In Memoriam, Taco the Pug

My picture of Taco the Pug is the last image I’ll be painting. I’m dedicating my second book to his memory. I had a devil of a time capturing his likeness, but this is as close to realistic and I’m capable of. I’ll color this sketch tomorrow.

He was a handsome pug with a demonic obsession with food. For most of his life, dinner time was always preceded with a mad dash to the kitchen, with squealing, whining, and howling with every meal. I believe that his first owners didn’t feed him regularly and he was simply traumatized by random states of starvation. Over the years he calmed down as we fed him on a fixed schedule. What a guy! I miss his antics. He was the most amusing guy I’ve ever known. Fabulous!

Evacuation Level 1

Today a wildfire hit Ashland and spread north to Talent and Phoenix and is now on the borders of Medford. We’ve had gusty winds up to 40mph driving the fire north. Once the emergency bulletins began dinging my phone I couldn’t focus on my work We moved all of our evacuation luggage to the living room so that we can make a quick exit if we have to.

I packed a laptop, my iPad, backup drives, power supplies, and cables so that I would be able to rebuild my entire work setup if we were forced to evacuate. We packed some canned food, some kibble for Willy, and his leash. It’s sobering to think that our essential possessions can be packed into a couple of suitcases and a backpack.

At this time we’re in no danger, but the hot winds continue and we live in a forest of tinder-dry trees. Things can change in an instant. I’ll sleep lightly tonight.

Page 42 Flats: Buddy Delivers Sad News to His Friends

Parting ways

As I was going through my book’s pages, I happened to cast my eye on the Hiroshige print that lives above my monitor and saw a beautiful view of Mt. Fuji. There’s a white cat sitting in the window enjoying the view. I was inspired to have Momma Jay looking out her own window, not towards Mt. Fuji, but toward the sky filled with Canadian Geese migrating back to their summer home in the North. I’m still working on the picture and will post it the coming Monday.

Page 42, the flats of which are shown above, shows Buddy telling his friends that it’s time to part ways. He’s going his way without them. His friends are feeling sad and left behind.

Page 39: Buddy Gets A Letter From His Mom

Page 39 shows Buddy processing the news in the letter he received from his mother. It turns out she’s left the Monarch Sanctuary. No one knows where she’s gone. The butterfly with the goatee is one of Buddy’s flock. You can’t see it here, but he’s a member of a Monarch Butterfly motorcycle club. I’m going to add a club logo to his t-shirt tomorrow.

I have to paint seven more pictures and I’ll be done with the first round of painting. Once I’ve got all my ducks in a row, I’ll go through them to repair any color inconsistencies. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Page 38: Betty Burro Finds Buddy's Family

On page 38 Betty Burro has found Buddy’s family. To create the background image of a thousand butterfly faces, I created a brush of a single face. The brush has randomized size, opacity, and angle to give it a less static appearance. I usually prefer to paint everything by hand, but in the interest of time, a brush served me well. My concern with this picture is that Betty’s appearance evolves each time I paint her. Before I publish this book I’ll have to make color corrections for earlier version of her hair and clothing. If I can remember back to February (5 months ago), I recall that her hair was punky pink. My favorite feature in this painting is Betty’s hand. If her hand seems a touch manly it’s because I used my own manly hand as a model.

Page 35 is complete: Buddy Meets the Pointy-Nosed Monarchs

While the rest of the kids are struggling to climb the mountain, Buddy has started looking for his family. The picture show the first Monarchs he encounters. Imagine his astonishment that he looks nothing like them: they have pointy noses and he has a beautiful knobby nose!

Chore Day, June 13, 2020 -- Cleaning, Cooking, and Going Through Pictures

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This week my chores were vacuuming the house, cooking up a veggie meatloaf (tofu, oatmeal) for Willie, my furry friend, and going through my digital photos, thousands of them. I started by collecting all of my images into a single folder, then removing the duplicates. The next step, which I’ve only started, is to manually examine all of the images to find my furry family members and copy each image into a special folder. I’ll use those images to create physical picture books. I’ll need about six volumes.

The pictures go back 20 years. Seeing my companions again was simultaneously happy and sad. I’m grateful and happy for the time I had with them, and I’m sad that they are gone.

The picture above is a sketch I did this morning while having a cup of tea — pencil and pen. It’s Jimmy Jay looking middle-aged. He’s not wearing his shoes in this picture.

Chore Day, May 30, 2020 -- The Problem of Deleting Duplicate Files

No cooking today. Instead I did the house cleaning — vacuuming and cleaning the bathroom.

I spent the rest of the day looking for a solution to a problem: finding and removing duplicate files. It sounds like a simple problem, but if you have 600GB of images, it’s a BIG problem. For the last two weekends I’ve been collecting my family’s photo libraries so that we can make picture books with the snapshots we’ve taken over the years. We have photographs from the ancient times when cameras used film and since we started using digital cameras, we have many thousands of pictures that have never been printed. 99% of the digital images are hidden away in forgotten corners of decrepit hard drives. After Taco passed away, we resolved to take the time to back up all of our images and archive them on multiple hard drives. I’ve got them all together and we have more than 150,000 images. I would estimate that 50% of them are duplicates.

With so many duplicates, going them one at a time is a losing proposition. Some files have been copied so many times that there are 10 duplicates! I want to find software that will find the duplicates and then give me the tools to remove them. I’ve looked at half a dozen software packages, but most of them come up short of handling this big job. There is one program that may be up to the task, Duplicate File Finder. It’s subscription software that costs $60 a year, but there a $20 discount. I’m cautiously optimistic.

Memorial Day, May 25, 2020 -- Remembering Taco

I spent most of the day trying to sync my. Window’s Clip Studio files with my Mach Clip Studio installation. Using the Cloud has become a waste of time. It’s much faster to backup my files to my file server than it is to use the very sluggish Clip Studio Cloud.

For the first time in over a year I took the day off completely from working on my book. I was drained and frustrated with the file syncing fiasco. We subscribed to HBO and watched some movies. I missed having Taco sitting next to me. I remembered the simple pleasure of the many times he rested his head on my knee while he licked his feet and then fell asleep. Simple pleasures are the sweetest.