Tag: art

SubscribeStar Saturday: SC Bigfoot Festival 2023

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Last Saturday I attended the South Carolina Bigfoot Festival in Westminster, South Carolina.  The festival is in its fourth year, and it was a bustling, fun event—a good model for how small town festivals should be.

There were some hiccups over the summer, with vendor packets (my own included) getting lost in the mail and the festival’s website disappearing for a couple of weeks.  The event organizers weren’t responding to e-mails, and I thought for awhile that maybe the whole thing had been shuttered.

Fortunately, that was not the case, and the festival organizers got everything working again.  I paid my vendor fee using some Discover Card cashback, and went up to Westminster after school on Friday, 13 October 2023 (spooky!).

My neighbors went up ahead of me, on Thursday, 12 October 2023, and picked up my vendor packet for me during the day Friday.  We stayed in adjacent campsites at Chau-Ram County Park, a beautiful park near waterfalls—and just $25 a night!

I made a critical error, however:  I should have taken off last Friday.  Because I was unable to attend the festival Friday, the vendor organizer put me down a little side street.  I was super close to the main strip, but just far enough away that most folks didn’t even realize my tent was there.

Needless to say, it was not a strong sale’s day.  Indeed, I only sold one painting, to a sweet little girl who loves the Loch Ness monster.  She purchased a painting I’d done of a strange aquatic animal, which she liked because it resembled Nessie.

I shared my vendor spot with the wife my neighbor’s family, and she was selling really cool crochet hats.  I figured she’d do a killing, as the hats were really well done, but she did not make a single sale.

In that regard, the festival was a disappointment.  As for the festival itself, though, it was an absolute blast.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Sleep!

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Ever since I was a small child, I get very grumpy when I am sleep-deprived.  My brothers would tease me about how angry I would get after about 8 PM, which usually just made me angrier.

As an adult, sleep deprivation tends to make me grumpy and nihilistic.  It’s not a good combination, and I struggle at times with despair (a terrible sin, because it fundamentally fails to place faith in God and His Provision) as it is.  Combine extreme exhaustion with a bad, or even just particularly stressful, day, and I can be downright insufferable.

Such was the case last Friday, 6 October 2023.  It was perfect storm of a day:  I released a new album to Bandcamp, which saw me awake at 3 AM to publish for Bandcamp Friday; I had to build out an entire pep band setup for a school pep rally in about forty-five minutes; and I had myriad Homecoming day responsibilities, including sound checking the choir (they sang the National Anthem Friday evening) and calling the game.  It all meant a long, exhausting day, one that left me drained mentally, physically, and spiritually.

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September 2023 Bandcamp Friday; NEW RELEASE!

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Ah, yes, Bandcamp Friday has returned, which means I hope you will consider pitching in a few bucks to buy my music—or my second book!  After a long hiatus over the summer months, this celebration of indie musicians is back.

The first Friday of a bunch of months in 2023—February, March, April, May, August, September, October, November, and December—will feature this pro-indie music observance, a day on which Bandcamp waives its usual 15% commission on sales.

In other words, when you buy my music, almost 100% of it goes to me, instead of almost 85%.

To celebrate, I have a brand new release:  Spooky Season!  Spooky Season is a collection of seven new compositions with a spooky, autumnal vibe, perfect for pumpkin-spiced living and ghostly vibes.  These tracks won’t hit streaming platforms until October, but you can purchase them now via Bandcamp!

Spooky Season is just $5, and includes full scores and individual parts for every track—a $28 value!—plus a bonus track.  It’s also crammed with videos, handwritten manuscripts, and other goodies.

Currently, my entire discography of eleven releases is $18.39, a savings of 50%, which is not bad for eleven releases.  That’s $1.67 per release—not too shabby!  To purchase the full discography, click on any release, and you’ll see the option to purchase all of them.

You can also listen to a ton of my tunes on YouTube (and it’s free to subscribe!).

I’m also selling all of my paintings for $10, with free shipping in the United States, regardless of how many you purchase.  They’re one of kind, so once a painting is purchased, it’s gone.

I’ve also joined Society6, a website that lets artists upload their designs, which can they be printed onto all manner of products (like this throw pillow, or this duvet cover).  Why not get a bookbag with a mouthy droid on it?

I only get 10% of the sales made there, but some of the stuff looks really good—I really want these notebooks with my “Desert View” painting on it (now SOLD!).  Some of them are straight-up goofy, like this church doodle I made celebrating the presidential pardon of Roger Stone (the description for the piece is “Anger your friends with this doodle commemorating the presidential pardon of America’s most dapper political operative“).

