art
I like art - painting, sketching, and digital (i.e., drawing simple designs in Inkscape). I’m not very good at improvising, though, so most of my works are based on a photograph (CC-licensed or public domain where possible, but it should fall under fair dealing in any case). I’ve tried to credit the original source where possible, but some of the sources for my work are lost in the browser bookmarks of laptops past. If you know the source for anything credited, please let me know!
To see a higher-quality version of each thumbnail, just click on the photo (or view the imgur album, which also contains a couple more paintings which didn’t make the cut for this page). For the most part, the quality of the photos is pretty bad. Unfortunately, I can’t get any better-quality photos for most of them – I no longer own the vast majority of my paintings, as I usually give them away as gifts. In fact, for some of my paintings, I don’t even have photos of them at all.
i guess they’ll just be lost in time, like tears in rain
Posters
I made these to hang on my wall (12” x 18”). Don’t take them too seriously. They’re shitposts.
Verhör des Guten. Don't even ask.
Source: Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash + Bertolt Brecht's Verhör des Guten.
Home. A digital version of Impossible Journey below.
Source: Blair Fraser on Unsplash + David Foster Wallace's Laughing With Kafka essay.
Paintings and sketches
Impossible Journey. Acrylic on canvas, 12" x 12". June 16, 2017. Hanging at La Finca in Montréal (I used their logo so it's only fitting).
Source: Jason Blackeye on Unsplash + David Foster Wallace's Laughing With Kafka essay.
Bird and Bird' (1/2). Acrylic on birch panel, 10" x 10". December 6, 2016.
Source: Tory Kallman on Flickr.
Bird and Bird' (2/2). Acrylic on birch panel, 10" x 10". December 6, 2016.
Source: Tory Kallman on Flickr.
Bird Triptych (1/3). Acrylic on birch panel, 10" x 10". October 22, 2016.
Source: Jerry Nicholls on Flickr.
Bird Triptych (2/3). Acrylic on birch panel, 10" x 10". October 22, 2016.
Source: Jerry Nicholls on Flickr.
Bird Triptych (3/3). Acrylic on birch panel, 10" x 10". October 2, 2016.
Source: Louise Morris on Flickr.
La Promesse. Acrylic on birch panel, 10" x 10". September 24, 2016.
Source: René Magritte's La Promesse (the 1950 one, not the 1966 one).
Rose. Acrylic, 11" x 14". December 24, 2011.
Source: unknown (probably Flickr).
Life. Acrylic on scrapbook paper. 2010.
Source: a graphic I found on 4chan (don't judge).
The Lion King. Acrylic on scrapbook paper. 2010. I never actually finished this but I still kind of like it.
There is A Light That Never Goes Out. Acrylic, 7" x 11". 2009 or 2010. Created for a friend who introduced me to The Smiths.
Source: unknown (probably Flickr).
Generic Landscape. Acrylic, 7" x 11". 2008. The stuff on the sides is tape because I couldn't find a better way to stick the canvas on the wall.
Source: unknown (probably National Geographic).
Balloons. Acrylic, 7" x 11". 2008. The stick figures were drawn with pen because have you ever tried to draw stick figures with paint? It's not easy.
Source: original, for once.
Dewdrops. Acrylic, 7" x 11". 2008.
Source: unknown (somewhere on Flickr).
Somewhere in Russia. Acrylic, 7" x 11". 2008.
Source: a really old issue of National Geographic.
Princess. Pencil on a huge piece of paper, using grid lines for guidance. 2008. Created as an art class assignment.
Digital
When I was in my senior year of high school, my friend and I created an embarrassingly cheesy series of webcomics that could be described as “xkcd-inspired, but with a focus on melodramatic teenage problems and littered with inside jokes that will certainly seem dated in a few years’ time” (The New York Times).
(That’s a joke. It was never featured in The New York Times.)
I had a lot of fun with it, going so far as to do all the graphics in Inkscape and build a PHP-based website that was visited by a few dozen people throughout its lifespan, all of whom were my friends and most of whom could relate to the banal teenage problems featured. The website has since been deleted, for reasons that can probably be surmised, but I still have the graphics, so I figured I’d put the least embarrassing ones on here.
Tales From Mathematics
This one was supposed to be part of a series featuring various abuses of mathematics, but I only ever made one. You can tell I was salty about something here.
Ash and Pikachu
This one’s actually one of my favourites – I really enjoyed making those vector renditions of Pikachu and Waldo. Inspired by a true story, albeit one that does not involve Pikachu, but does involve a healthy dose of salt.
A Tale of Too Much Alcohol
Also inspired by a true story, or, more accurately, many true stories.
Explorer
A fun and unusually salt-free little drawing.
Tales From Regular Physics
There was supposed to be another series called “Tales From Astrophysics” but I never ended up making it. There are only so many ways you can misappropriate scientific concepts.
Maybe It’s Better
Presented without comment.
Bad Ideas
The watermelon bowling thing happened to me while on a trip to a particularly rural part of China. We managed to procure a whole watermelon but didn’t have anything to cut it open with, so we decided to forgo eating it and just use it as a bowling ball instead. (There wasn’t much to do in the area.)
Evidently, the watermelon had other plans, so we were able to enjoy a nice snack of watermelon after a brief attempt at bowling.
Themed Names
Making this one taught me a lot about: precious gems, Switzerland, nuts, and the depths of human cruelty.
Paper Cranes
The weird story about this one (which is one of the only ones not inspired by a true story – the idea just came to me one day when I was making paper cranes) is that about two years after I posted it, I found an everything2 writeup with an eerily similar theme.
Plenty of Fish
I had to bury that fish in the garden myself. It was a sad day.
Another Fish
True story. There were a lot of fish turnover issues that year. My CEO approval rating on Glassbowl went way down.