My personal hero - the twisted genius of a mad child psychologist.

Copyright 2008 Kmuzu Cram

Can You Sea?

I am working on this painting for about a two weeks. I wanted to do a two layere piece with geometric shapes that showed the paint underneath.

I started first with a pig's hair brush. I painted highly textured vertical lines. I used a denim blue and sea foam green. I placed each color on opposite ends of the brush and lightly painted - the brush barely touching the canvas. Also, I heavily thinned the paint using Createx base.

After letting paint dry for half a day, I used common school glue and lightly poured the shapes I wanted. The school glue works great, but tends to spread out more than liquid wax. It's also harder to remove. Anyway, I gave the glue a good 24 hours to dry. I then painted over the the glue and the base color with an acrylic dark blue. I only lightly thinned the color with base. Again, I used a pig's hair brush to create texture, but used a full brush and heavy stroke upon the canvas. I painted vertical lines up and down until a fully covered the glue and base paint.

I waited another full day for the paint to dry and then carefully removed the glue. Sometimes, I had to use the dull edge of a butter knife to pop the glue off. I was surprised to see how much the glue had spread out, but it did maintain a tight seal and didn't let the second layer paint seep through.

On the other side, I painted a base teal green coat as the base layer. I used a good pigment acrylic paint - Winsor & Newton Galeria "Pale Olive". I wanted an academy level paint, because I knew I was going to put many layers of paint on top and did not want any separation.

I wanted to create a multicolor wavy effect. I used several different paints: Liquitex Bronze Yellow, Jo Sonja's Permanent Alizarine, Jo Sonja's Olive Green, Grumbacher Yellow Ochre Light, Dick Blick Raw Sienna, Folk Art Grass Green, Folk Art Pine Green, Apple Barrel Coffee Bean.

I drew verticle lines creating demension by apply a dark color first and the hightlighting that color with a lighter color. I continued this until the whole half was filled in.

So, as you can see I have created my pattern for the base layer. Now, to pour glue in the outlined shape of kelp and hope this structure looks like the textured plant. That is the plan ...

I am a little embarassed using Folk Art and Apple Barrel. Folk Art is a much better paint, but still both are only craft quality. The pigment color should not fade and the paint is from the USA so it doesn't contain lead. However, the pigment is not consistent and does not mix well with other paint. Dick Blick and Liquitex can be a little chunky - although the pigment color is pretty good.

Jo Sonja's, Grumbacher and Winsor are good acedemy grade paint. They have a smooth structure, consistent pigment count, mix well with other paint and maintain color and texture. But they're very expensive.

Anyway .. wish me luck

God's Speed George

Comedian George Carlin died yesterday from an apparent heart attack. Yahoo News reports:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs and dirty words, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday, a spokesman said. He was 71.

Carlin, who had a history of heart and drug-dependency problems, died at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.

Carlin was a hero of mine. Not only was he one of the funniest comedians, but his routines had social meaning as well. An era that I grew up in is slowly fading away. I will miss George Carlin and his seven words you can never say.

Bring Cake - Hell Yea

This is the second entry in the Bring Cake saga.

Bill Gates Last Day

I found this funny little video on Coginu.

It Takes A Village

I am slowly working on a cartoon series called, "Bring Cake". This is the first in the series. My goal is to become fabulously rich and famous from these simple cartoons. You have the distinguished honor of viewing the first one.

Bring Cake - by Kmuzu

Bottle Neck

The Science Museum in London is displaying a fascinating glass sculpture called, Klein Bottle 1995-1996.

"This is one of a series of glass Klein bottles made by Alan Bennett in Bedford, United Kingdom for the Science Museum, London. It consists of three Klein bottles, one inside another. A Klein bottle is a surface which has no edges, no outside or inside and cannot properly be constructed in three dimensions. In the series Alan Bennett made Klein bottles analogous to Mobius strips with odd numbers of twists greater than one." - Science Museum

This statement does not really convey the beautiful intricacies of the work. As you follow each tube to the inside, you realize that each leg makes up a inside nodule and that all legs are connected together from the inside. The geometry (if that is the right word) of the structure does remind me of a Mobius strip, in that there is really no defined inside or outside.