I have a few new paintings in the works, and hope to be attending the South Carolina Bigfoot Festival to try to hawk some of my works.  We’ll see how that goes!

My first book, The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot, is $10 in paperback, and just $5 on Kindle.

My second and newest book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures, is $20 in paperback and $10 on Kindle.

Finally, after I finish Offensive Poems: With Pictures, my planned third book, I’ll be uploading those doodles to Society6 as well.  I have high hopes (perhaps naïvely) for this book, but we shall see.  The doodles are some of my best work—and in glorious color—and without notebook paper lines!

Thanks again for your support!

Happy Friday!

—TPP

TBT^2: Modern Art and Influence

The Portly Politico6 Comments

Doing these retrospective TBT posts reminds me of the cyclical nature of life.  Just like least year, we’re in the slow, lazy days of high summer, when the heat is so intense, a permanent haze hangs over the land.  There is something surreal about it being blindingly bright and languidly hazy at the same time.

I don’t have much more to write about modern art, although I got an eyeful of it at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Some modern art is quite striking and challenging, to be sure, but when I saw a canvas that was literally painted black, I groaned internally.  A former colleague of mine, an art teacher, always said of modern art, “well, somebody had the idea to do something, and did it, so it’s art” (I’m paraphrasing rather loosely there).

It’s one of those things that’s so stupid, it sounds profound.  Her argument was essentially that if you did something—even something asinine—first, you were creating art; you just weren’t born early enough to be the guy to paint a canvas solid black and offer up some lame justification for why it’s a study in how we perceive color.

I’m fairly certain that if I painted a canvas a solid color and donated it to the Art Institute of Chicago, they would not put it on display.  I understand that modern art seeks to “shock” viewers, but the only thing shocking about a black canvas is that it’s presented to the public in one of the finest of fine arts institutions in the country.

But I digress.  It’s all just wealthy idiots smelling their own farts.

With that, here is “TBT: Modern Art and Influence“:

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May 2023 Bandcamp Friday

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Well, here we are again:  another Bandcamp Friday, which means I hope you will consider pitching in a few bucks to buy my music—or my second book!  It’s the last Bandcamp Friday until August, so if you want to support my work, today’s the best day to do so for awhile.

It’s also Teacher Appreciation Week.  What better way to show your appreciation than by buying my awesome merch?

The first Friday of a bunch of months in 2023—February, March, April, May, August, September, October, November, and December—will feature this pro-indie music observance, a day on which Bandcamp waives its usual 15% commission on sales.

In other words, when you buy my music, almost 100% of it goes to me, instead of almost 85%.

Currently, my entire discography of ten releases is $9.50, a savings of 45%, which is not bad for ten releases.  That’s $0.95 per release—not too shabby!  To purchase the full discography, click on any release, and you’ll see the option to purchase all of them.

I’m also selling all of my paintings for $10, with free shipping in the United States, regardless of how many you purchase.  They’re one of kind, so once a painting is purchased, it’s gone.

I’ve also joined Society6, a website that lets artists upload their designs, which can they be printed onto all manner of products (like this throw pillow, or this duvet cover).  Why not get a bookbag with a mouthy droid on it?

I only get 10% of the sales made there, but some of the stuff looks really good—I really want these notebooks with my “Desert View” painting on it (which again, is just $10 for the one-and-only original).  Some of them are straight-up goofy, like this church doodle I made celebrating the presidential pardon of Roger Stone (the description for the piece is “Anger your friends with this doodle commemorating the presidential pardon of America’s most dapper political operative“).

I have a few new paintings from my highly unsuccessful foray into selling at the Lamar Egg Scramble, and I have two new doodles for just $5 each:  Robo Talk 23 No. 1 and No. 2.  I’m also working on quite a few more doodles for Society6, which will also end up here.

My first book, The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot, is $10 in paperback, and just $5 on Kindle.

My second and newest book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures, is $20 in paperback and $10 on Kindle.

Thanks again for your support!

Happy Friday!

—TPP

Phone it in Friday XXXVI: On the Road, Festival News

The Portly Politico4 Comments

I’m chaperoning a trip to Washington, D.C. for my school’s ninth and tenth graders, and we’ve been going nonstop since about 5 AM on Wednesday, 29 March 2023.  Indeed, I’m writing this blog post on the bus to our nation’s capital.  The bus is equipped with WiFi, which is one of the more decadent instances of modern travel amenities I’ve enjoyed.

