ABCD BABY T SHIRT

It's been nearly a year since I began the visa process for L. A FREAKIN' YEAR. Still waiting. We don't have a date yet for the consulate interview, but it seems to be a few weeks away.

I'm not trimming my beard these days. I say that I've decided not to cut the beard until the visa happens, but really I'm just lazy. That, and I know that L will give me shit if I let it grow too scruffy, so this is my last chance to look like a homeless person-- until such time as I actually do become a homeless person.

Sometimes I fantasize that someone asks me about the beard, and I tell them that I'm signed to be in a Civil War movie in a couple of months, and the director wants me to grow it out.

I had the same fantasy last summer when I let my hair grow long.

I need a haircut right now, as a matter of fact, but not like it was last year. I hate getting haircuts at all times, though. It always seems so risky.

I mostly only wear my baseball cap (Astros) at work. The lighting in the room is awful, and if I don't sheild my eyes from the glare, they get fried. I've had someone comment that it's odd that I put my cap on when I'm inside a building and take it off when I go outside.

I've also had near strangers come up to be and start talking baseball, saying teasing things about "you guys" being in second place, or admiring comments about some player I had barely heard of. At first I had no idea what they were talking about. Then I realized they were commenting on the Astros cap. This never happened when I wore the cap when I lived in Hong Kong.

I mostly just like the Astros logo, and I'm from Houston. But it's just a cap (and an eye saver at work), not a tribal emblem.

In the photo I'm wearing a polo shirt. I almost always wear polo shirts because they're comfortable, and they don't need ironing. But L says I dress like crap. I will trim my beard when she gets here. But I shall always dress like crap-- because I can. But if I could ever lose some weight, I'd at least start tucking the shirt in. I would also probably go back to wearing Oxford shirts. I think in that case L might not think I look so crappy.

But she loves me whether I look crappy or not.

I want the visa.

[The visa finally came through, and L arrived in July 2009, 18 months after we were married.]

This piece was manipulated in Jasc Paint Pro Shop 8. It is a synthesis of four photos and multiple layers. I took Donny, the horse, out of his original phot by erasing his environement, then added his horn by painting the white horn and darkening/ lightning in the highlights and shadows...some areas were cloned from his body in order to achieve a match.
Then I used a Christmas picture of my cousin, Dale and erased my kitchen and children (sorry guys). I turned his baseball cap into a hood by painting a color adjusted texture and continued painting that over his t-shirt and arms. I used that method for the rest of his costume. I stole his left hand from a different photo, since Dale didn't have one in the original photo. It required me to use the lightning/darkning and saturation and hues brushes to make it look like Swede-Finn's hand, since the hand I used was one of color.
Shadows and highlights were added. The rope was a painted texture which I drew with the mouse...not easy. The trees were taken from another photo in which I I had to erase other trees and branches and needles in order to achieve the framing effect I wanted out of these ones. The mountains are the Alps, (the easiest layer) cropped from a photo my brother sent me from Switzerland. Then I added the framing. The green brown background was another image in which I darkened the central portion in order to achieve a minor 3-d effect for the image, which I dragged in on another layer.
The scroll is another image developed from preset shapes and then warped to make it more animated, then colored. The text was finally added and scrunched a bit to fit the scroll. It was an exciting piece to work on...building a whole corner of the world. It tickles my fancy to create a "reality" that only exists in my imagination!

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