I don't know if that makes any sense. Let's just say, I think the whole thing is ... well .. really cool. If I ever find myself in London, I definitely will have to check out the Science Museum. We have a Science Museum in Las Vegas, but it is all dedicated to how a slot machine works. Ya got to teach those kids early - Slots for Tots.

Not Much

I am not much of a philosopher, but here it goes. Momentum is the essence of life. It is the small kinetic energy of each step and gesture. It builds and builds until it changes the world. If you don't know where to go or what to do. Turn yourself in a direction and move. Just the movement itself changes life and if you're not careful your feet will carry the body away.

I don't know much about Andrew Bird. I saw one of his videos on a forgotten website and really liked it. In #45.3 Spare-Oh, he takes a stroll down a street in Montmartre, Paris. After a short introduction, it all starts with one step into an intersection. As he moves through the crowd, he plays his guitar and sings. Funny, that I'm not interested in the destination, but in the travel of the song. Before I know, I am far away from that first step.

#45.3 - Andrew Bird - Spare-Oh
Uploaded by lablogotheque

Now for Something Different

For my next project, I'm trying something a little different, a horror piece. This painting is on a white cotton / synthetic fabric, stretched and glued on canvas board. I treated the fabric with a chemical ground to retard absorption.

The face was done first with a slight gray background. The ink settled nicely into the fabric without much splotching or running. The acrylic however was much more challenging. The first layer was heavily thinned with Createx illustration base. This is a chemical used to thin out paint for airbrush. The thinned acrylic was immediately absorbed into the fabric and fuzzed out like watercolor.

This effect is perfectly fine for a horror piece, but will not work for a detailed work. I thickened the acrylic paint and put on a second layer. This second layer worked fine, but hid the pattern in the fabric. I will have to work on the right consistency.

The ink did not get along at all with acrylic. The watery acrylic expanded the ink, turning the ink a purplish color. I will have to place the ink as the last layer or just use black acrylic and a thin brush.

The blood was the last part. I tried several different types of red to get an authentic color. For the most part it looks realistic, but in different parts has a wine color rather than a congealed blood effect.

Anyway, this is my first serious horror piece. Last year, I did do a fun horror illustration called, Monkey Zombies in Space. It sold fairly quickly on Ebay to a guy who runs a shop featuring astronaut and flight merchandise. What happened to the painting after that, remains a mystery.

Great Bands of the 80's

These 80's bands really set the trends for punk and rock that we see today. This was before Nirvana. These were the innovators. Click on the song to see it on YouTube:

Oingo Boingo: Dead Man's Party
Violent Femmes: Blister in the Sun
Talking Heads: Psycho Killer
Strawberry Switchblade: Jolene
Elvis Costello: Veronica
Eurythmics: Sweet Dreams
Sex Pistols: Holiday in the Sun
Queen: Killer Queen
Joe Satriani: Surfing with the Alien
The Knack: My Sharona
Pat Benatar: Hell is for Children
Cheap Trick: I Want You to Want Me
Clash: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Timbuk 3: The Future's so Bright
Suzanne Vega: Tom's Diner
Kim Wilde: Kids in America
Madness: One Step Beyond
Billy Idol: Rebel Yell
Henry Rollins: I'm a Liar

I know, I go a little bit into the late 70's and early 90's. I hope you enjoy (real) music. Now back to Hannah Montana.

**Addition** After thinking about it for a bit, there are some more bands that have influenced modern day music. I tried to avoid the obvious like Madonna or Chicago. Anyway, Here is the rest of the story.

Prince: Purple Rain
Pretenders: My City is Gone
Katrina and the Waves: Walking on Sunshine
Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run
Blue Oyster Cult: Burnin' for You
The Smiths: Girlfriend in a Coma
INXS: Devil Inside
Joe Jackson: Is She Really Going Out with Him
Psychedelic Furs: Sister Europe
New Order: Blue Monday
Fishbone: Sunless Saturday
The Replacements: Another Girl Another Planet

Bad Kung Fu

I am such a big fan of bad Karate, Kung Fu, Taekwondo and other martial arts. What ever it is, it has seem authentic and humiliating at the same time. Here are some examples of really bad stuff:






This is the worst martial arts movie ever. It is soooo .. bad .. it's good. "When gymnastics and karate are fused, the combustion becomes an explosion in Gymkata!"

