A New Year

A bunch of stuff for a new year, yesterday was me and my wife's ten year anniversary, but since she's deployed, we didn't get to celebrate. I felt pretty low all day, and I worked instead of celebrating to get my mind off things. Never fails to make me feel better. Even finished a painting last night, not the little one I've posted here, a big one. Happy new year.

Fathers and sons

The drawings I did before were about the mother so I thought I would focus on the son, but ony one got the son. The father kept creeping in, I kept wondering about the relationship with this invisible person fighting the good fight in bad places. The last watercolor here ends up being almost abstract.

Denise

New post, new model, this is the mother of a boy who has been a source of trouble for my son the last few days. She seems like a sweet enough woman, simple though, and caught up in her share of troubles. Something of a chain smoker from the way the house smells and the way Devin smells when he comes back from their house. I think I took care of the whole thing today, had those parent to parent talks that I hate so much. Of course I could take my friend's advice and train my son to be like some ferocious, rabid gerbil ripping the balls off any kid who so much as blinks at him wrong, but I don't raise my son to be that way, and he's too sweet for that. This woman doesn't seem to know her children very well, she has that weird blind spot that alot of people have with regard to their children's faults. Either that or she doesn't care. From the way the boy acts it's easy to imagine what his father's like, the way the boy belittles everything different from him and calls everything gay and "stoopid". Just another typical military family. But I wonder about this woman who calls me sir everytime I talk with her even though I'm a few years younger than she is and look alot younger than that. This woman who acts like a dog that's been hit too many times...

More violence

Well, the painting that is developing out of these studies is coming along nicely, so I don't want to spill the beans on my model. But the curious always know where to find me.

Violence contained...

So, I had this experience with my son's best friend's father several days ago, and he's been my subject every night since then. These are last night's drawings. Tomorrow's post will go into more detail about him and the whole weirdness, but I've been trying to get into this person's head, and while these don't succeed the way I want them to, I feel like I am getting closer. Onward winter soldiers!