1345 - Japanese(ish) Building

Using repeatable elements, I pieced together this Japanese-style building.  It got a little too ornate, so I might edit out some of the filigree.  

I have here a mash-up of Japanese and Korean architecture.  Both styles employ some very intricate interlocking woodwork to create the roof structure, with curved tiles to drain rainfall with efficiency.  

1344 - Japanese Doors

I built these Japanese-style doors out of repeatable elements.  These days, I'm feeling dragged-out, so it's been slow going on the creativity front.  Must be the lack of availability of chocolate-flavoured vitamins.

1343- Vitamin Bottle Tontine

True weird Jeff-based fact: every bottle of pills, I consider as a tontine.  A tontine is a sort of annuity or lottery that you win by being the last among your peers to leave the mortal world.  So too for vitamin pills.  

This happy little guy is the Hawkeye of vitamins, the last of his people.  Despite the label proclaiming "NEW!", Bayer has stopped making Chocolate Brownie Chewybites Vitamins years ago.  This pill was consumed on its expiry date.  I believe you could still purchase a bottle of these vitamins on Amazon for a hundred bucks, but the pills will no longer have any health benefits.  

Chocolate Brownie Chewybites were seriously delicious and getting my daily dose was also a daily highlight.  Shelf this concept under the rubric of health products that were so good they couldn't be good for you, much like the great-tasting cinnamon-burst toothpaste gel of a few years ago that foamed up like blood and made brushing your teeth seem like a visit to a tuberculosis ward.  Check out way back to JSVB Post #483 to see that, by please clicking here.

1342 - Snowbird

People are asking, "How much snow did you get in Vancouver?".  This is a photo of the plastic decorative goose in our back yard.  It looks like the ghost of a dodo bird now.  The weatherman says Vancouver to date has received more snow this winter than Edmonton or Calgary.  

1341 - Valentine's Stork Banner

2017 is a banner year, in that I seem to be making a number of banners.  Seeing as it's Valentine's Day, I thought I'd share a heart-themed banner featuring my stork character.  Baby is now Cupid.   Any other day of the year, it's generally not a great idea to supply an infant with an archery set. 

1340 - Fab Fish

Today is Ungood Art Day on JSVB.  This last month, I coloured within the lines for my work, creating few if any entertaining or illuminating clunkers towards Ungood Art.  Most art blogs try to feature the best work the artist has to offer.  With Ungood Art, I try to show some of the stuff that I make that will never end up in a showcase.

So, I painted the "Colour By Number" in kids' section of the newspaper.  When I apply paint to my religious icons, I protect the table with newspaper.  Being thrifty, I re-use the same paper over and over.  I have been looking at this fish for maybe five years now, and I finally got around to colouring it in, following the directions precisely. 

1339 - Pink Shirt Mayor TV Banner

Pink Shirt Day is coming soon. It's a day for raising awareness against bullying behaviour.  I have no doubt that addressing behaviour issues and violence requires more than just wearing pink on February 22nd, but an awareness campaign like this is still a good thing.

I took the original blue Mayor TV banner and dressed it up in hot pink.  I also made a few cosmetic changes to the Mayor himself.  Mayor Moore is a champion of the pink-shirt anti-bullying cause and tireless in his efforts to make our city a better and friendlier place to live.

1338 - Of Chimps And Villains

My friend Earl has been taking voice acting lessons, and I could not be more proud and thrilled for him.  Recently, he shared an exercise where the instructor had him give voice to a silly cartoon villain and a freezing cold chimp.  Both ended up riding a midway ride that was too dangerous for the public.  

It's really evocative work, so much so that I listened to the track about a dozen times while burning this sketch into my sketchbook.  Now the villain and the chimp are more than just voices, although chimps don't have tails.  

The poses and gestures are drawn from my own experience: this is close enough to what it's like to ride the Wooden Roller Coaster at the Pacific National Exhibition. What a great ride!

1337 - Navel Gazing

Since the new year of 2017, a lot of my friends have been actively navel-gazing, and so have I.  It's a colloquial term for an introverted assessment of one's life and one's place within the universe.  

There's two problems with introspection.  One leads into a feedback loop of self-accusation, since you feel the need to be affirmed and the quickest affirmation is to do something wrong and know it.  Another pitfall is to assume you've got enough information to do something positive when you really need to do more.  You end up doing something rash, stupid, and regrettable. 

So, navel-gazing is normally best kept a solo endeavor.  The Internet is not the best place to share things that will last through the Information Age.  

Yet lately, these friends of mine who are seeking answers are succeeding in finding them.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised: these are smart, sensitive people.  Maybe maturity is finally catching up with us.  

I am extremely proud of my friends right now.  There's a lot of negativity in media, society, and the workplace.  One path to inner balance is personal creativity.  I've got friends who are blossoming in photography, music, writing and journalism, acting, and crafts.  Art for art's sake!  

I've been keeping JSVB going for this same reason.  There's not really any money in it, but there is the humble satisfaction of getting the ideas in my head onto the computer screen via talent, skill, and blessings from above.  I have decided to launch into a plan, something really simple and common, but an idea that I hope adds to joy and banishes anguish.  I'll post about it when I get it all organized, which ought to be soon. 

Today's sketchbook features a couple of human torsos with navels you may gaze at.  I couldn't decide whether I should supply a female belly button or a male one, so I went with both.  

1336 - "50 Shades Of Greg"

This is an alternate banner for Mayor TV, designed with Valentine's Day and intimacy in mind.  Well, as much intimacy as a live Facebook broadcast from City Hall can ever be, I suppose.  I'm not altogether convinced my cartoon Mayor Moore character is a good fit for this composition, but if you read the whole picture from left to right you go from deep romance to political whimsy. I think that's fun.