Author: mightylark
Who am I?
I sat next to my daughter painting for a bit today and I was reminded to add some blues and greens, to work the whole piece, and I o just have fun.
She’s pretty good; very intense and unafraid to try different things. I hope no one ever changes that in her. At any rate, with her influence I was able to finish this Nolan Ryan piece today. I am very pleased with it.
Then later this evening I was able to work a very tiny painting in my sketchbook with a big brush. Long live the joy of six year old girls seeping in.
Who am I?
Who am I?
Well, today’s post probably has more to do with remembering baseball history than it does remembering the card. But I owed the universe a little more energy on the daily today after yesterdays failed voyage.
Who am I?
This fellow got a little dark real quick and working with the e big brush I had trouble resurrecting the features. Not sure I managed.
Who am I?
Love these Reds uniforms. So simple but there’s just a nice pop with the stripes at the waist and cuff.
Who am I?
Simurgh
Borges talks of the Simurgh, a spirit of Middle Eastern mythology; an eagle made up of 30 separate eagles.
when I read this I thought of Willie Mays’s catch. He was an eagle and the baseball was his prey. I am trying to figure out how I build my Mays of thirty separate Mays will I use the same drawing repeatedly or work with different images? I’m not really sure yet. The idea is still rather in its infancy.
I do know that Mays is a perfect alignment for myth. All of the old timers were. It is a wonder what baseball is without a thousand different camera angles over telling the story.
Who Am I?
I don’t know that this will baffle anyone, but you never know.
A Change of Venue
For a little over 16 years now I’ve used Twitter, now X, to share my artwork. When I started my account that was actually the very beginning of The Mighty Lark. I had been participating in The Hive Gallery’s group shows and they had just put together a show of avatars. My paintings at that point were all birds and robots and so I decided that I wanted to create a bird avatar. It was also a bit of an homage to Kevin Cross, who at the time was creating a character called The Monkey Mod. I had a couple zines and stickers featuring that character.
At any rate, I never would have thought that a decade and a half later the moniker would still be going strong. And look, it’s now been adopted even into the name of my site, so I guess it’s not going anywhere. But with that in mind, I feel like X and I are headed in opposite directions. We’ve grown apart these last few years. Twitter was cute when there was Tweet Whales and 140 characters. It was even pretty great when Periscope came along. I’ve weathered some rough times since SpaceX Uber Rich TESLA mElonagomaniac came along, but at this point, I’m just not sure that the business that I drum up and the card talk that I get is really worth it. I’ve gotta try something different because I know my LGBTQ friends are not welcome there. I’m pretty sure my librarian friends are not welcome either.
So, if you are here and would like, welcome to a “new” old venue where I used to share a lot and where I intend to do so once again.
Keep on Rocking
I have been obsessively playing instruments this year. I started with my son’s ukulele, hiding in all of the quiet recesses of my house while single parenting. I’ve found that where I have trouble getting my paints and prints out and finding space that they can stay without my children getting into them, I can take out and put away instruments twice as easily. About the only painting I get in regularly is my daily drawing.
Since picking up the ukulele, I’ve had my father’s acoustic guitar which I learned to play on 30 years ago repaired, begun playing mandola that I received from my Aunt after my Uncle passed, and most recently started strumming a mandolin which I purchased online.
I’ve been writing a lot of different progressions and melodies and even creating a few songs with a friend, though I’m not sure that that is going to be the final iteration of anything that I’m playing. I’m really hoping to put together a few projects that involve visual art and my own soundtracks a la WMR whose cassettes I’ve been collecting a while.
However, as a sort of bridge between my two creative areas for the time being I have begun carving woodcuts of instruments. Here is the first, Keep on Rocking in the Free World.
It seemed fitting to start with a ukulele. Prints are available on my Big Cartel page for $20.