in a ballgame.  Who knew it would be sunny?  I thought it rained every day there.  Instead, I got a pretty wicked sunburn.  I did manage to get some lotion on my irradiated skin, but it's obvious I was too late to avoid the initial solar blast.  I expect the burnt skin ought to come off like an opera glove in the next couple of days.  

The Mariners won, an astounding 16-4 over the San Diego Padres.  

1154 - Khreem Smith Jersey

Here's a picture of my wife wearing the jersey from football player Khreem Smith.  It's a real game-worn uniform complete with grimy spots, tears and mends, and some tailoring to make the shirt sit correctly over body protection.

It turns out that Mr. Smith is six inches taller than  my wife. Even so, the jersey fits her better than it would fit me: she's svelte. 

I'm going to wish my wife a very happy birthday a couple of days early.  Her birthday falls on Ungood Art Day, but I believe I'll be too busy to blog for the next few days.  I'll post for Ungood Art Day retroactively in the next while.  I know my wife wants to see this picture, so I am posting it now.  If you see this in time, make sure you congratulate her on another trip around the sun, and please to note how every year she seems to be getting younger.  I mean, check out this picture.  That is one young, young birthday girl!

 

1115 - Tampa Egg Cluckening

Yesterday was the start of the 2015 NHL Playoffs.  The Tampa Egg Cluckening chicken jersey is new, but the Chicago Chickenhawks shirt is a re-use.  That's to be expected, since the 'Hawks seem to be trying for a hockey dynasty. 

Tampa, though... I'm automatically prejudiced against playing hockey in June in cities where there are tall swaying palm trees in the parking lot.  This is a point upon which I disagree with Mr. Gary Bettman. Worse, Tampa Bay defeated Calgary to win the 2004 Stanley Cup, after which the NHL stopped playing hockey for an entire year due to a very unpleasant labour dispute.  So, I have bad memories of Tampa. 

One is of being stuck in line at a large store that had only one cashier available.   As we in line waited, there was a little boy up front who became very loud and inconsolable.  His toddler-ific "NOOOO-OOOO-OOO!!" was enough to topple trees for almost a kilometer around.  I joked to the person next  to me in line that the kid must have just learned that the Player's Union had rejected the owners' latest offer and the season was going to be postponed for another couple of months. 

I think my favourite recollection of the Tampa Bay Lightning was a segment of comedian Rick Mercer's "Talking To Americans".  This is a bit where Mercer asks citizens of the US of A their opinion on something that every Canadian would know.  Most of the time, the Americans are ignorant of the correct answer, but in trying to be polite, they make up whatever they can come up with on the spot.  It's a funny segment, but cruel to our fine neighbours to the south.

Anyways, Rick traveled to Tampa Bay and went to the beach wearing a Tampa Bay Lightning hockey jersey.  At the time, the jersey had the words "TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING" in large lettering right on the front.  Then he asked the locals what the name of the Tampa Bay hockey team was.  None of them could name the team, and none of them thought to just read out loud the name on the jersey.  

The modern Tampa Bay jersey just says Tampa Bay (or "Bolts").  The new logo has a stylized lightning bolt, but by very slightly stretching out the logo, it also looks like a cracked egg.  Perfect for a chicken jersey!

1105 - The Flame-Out

My lovely wife poses with my latest creation, called a "Flame-Out".  It commemorates today's witness to the dumping of the Calgary Flames from the Stanley Cup Playoffs.  To be fair, I did take this picture several days ago, which is why my wife is smiling.  I bet she ain't smiling now, but I sure don't want to go look just yet, at least not without the cocktail.

The Flame-Out is based on the popularity of the new avocado-based beverages: my wife loves avocado!  I followed what a local bartender was doing and made a couple of adaptations to fit what I have in my liquor cabinet:

THE FLAME-OUT RECIPE

1/2 ripe avodado, peeled and pitted

equal amount of cream

1 shot chocolate creme liqueur*

1/2 shot tequila

1/2 shot gin

ice

*Kahlua might work, but it would likely turn the drink brown.  The clear chocolate liqueur is preferred.

Beat the avocado and cream together until thick and frothy using a hand blender.  Pour into a martini shaker.  Add the liqueur, tequila, gin, and ice.  Shake until chilled and well-mixed.  Pour and enjoy immediately!

The flavour is light and creamy.  The tequila and gin both blend and accentuate the green, grassy notes of the avocado without making it taste like you're drinking an avocado.  

Of course, I live in Vancouver, so why not a Canucks cocktail?  Really?  You have to ask that?  I haven't tried this, but I imagine you could shoot it like Jägermeister:

CANUCKS' ABSINTHE FROM THE STANLEY CUP RECIPE

Umm, let's see:

1 shot absinthe

1 shot Alberta Rye ( as in why, Alberta, why?)

choke cherries

bitters

Throw all that in a tumbler and suck it down sometime between the final game of the regular season  and the end of the first round of the playoffs.  Best served with twins who aren't getting any younger and who are never going to be traded.  The sourness should be strong enough to last through basketball, baseball, and football season.  

 

1041 - Chickens 102

Today is Grey Cup 102, over a century of championship Canadian football.  The parties have been going on for days, the venues have been perfected, the hosts are all smiling, gracious, and ready for visitors from coast to coast to coast.  Players mingle with fans, vendors hawk all kinds of popular items, and food and drink flow freely.  What a great week!  And at the end, there's even a dramatic football game that just so happens to be our nation's most prestigious event.

Oh yes, and then there's chickens wearing sweaters.  I had to hand-build a "Cluckgary" jersey for the chicken who supports the Stampeders.  Both contenders pose with the cup, but only one will win it.  Who will it be?

1025 - The Chicken Who Saved The Pennant

It's World Series time, so that means chickens wear jerseys.  Since I already have a Hen Francisco Giants jersey (complete with panda hat), I made a new Kansas City Roasters jersey, since these guys haven't won Series since 1985.  

To see the chicken with the the panda hat, please click here.

1019 - "MCLAREN - 44"

The BC Lions never made bubblegum trading cards for their 1977 team.  So, thirty-seven years later, I decided to fix that oversight.  I figured I could make my own trading card, and with the help of my trusted printer friends, I did exactly that.  Mind you, I only made one card so there won't be a lot of trading, but it looks authentic to the 1970's in as many details as I could muster.  

Front view.

Back view.

I started by creating a rotoscope of several different elements that I composited in Photoshop, including the head, body, helmet, grass, stadium, and background.  Then I painted over everything by hand in Corel Painter to unify the style.  You may have seen the final picture already when I posted the artwork in JSVB Post #1011, which you can see by clicking here.

I brought the poster-sized image back down to card size and created a frame typical for a 1970's era trading card.  Then I ran the image through some colour filters to make the ink look junky and the card stock look old.

The card stock was a problem, since it would have been prohibitively expensive to print one card on authentic stock.  So I used a modern card stock that was printed on two 12-point cards.  These cards were printed, cut, and glued back-to-back to make a card with a realistic 24-point thickness.  To the card on the back I digitally created the look of very cheap card stock and ink.  If you look at it with a magnifying glass, you can see that the effect is purely digital.  It's convincing from a couple of inches away or more, though.  I think my printer was a little puzzled why I would go through so much trouble to make his best inks look so shoddy.  The work speaks for itself, though.

Here, I presented the card to the real-life player from 1977, who happens to sit in my section, and who my wife and I have no doubt deafened as we shout and yell at the players during the game.