My List of Great Artists

My List of Great Artists

As you know I'm a big fan of art, mostly modern art. Living in casinos and designing and playing slot machines has left .. well an empty feeling. I need more than Big Bang Bucks slot glass. So here, The Mighty Kmuzu presents a list of really great art. From most awesomest to just awesome. Have fun and tell me what you think.

Pieter Bruegel: The Census at Bethlehem (1566) *1
Leonardo da Vinci: The Last Supper (1497)
Michelangelo : Pietà (1498)
Vincent Van Gogh: The Potato Easters (1885)
Van Eyck: Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife (1434)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Bal du Moulin de la Galette (1876)
Vincent Van Gogh: Starry Night (1889)
Henri Rousseau: The Sleeping Gypsy. (1897)
Georgia O'Keefe: Pelvis With Distance (1943) *2
Pierre-Auguste Renoir:A Girl with a Watering-Can (1876) *3
Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907)
Diego Velasquez: Las Meninas (1656)
Michelangelo: David (1504)
Sandro Botticelli: Nascita di Venere (1485)
Rembrandt: Night Watch (1642)
Vincent Van Gogh: Irises (1889) *4
Pieter Bruegel: Babel Tower (1563)
Giuseppe Arcimboldo: Vertumnus (1591) *5
Gutzon Borglum: Mount Rushmore (1925)
Pieter Bruegel: Massacre of the Innocents (1567)
Gustav Klimt: Adele Bloch Bauer (1907) *6
Alberto Giacometti: City Square (1948) *7
Salvador Dali: Persistence of Memory (1931)
Jackson Pollock: No. 5 (1948)
Edward Hopper: House by the Railroad (1925) *8
Peter Carl Fabergé: Imperial Coronation Egg (1897)
Paul Gauguin: Te Tamari No Atua (Nativity). (1896)
James McNeill Whistler: Whistler's Mother (1871)
Henri Matisse; Dance (I) (1909) *9
Georgia O'Keefe: Pelvis III (1944)
Pablo Picasso: Guernica (1937)
Mark Rothko: No. 3/No. 13 (1949)
Odilon Redon: The Black Sun (1900)
Claude Monet: Madame Monet and Her Son (1875)
Leonardo da Vinci: Gioconda/ Mona Lisa (1505)
David Hockney:The Bigger Splash (1967)
Emanuel Leutze: Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851)
Otto Dix: The Nun (1914)
Edgar Degas: Little Dancer of Fourteen Years
Piet Mondrian: Composition with Red, e, Black, Yellow, and Gray (1921)
Joan Miró: The Birth of the World (1925) *10
Raffaell: Trasfigurazione (1519)
J. M. W. Turner: The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1835)
Joan Miró: Object (1931)
Roy Lichtenstein: Drowning Girl (1963)
Georges-Pierre Seurat: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1886)
Rembrandt: Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (1632)
Gustav Klimt: Judith I (1901)
Alexander Calder: Lobster Trap and Fish Tail (1939)
Wols (A. O. Wolfgang Schulze} Painting. (1946)
Frederic Edwin Church: Heart of the Andes (1859)*11
Andy Warhol: Campbell's Soup Can (1964)
Alberto Giacometti: Man Pointing (1947)
Andrew Wyeth: Christina's World (1948)
Georgia O'Keefe: Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue (1931)
Salvador Dali: Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (1936)
Claude Monet: Terrasse à Sainte-Adresse (1886)
Jeff Koons: Three Ball 50/50 Tank (Two Dr. J. Silver Series, One Wilson Supershot) (1985)
Egon Schiele: Death and the Maiden (1915)
Hans Holbein: Nikolaus Kratzer (1528)
Eugène Delacroix: Girl Seated in a Cemetery (1824)
Edgar Degas: Dancer with a Bouquet of Flowers (1878)
Henri Matisse: Nude's Back (1918)
Hildebrandt Brothers: New Hope (1975)
Vasily Perov: Savoyard (1863)
J. M. W. Turner: The Fighting Temeraire (1838) *12
H.O Tanner: Flight Into Egypt (1923)
George Inness: Autumn Oaks (1878)
Boris Vallejo: Tattoo (1981) *13

