Cheek Pouches

It's been a busy few days--Frits, an Internet friend of mine, is in town for a chess tournament, and has been trying to teach me to paint. More specifically, he's been trying to teach me to paint children. No-one should ever hire me to paint their kids. The wee rotters all look the same to me, and mighty peculiar, besides. I've been torturing poor Frits:

"Oy, Socar, you're flattening out his cheeks again!"

"Those cheek pouches are just wrong, man, wrong. He looks like he's not done yet--put him back in the oven!"

"But it doesn't look anything like him! The cheek pouches are part of him!"

"Bah! All children look the same, anyway!"

Then, there's the matter of our views on painting, itself--

Frits: Nothing is more beautiful than reality. You cannot improve upon the colours, the lighting, the raw appeal of the natural world.

Me: Reality is only a place to get ideas. It's full of ugly bits, which need to be beaten out. A painting should reflect a happy dream of the world, not the actual world.

--and pizza--

Frits: Yeah, send me a deep-dish with no cheese, extra tomato sauce, bacon, green pepper, Italian sausage, pineapple, mushrooms, onions, and beef.

Me: What the fuck is that? I'll have a thin-crust with pepperoni, green olives, and crushed garlic. None of this pineapple-and-meat rubbish--and make sure you stick cheese on mine.

Stella: Feeeed meeeeee!

Then, there's the matter of crazy folks. Frits has been reading a book on psychopaths lately. It contains a list of characteristics which, should you exhibit them, may suggest that your brain's a bit wonky. He has been gleefully trying to stick the psychopath hat on everyone from me to my parents to...Stella! If he isn't careful, I'll stick it on him.

In spite of our disagreements, however, I must admit that my kid-painting skills are beginning to improve. I have resolved never to paint children again, after this, but at least I'll know how it's done. Small children, see, they've not got proper faces yet. They look like lumps of extra-mushy plasticine, with features sticking out at odd intervals--sort of like eyes on a potato. It would have to be a very round potato, though, because children have also got great helium-balloon heads. They have weird packets and pouches of fat hanging from their cheeks, and their noses are tiny and bulbous. They look...unfinished. (And they all, damn it, no matter what Frits might think, look the same! Most people probably have the wrong parents, having been mixed up at nursery school!)

I have also, of course, been working on the Fleshrot Halloween Special as well. Oh, man, I really stuck my foot in it this time! I went into an absolutely ridiculous amount of detail on the first page, which took nearly a week to complete. I wasn't going to keep it up for the remaining four pages, but I couldn't help myself. The first page, though I say it myself, looks brilliant. I nailed the composition, setting up spirals within spirals to guide the eye round a circle of dancing zombies. The lighting is exciting, and the zombies are...disgusting. It's my best picture of zombies to date. When I got started on the second page, I couldn't bear to leave out, you know, the extra-gnarly rotting skin, the gratuitous maggot sprays, the crinkly bits on the undersides of toadstools. I dove in with the same laborious enthusiasm I'd employed on the first page. I've just finished the third, with three weeks to go till the absolutely-final-no-exceptions deadline. The fifth page should be easy, since it's just one frame, which is mostly filled with sky. The fourth, however, will be just as difficult as the first, second, and third, so I'd better get my skates on.

Now, a completely random observation: I've become so used to certain common misspellings, particularly on the Internet, that I find myself pleasantly surprised whenever I see:

definitely instead of definately,
privilege instead of priviledge or privelage,
original instead of the loathsome origional,
epilogue instead of epilouge,
reference instead of referance,

and

plagiarism instead of plagerism, pladgerism, plagarism, pladgarism, pladgiorism, plagorhythm, plahoohoobugaloo-arizzm, or Bob.