Good news, everybody!

This is Snow White and HIS Prince Charming.

I have found the perfect model for my sweet Michael! No more trying to draw him out of my head (which is a pain, let me tell you). The problem now is, how do I get in contact with him? How do I get him to pose for me without seeming creepy? How do I go about using him as my model legally? Does it even matter if none of this ever gets published?

Yeah, lots of things.

This isn't some random guy though. This boy is the cousin of my best friend who I have been using as a model for around a decade. Ah! I was wondering what kind of pictures I could post with this blog and I didn't have any for the story but I can post the pictures I have done of my best friend, Gabe, over the years.

First few layers of paint on Prince Gabe.

Base drawing for the painting.

A really old painting I did in high school. That's his tongue that's making the mouth look funny. He was being Miley Cyrus before it was cool.

Gabe as Little John and my brother as Robin Hood. We had a really cool photo shoot in the park for this one.

I met Gabe's cousin at Gabe's brother's wedding. I helped Gabe do a lot of the best man duties and at the after party at his parents' house I saw this guy across the room and it was like a scene from West Side Story except that it wasn't love (it wouldn't work out for me anyway, he walked into the wedding wearing the most fabulous blue velvet dinner jacket, if you know what I mean...) it was seeing someone that you had created in your head suddenly appearing before your eyes.

Just a doodle of Gabe as a prince.

We had a weird few minutes as I just keep staring (yes, full on staring at him. I was very, very rude but I was also very, very tired so I wasn't really watching my actions) and then I told Gabe that I needed his cousin as my model. Gabe, being so like himself, thought it was just so funny that he called his cousin over and was like, "this is my friend Kelsey and she wants to draw your body. Bye."

I hate him sometimes. I then had to take a few moments to explain to this absolutely adorable gay boy about my story and why I needed a model and why he was just perfect. He actually looks a lot like Gabe but skinner in the face and body and he has the same racial ambiguity that Gabe possesses. And he had a great sense of flair (note the blue velvet dinner jacket comment from above) which, of course, is needed for a pop singer.

In progress painting of Gabe in a towel that I painted to go up in a gay bar here in Dallas.

I just texted Gabe and made him promise to hook me up with his cousin (I'm actually really jealous of how close he is with all of his cousins. I'd like to justify it by saying that's just how his family is because they're Hispanic but that's probably not all of it. My family just sucks. I was going to finish that sentence as "with communication" or "at keeping up with one another" or "at caring about each other" but "my family just sucks" is pretty succinct and perfect.)

The finished painting. Boom! 22 hrs! And then when I pulled this out of my car, we cracked the glass :(

Anyway that got a little dark there. Oops. To (sort of) lighten the mood, here is a bit of my story about Artemis and her everyday life. This is just one of those moments where she's awesome and doesn't even realize it herself.

Artemis     

Artemis ran the ticket exchange at the local Chucky Cheese. She only made minimum wage but she got free, old pizza and as many temporary tattoos as she wanted. This week it was a daisy with a smiley face in the center that she placed on her left wrist. She usually stood behind the counter, or sat if she could steal a tall stool, and mechanically traded tickets for prizes.

      Every once in a while a dad of one of the kids would eyeball her in her blue polo and khaki pants but she didn’t really mind. They never bothered her like the oil field boys. She worked with a bunch of them every day at the office where they barely noticed her but at night, as the ticket taker at a children’s arcade, she became a hot commodity. She assumed it was because they thought she was younger when working at Chucky Cheese or maybe it was because they had had a couple of beers by the time they got to her booth.

      She occasionally had to take to the floor and put more tickets in a machine or fix the coin slot. Sometimes she couldn’t believe the things that went wrong with the games. Saturday she was sketching her mystery man in her small sketchbook with a fat, black 8B pencil. It was perfect to get the high contrast and soft look she saw in her head. His eyes were closed and his head was down. He looked to be biting his lower lip in concentration and his brows were ever so slightly creased. His hair framed his face with only a few curly strands falling across his forehead. Artemis was really wanted to touch his cheek through her drawing, feel his skin and the slight stubble that she knew was there.

      A tiny hand tapped the glass counter next to her drawing. Artemis looked up at the tiny girl standing there with a rat’s nest of plain brown hair, enormous hazel eyes and a pizza stained pink and yellow striped shirt.

      “Can I help you? Do you have tickets to exchange?” Artemis asked in her nicest, kid-helping voice as she closed her book and slid it under the counter.

      “The machine over there won’t give me my tickets.” The little girl pointed over to the far back corner of the arcade.