*1 When I first saw this painting, my eye went directly to the lone wheel in the middle. It seemed to me that the whole painting turned upon this wheel. At first it seems to be quite innocent. Children skating on the frozen lake. Pheasants playing and working in the snow. But as you turn upon the wheel, you notice the crowd huddled around a building to pay their due to the Spanish. And you miss the most important part. Mary and Joseph slowly making their way. Their fate, as well as ours turn upon this wheel. Is this how we travel through life? Do we miss the important parts as we travel around the wheel?

*2 Georgia O'Keefe blows my mind. Most of her paintings are simplistic, but are so bold in their statement that it's almost too much for me to take. In Pelvis With Distance there are two distinct images: The first is the foreground image a bone structure. The bone splits the painting in two and with wings flow to the outside. To me it breaks the boundaries of the painting into a kind of infinity. The background is of a fertile desert plain. This background creates distance and dimension. It is almost like the painting is going backwards in time. Starting from the background of a living desert and flowing backward to the foreground of a stark, white bone.

*3 A Girl with a Watering-Can makes me happy. She reminds me of my daughter in the garden. So what if I'm a bit sentimental.

*4 Vincent Van Gogh's, Irises makes me angry. Why is there one white flower? Damn him for conveying the most absolute representation of depression.

*5 Giuseppe Arcimboldo was so far ahead of his time; I think he was a time traveler.

*6 The embodiment and expression of beauty.

*7 Alberto Giacometti's City Square If you look at the sculpture in a certain direction the people almost disappear. This piece affects me almost on a primal level. I really don't understand it. In some ways they're individuals, but why are they grouped together? Why is there no connection? It's almost like they're the aftermath of a nuclear blast. Shadows walking without purpose.

*8 As with O'keefe's work, House by the Railroad meaning is in perspective. I see this as an old, but well kept house. split from the painting by crude railroad tracks. To me this painting represents the negative of expansion. The old way of life is being torn from the view by the expansion of the railroad. It almost like everyone is leaving or has left.

*9 Dance (I) makes me happy. A eternal, flowing circle of life. My eye follow around and around.

*10 I saw The Birth of the World shortly after I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, I saw this painting and it sent me into a deep depression. I can view it now with some detachment. To me the red dot and yellow tail do not represent a sperm, but represent a soul with a thin attachment to the the Earth, represent as a mother. So thin, that if we are not careful the connection can be broken and we are left disconnected and alone.

*11 In Heart of the Andes we have raw nature on the right hand of God and cultivation on the left hand of God.

*12 Light .. Light .. let there be light. No one does better light than Turner.

*13 Hey Art Snob .. I like it and that is enough for me.

Speaking of Skeletons

I don't know why, but I'm stuck on animated skeletons lately. It's like my fascination with giant killer robots. Anyway, here is one of my favorite short animations called, "Starving in the Belly of a Whale", sung by Tom Waits and animated by Gal Shkedi.

I really like the stylized characters and the cutout figures. The storyline of the animation also does not follow directly with the lyrics, but instead compliments the lyrics.

The following YouTube video has some artifacts in the very beginning. These clear up about twenty seconds in:

Viva Calaca!! - The new Oingo Boingo

I found this on YouTube. It sort of reminds me of 80's group Oingo Boingo's, "It's a Dead Man's Party." The animation is just great and authentic. I like the old-style type cutouts. Well, anyway - watch and enjoy.

Viva Calaca!! is an animation project by Ritxi Ostáriz (iikki.com) based on the Mexican Day of the Dead. Original music by Voltaire (voltaire.net). - From YouTube