After the madness (and awesomeness) of my school’s annual Spring Concert (more on that tomorrow), it’s good to hit the road for a few days.  I was not looking forward to slogging through the rest of the week after the high of the concert.  That’s not to mention the burn of it:  according to my fitness app, I burned over 1900 calories and walked a little over seven miles throughout the course of the day.

There’s been a great deal of walking on this trip, so the burn keeps going.  I haven’t been able to get in my morning run, but the perambulation to historic sites has made up the difference in terms of caloric burn.

I’ll have more details soon.  The other big event is the Lamar Egg Scramble, which kicks off this afternoon, the bulk of which is tomorrow.  I have some big (for me) news in regards to the ol’ Scramble.

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Lazy Sunday CXCIV: Paintings

The Portly Politico4 Comments

A quick blurb before today’s post:  I’ve released my second book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures.  It’s a collection of travel essays I’ve accumulated over the last four years, and it’s available now on Amazon.

Here’s where you can pick it up:

Pick up a copy today!  Even sharing the above links is a huge help.

Thank you for your support!

—TPP

***

I love working in miniature.  That’s probably why I love LEGO and Nanoblocks, and generally small bits of bric-a-brac.  I like composing short pieces, and painting small paintings.

I’ve been reblogging a lot of my painting posts lately, so I figured, “hey, why not put all those posts into an edition of Lazy Sunday?”

So I did!  Not much more to it, but it’s been motivating me to produce some more paintings after a bit of a hiatus away from it.  It’s a fun way to pass the time, and I occasionally make some money from it, which is always a nice little perk.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

TBT: Even More Little Paintings

The Portly Politico6 Comments

Last week I “threw back” to a post about some of my little paintings.  I’m tinkering with the idea of applying for spots at some upcoming festivals, and it’s gotten me thinking about my little paintings.  I ordered some more of my tiny canvasses, and if I have a bit of time this week, I hope to do some more.

Several of the paintings in this original post have sold, mostly to family members, but also to outside buyers.  I sold several at a school art sale, and the remaining originals are for sale on my Bandcamp page.  Additionally, I’ve incorporated digital images of many of these paintings (and some of my doodles) into merchandise over at Society6, so you can get pillow shams, coffee mugs, and even bath mats with these and other paintings printed on them.  Eventually, I’m going to treat myself to these notebooks featuring my painting “Desert View.”

With that, here is 8 March 2022’s “Even More Little Paintings“:

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TBT: More Little Paintings: Hearts and an Octopus

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My passion for bizarre, Primitivist artwork has been reignited of late, thanks in part to my setting up a hokey artist page on Society6.  I’ve had a great deal of fun uploading some of my paintings and doodles as designs to the site, and the idea that someone could purchase a duvet cover with a doodle of Roger Stone saying, “MAGA, baby!” tickles me to no end.

I’m also toying with the idea of getting a stall at the upcoming Egg Scramble Jamboree here in Lamar—and, later in the year, getting on at the South Carolina Bigfoot Festival in Westminster, South Carolina—to see if I can, y’know, actually sell some of these paintings.  If I try and fail, then I’ll know it’s little more than a self-indulgent hobby that I can keep to myself.

So I thought I’d throwback to a post from last March, one in which I showcase some of my wacky paintings.

With that, here is 1 March 2022’s “More Little Paintings: Hearts and an Octopus“:

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TBT^2: Hawkworld

The Portly Politico2 Comments

This weekend my older brother will be running the Myrtle Beach Marathon, which means we’ll be feasting on seafood and good times (and he’ll be running 26.2 miles, so he’ll have earned the festivities; I’m just driving him to the starting line).  I’m hoping that’ll mean a trip to Player’s Choice, an amazing comics and collectibles store that is, improbably, the anchor store (essentially) for a failing mall.

The idea of picking up three comics for $7 (as I did when I scooped up Hawkworld in 2021) seems unheard of in this Age of Hyperinflation.  I don’t know how much inflation has affected the price of used comic books, but the idea of getting three of anything for seven bucks seems like some kind of fevered fantasy these days.

I really enjoyed this comic and its storyline of a decadent empire in decline, and the message seems eerily prescient for us in these latter days of the American Empire.

Gulp!

With that, here is 3 March 2023’s “TBT: Hawkworld“:

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