OK, I’ve been meaning to get this out the door forever. One thing went wrong after another.
First, I drew up a pretty nice picture from an old live sketch of Roxy, inked it, and ruined it because I didn’t clean my watercolor brushes correctly between colors.
It happens though. The more you paint, the more mistakes you’ll make. Which is great. You don’t learn from talking. You learn from doing.
And I draw and/or paint daily. Yes. Every single day.
Even on vacation. I’ll still bring a sketchpad and just draw.
It’s because I love it. Some folks swear by meditation. More power to them.
It’s not me. I can’t imagine anything worse than getting nothing done. Meditation is sitting around for hours not doing anything. That doesn’t sound too exciting. I’m pretty sure I get all the benefits of that peace of mind thing from painting.
Anyways, after killing that painting, I decided to do it again. Because what did I just write about? If you’ve done it once, you can do it again? Damn right!
I say this shit because mindset is paramount to success. It’s hard enough to make it as an artist. You’ll definitely have the leg up if you got the right mental approach to it all.
Speaker Girl
It’s funny because this is an old concept for me. Even before my drawing was any good, I’d still draw a girl between two speakers.
This one has a fantasy cat on top of one of the speakers. I think the next one will have a baby dragon.
When you’re the artist, you get to make the rules.
Allie recently did the same pose as this one. So I’ve already prepared for a bunch of these.
I haven’t seen Roxy in weeks. Just Allie. So I’ll probably do five or six of these speaker girl paintings with Allie in the next few months.
I love the concept.
Now, if you’re wondering why I do them, during the mixes, we decide in advance where we want the instruments to go. The Sound Engineer I work with only likes three places – hard left, center, and hard right. He’s very much against the concept of partial left or partial right.
If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, I’m talking about where an instrument goes when you’re mixing the music. For instance, on your average song, you’ll have bass drum, snare drum, lead vocals, harmony vocals, and bass guitar right up the middle. You might have your violins and guitar on the left and your pianos and synthesizers on the right. Your toms and cymbals will also be on the sides.
Now that I’ve said all that, pick your favorite song. Put on headphones. And write down where you hear the different instruments. Left, center, or right? See if you can figure it out for each instrument.
This of course is an actual watercolor and gouache painting. Back when I did the diagrams, I’d draw a topless model in the middle of two speakers and actually write where I want the instruments. And give it to my Sound Engineer like that.
Upcoming songs
Yes, my muse is a beautiful woman. Well, most of the time. Sometimes a friend of mine.
I got five songs coming up. They’ll be available next week. Two of them, I wrote for my wife. One of them I wrote for Roxy. Another I wrote for Allie. One remains undedicated.
So yes, five songs coming up. They’ll be available on this site next week. Right now, the Mastering Engineer is mastering them.
