Long break time

I have taken a long break from social media. I will update my website and my Etsy page but recently I have just become ill from the state of the world and I just need some time off from FB.

I have been back to taking care of my health and looking after the house. The studio got cleaned up some. I took a summer break to smell the roses and just enjoy the work I have put in to get me to where I am today. My shoppe is doing fine and is full of shirts, posters and overflowing with my art. My dog and I are bonding and he is making great progress in listening and hopefully we will be walking arround the neighborhood soon together.

 I have been reading The Book of You by Dr.Oz which has helped me with morning stretches and healthy recipes. It has great illustrations of the human systems and it's pretty funny to read. I got into an old comic book called Moon Knight which I got the first run of online pretty cheap. 

 I am working on another painting for my Uncle Bill on my mom's side of the family. This one he wants Hanna Barberra's wacky racers vs. a made up hot rod of villains. He's pretty cleaver with his ideas and it's fun to paint for someone who really enjoys the work. He and I both collect action figures and comics. He often gave me subscriptions to marvel comics for my birthday growing up.

I have been working on my Alien guitar lately too. I got some new pickup covers and knobs in silver. I also picked up some better black tuners. It may need to go up to Alvas Music soon to get the final details done. I also finished a new flyer for Toys That Kill yesterday that turned out great. It's for a local show here in town this October. 

I have been wearing my carpel tunnel brace on my left hand which has helped a lot. I am back playing guitar again too. Really fun to be playing again. I found a book of lyrics I wrote in my studio too. I woke up this morning thinking of band names. The one I thought up I liked the most today was The Book Readers. The weather is cooling hopefully which makes jamming easier. 

I mostly like playing my nylon acoustic I picked up at the flea market for 20 bucks and fixed up. The dog loves to hear my play. He falls asleep when I play...is that good or bad? I stopped drinking diet cokes about six moths ago too. I switched to unsweetened iced tea and black coffee. I tried a Diet Coke a few weeks ago and could not stomach it, so I guess that's that. Also gave up ice cream too. I'm a bit lactose intolerant anyway so I switched to nonfat zero fro yo fro trader joes awhile back and frozen mango to beat the heat. Did I mention ice water? Lots of that too.

I plan on making new poster with the new flyer design soon this month... Maybe I will have them in time for the show on the 17th. Of course with help from my pals at Calimucho, San Pedro again. In the next blog I hope to take some photos around the studio that show my work process. Maybe that will be a page on my website? I know people want to see how I do the art so I hope to have that for you guys soon.

Until next time, be kind to animals...even humans... 

Tinkering project

Working on finishing up this long time project. I found this guitar at a flea market in town. It's a 1987 (I think?) Squire Bullet Strat. It was blue and beat up when I got it. I think I paid 20 bucks for it. The parts worked sort of but needed re-wired which was fine because I had to strip it all down to paint it anyway. I painted it with acrylic paint and 11 coats of krylon crystal clear coat I think... Maybe satin clear because it's kind of satin finish...anyway... I had it for sale for $800.00 in my shoppe for about a year or so. It got attention and a few close offers (I would have gone as low as 500) well I just decided to hang on to it. The paint job is an homage to the late H.R. Giger whom I have loved since Alien first hit theaters. (Did you know he also designed the batmoble for batman forever?) Today I tracked down the parts I need to finish this project.... Chrome pickup covers, switch knob and volume knobs. I also found some black mini tuners (I was looking for matte silver, but could only find locking ones and I just want basic tuners for this) picked up a batch of new stainless steel pick guard screws too. Now I just have to wait for the parts, in the mean time I got two new sets of extra slinkys from Alvas Music (they re-wired and did the full set up after I painted the thing too) I oiled the neck which had got a bit faded from all the sun at my shoppe. I used the oil my wife got me for my dry elbows, Aragon oil... It seemed to work just fine. I put on one of the slinky sets and cleaned off the dust from the warehouse (my shoppe is inside an old ww2 navy warehouse) I have been cleaning the studio and when it gets cooler I will plug it in to my Princeton (it's sold state, not tube, but someday I hope to upgrade to tube but it does the job for now) it's a low budge model but it's super light and very thin fast neck and the set up from Alvas was fantastic...the frets are still gleaming. When I get it all done I will try to add an update here. Keep on rockin in the free world!