If you've been reading here for a while, you might remember me accidentally running into an ancestor at the Art Institute of Chicago a couple of years ago. I had an idea today that inspired me to have a look around for more images of his work (I found a three good high-resolution images on-line, two from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and one from a private auction site). Then I started looking for work by his cousin Jacob and found a couple of fun things:

While this image isn't large enough for my purposes, it struck my fancy from a Canadian perspective and a literary perspective. Jacob Huysmans moved from Belgium to England and became a fashionable painter in the court of King Charles II. This portrait is of His Highness, James, Duke of York, while he was the second governor of the Hudson's Bay Company from 1683 to 1685. In 1685 he ascended to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland as King James II of England and King James VII of Scotland. On the literary side, one of my favourite books is "Captain Blood" by Rafael Sabatini. This would be the James that Peter Blood was accused of treason against. BTW, if you have never seen the film adaptation with Errol Flynn (it was his first movie), find it and see it. It's the pirate movie that started all pirate movies ;-)

The winning find of the night, however, is the image below. A portrait of Bridget, Lady Kilmorey, painted sometime around 1664 (give or take a year). The image is a wonderful tie-in with what I've had in mind behind the Red Chair series, anchoring what I'm working on not only in general historical context I had in mind all along, but pulling it right back into the family. I'm very pleased with this.

Last Saturday littlemissrisk of LittleMissRisk.com, Sweet Soul Burlesque, and the Voodoo Dollz was over to model some of valerian's Art of Adornment jewelry and accessories. I have well over a hundred quality photos to go through and will start up a project file and gallery while I am working on the photos. Some of these will be added to the Red Chair Project, plus there will be some 3D animations as well, just for fun. In the mean time here's a behind-the-scenes shot and a couple of Polaroids for the sake of funky retro sassiliciousness.








I am seriously tempted to play hookey from the day job later this week to get some work done.

The Sin City anniversary party is coming up this weekend so it would be nice to get through these pictures before I have another pile to go through. I'm not really interested in being tethered to my photo booth when there will be stage acts (including littlemissrisk), especially with Richard's on Richards being such a great place to shoot the stage because of the balcony - that's where I made the image of Collide that was used in Keyboard Magazine last June - I think I'll bring the big camera with my long lens and concentrate on the stage. As much as I like how many of the photo-booth photos have been coming out, it will be a good thing to change things up a bit. I still have to talk to cheekydevil about this. I don't like to assume I'm guest-listed when I don't really have a defined rôle at the event.

I've already got the 31^st booked off so I can get out on Sunday and "celebrate" (i.e. get drunk enough to pretend I'm not ancient) my birthday at Skank. That will definitely be a night for the waterproof+shockproof=bar-proof wee camera so I can enjoy some unfettered stupidity without worrying about tending to a few grand worth of gear.

For the first time in years I have both Good Friday and Easter Monday off (union job). I intend to take my camera to Blender tonight. Considering I am normally confined to the photo area when I am at Club 23 West it will be fun to get pictures showing the space, although my heels are currently swiss cheese from new-shoe-itis, so I may not be inclined to be on them much.

Sunday evening we'll be having an Easter dinner with Elaine's family and after that I think I will take cheekydevil up on his suggestion to try out setting up a pay photo-booth at Sanctuary. If it goes well I might do it regulary, particularly if/when I start getting Mondays off all the time.

During the days I will be getting on to making headway on some outstanding projects. I need to finish my corporate taxes. It's an odious chore, but it needs to be done. I have a catalogue application that I started for Elaine's web store that I'd like to finish off. My Red Chair project has stalled, so I'd like to get going on another painting.

I was also planning on working on the illustrations for Dark Canada, but haven't gotten any feedback on the last sample so I don't know if it's what they want or not. I told them when I sent the last one that I needed feedback quickly to make their deadline. I think I may do a few more just for fun and if it turns out they don't like them, then too bad, they can find another illustrator. I can use them myself on Gothic BC. I also wouldn't mind finishing off the first two "not cartoony enough" ones that I sketched in the style I orginally had in mind.

There are also some little things around the house that I want to do, like clean the carpets and perhaps do something different with the "Christmas" lights in the living room (which stay up all year in one form or another and tend change with each major holiday).

In short, I plan to come out the weekend both relaxed and feeling like I've done something. I neither want to spend the whole weekend on social outings (the two club nights and family dinner are enough) nor do I want to spend the whole weekend doing odious things (like taxes). What I have planned is a nice balance between social time, obligations, creativity, and simple "puttering".

And now my rather pointless "lunch hour" is over so it's back to work.

Is there any special reason why the only feedback I've gotten on my last two paintings (Red Chair #1 and Red Chair #2) has been a tiny smattering from total strangers (that's counting not just my journal, but communities, my portfolio, deviantART, etc.)? Are they that boring? Or are they not accessible? Or is it just some retarded social thing like because the paint manufacturer's friend dated your friend's friend's sister fourteen years ago so you won't comment for fear that your friend's friend's sister might take that as an endorsement of the brand of paint and that would make you a bad friend and get you dirty looks at the nightclub you won't go to anymore because the guy who cleans the bathrooms there is dating the paint manufacturer's ex-wife's cousin and had the gaul to add the paint manufacturer to his friends list on LJ?