Monday, November 13, 2017

1431 - Curse Of The Red Underwear


The thirteenth day of every month I try to feature my Ungood Art on JSVB.  Ungood Art is some version of a project I am working on that started off with the best of intentions but somehow the artwork went awry.

This bit of unfinished artwork has a long history with unhappy associations. I've hung onto it for a while before deciding to catalogue it with my JSVB Ungood Art file.  

It was going to be a comedic documentary piece about the supernatural effects of red underwear, something that I know very little about but apparently is a strong belief in equatorial locations around the world.  Specifically, as you might judge from the stereotypical sketch of the happy latino, I was going to look at the topic from the point of Mexico.  That's where I discovered the cultural mystery of red underwear: Mexican lingerie outlets were running out of red clothing on account of the solar eclipse.  Local belief was that wearing red underwear would ward off any evil effects of the eclipse on August 21 of this year.  

So, being lazy on the subject,  I delayed working on this art piece since it was just for my own amusement and a provided chance to practice drawing using the dreaded Bézier tool in Photoshop (not shown in this version of the artwork).  I started drawing on September 5 or so, with the plan to publish on the 6th.  On September 7th and then again on the 19th, Mexico was heavily rocked by violent earthquakes that destroyed much property and killed many people.  Shocked and depressed by this coincidence, I decided I'd better not publish the piece, and I never finished the drawing.  

Worse still, JSVB seems to be developing a track record for predicting natural disasters.  I drew a similar comedic piece involving an earthquake in Japan.  I published JSVB Post #296 (click here to see it) on January of 2011, and the massive tsunami hit in early march of that year, a little more than a month from my post.  

Coincidence, yes, but I still can't help feeling rotten about that. This discouraging sentiment continues to dog me to this day.