Posts Tagged ‘meta’
Murder Plaid
Tuesday, June 24th, 2014
Murder Plaid, abstract art by Amy Crook
Even though Hannibal and I are on a break that will, I suspect, last beyond the actual hiatus of the show, I couldn’t resist making a reference in the title of this painting. There’s layers of semi-opaque Japanese watercolor in four shades of red, mixing and blurring until you get a very creepy not-quite-face staring out at you from something resembling a murder scene. The broken gold lines run through the whole thing like gold thread through one of Dr. Lecter’s murder ties, not to mention the understated plaids that make up most of his wardrobe.
Murder Plaid, 5″x7″ Japanese and metallic watercolor on Arches cover black paper.
Murder Plaid, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see a close-up of the textured pinks and reds and oranges layered together, with light glinting off the ‘threads’ of gold. Below, you can see the piece in a frame, staring at you, daring you to take it home.
Murder Plaid, framed art by Amy Crook
It really is that creepy in person. Also, now in a drawer.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Floating Gallery, Series and Books, Zombies, Skulls, and Other Morbid Things
Tags: black paper, for sale, gold, hannibal, japanese watercolor, meta, watercolor
Mischievous Minions
Wednesday, August 28th, 2013
Warning: This blog post will contain spoilers for Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2.
If I had to choose a single word for my feelings about the Minions from Despicable Me it would be delighted. They’re not particularly good, or particularly competent, but something about them just makes me smile.
In fact, the best phrase I came up with to describe them was, “innocently evil.” They’re so gleeful when they’re trying to one-up each other, but they love ice cream and bananas and silly costumes. They’ll punch and poke and push one another just to amuse themselves, but they also don’t seem to much mind when they meet with misfortune. They just grin and go along with it, though blowing one another up will be met with glares and possibly a punch in the arm from the soot-stained, injured party.
They’re so wonderfully juvenile, too. They giggle over “Ramsbottom.” They’re totally unsympathetic with one another. They slap-fight and swipe things from each other and ask for goodnight kisses. They’re like a little yellow refinement of childhood, with all the boundless enthusiasm and none of the screaming tantrums. And just like kids*, Gru remembers each and every one of their totally mundane names, while to everyone else they pretty much all look alike.
Even Gru’s occasionally mystified by them, like the scene where they’re working on antigravity serum and Gru looks up and there’s a bunch of them happily stuck to the ceiling, waving down at him. I love how Nefario’s all, “Oops, I meant to close that,” when the one floats off, and yet, no one does anything about rescuing him, though he shows up several times later. But the one that gets shrunk has his BFF that holds onto him the whole time and is very happy when he’s full size again. And there’s the one who gets his head in a jar in the 2nd movie, and wears the jar the whole rest of the movie.
Not to mention the fact that they react to kidnapping by building a bar and serving drinks on their little desert island.
They also speak their own language! And how cute is it when they sing familiar songs in Minion-ese. There’s not much of that in the first one, but there’s more in the sequel starting with the Banana song preview. Boyband mockery! YMCA! And of course the giant off-hours ice cream party complete with a drinking song. Everything is just funnier in Minion-ese.
In conclusion, Minions are awesome and fun to draw. Also, despicable.
*okay, maybe that’s just me and other people’s kids
Categories: Words Words Words
Tags: despicable me, meta, minion