      “Alright,” Artemis said as she pulled the keys out from under her station and grabbed the box of ticket refills. “Can you take me to it?”

      The little girl ran off toward the machine and Artemis followed more slowly. She ran up to the Zombie Murder Massacre game, probably the bloodiest shooting game they had there.

      “It won’t give me my tickets.” The little girl said again pushing all the buttons on the game.

      “I know, just give me a second.” Artemis unlocked the game and started to fiddle around with the insides. She pulled the tickets out, fixed the kink that had formed in the line, checked the coin slot and filled the tickets all the way up just because she didn’t want to have to come back out to the game later. The machine started spewing out the tickets as soon as she fed the tickets back in the right way and as soon as it was done the little girl yanked them out and ran off with her hands full of the pink tickets. Artemis closed the door and relocked it.

      Artemis didn’t really mind going out on the floor. The little kids ran into you like you weren’t there and every time you went out there all the little kids would complain about how this machine or that took their coins or wouldn’t give them their tickets. Artemis was trying to decide which machine could use the rest of her box of tickets when some little kid slammed into her leg and started coughing. Artemis patted him on the back but he started wheezing and grabbed at his throat.

      Artemis squatted down and tried looking in his mouth. He must have inhaled a small toy because she couldn’t see anything in his mouth. She quite expertly turned him around and pounded him so hard that the offending toy popped right out and skidded across the shiny concrete floor. The little kid looked a little winded and there were tears in his eyes but he soon saw his friends and ran off to join them without realizing how close he had come to death.

      Artemis stood up, gathered her tickets, and walked back to her counter. She passed by the small toy and picked it up. It was a power ring with a little green star in the center. Artemis had tried talking to the management about the small prizes they gave away and how they were possible choking hazards. She dropped the toy in a trash can as she rounded the corner back to her station, pulled out her sketchbook and started on a new drawing of her mystery man.  



Anyway. That was kind of a long one. If you made it this far, congrats!

Nighty night all.
KB

 

Dream a Little Dream of Me

My favorite song right now is "Dream a Little Dream of Me." I especially love Mama Cass singing it but, really, I will listen to any version of it.

Stars shining bright above you
Night breezes seem to whisper "I love you"
Birds singing in the sycamore tree
Dream a little dream of me
Say "Nighty night" and kiss me
Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me
While I'm alone and blue as can be
Dream a little dream of me
Stars fading but I linger on, dear
Still craving your kiss
I'm longing to linger till dawn, dear
Just saying this
Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
But in your dreams whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me

Well, that really just leads into this post, I guess. I haven't posted anything in a long time (which seems to be what I say every time I post something). I haven't been on the computer at all in a really long time really. to recap what has been happening in my life, I have been having a great time at my job as an In-Store Artist at Central Market, I just took down my work from JR's since it's been up there for two months, and I might not have been working on my computer but I have been writing so I think that I will post a little of that now. 

Remember a while ago when I posted those adorable pictures of that boy with curly hair? Well, same story as that, I've just defined what I wanted to say in that story a lot more. Maybe this song doesn't lead into this bit as much as I wanted it to. This doesn't even talk about how Michael hears Artemis in his head and he writes songs about her. That would have been way more appropriate for this post.

Michael

     

       The phone rang 40 minutes before Michael's alarm. He knocked the phone off the nightstand, hit it under the bed, and finally answered after falling halfway out of bed and onto the extremely cold, hard wood floor. 

     “Hello?” he answered. His voice was rough and his nose sounded stopped up. Michael had been stressing all day yesterday that he had caught the cold on the plane back from Spain.   

      “Michael! It's Caleb. Meet me at La Rue in 20 minutes.” Caleb’s sharp New Yorker accent hurt Michael's head this early in the morning.

      “No.” Michael pushed himself back into bed and pulled the covers back up over his bare shoulders.

      “Michael, this is really important. Danyea’s at nine.”

      “I don't like Danyea’s.”

      “Michael. Frederick’s at noon?”

      “Fine.”

      “Perfect. See you there.” Caleb hung up before Michael could say anything else. Michael tossed his phone to the other side of the bed and buried his face back in his pillow. It was too late though. Sampson and Apollo, Michael's two guinea pigs, had heard the phone ring and Michael's voice. They started screaming for their food at the top of their lungs.

      “Shut up!” Michael yelled as he stopped his head under the pillow but it did little to muffle their high-pitched cries. “I get to sleep for another half hour! Come on!” his cries fell on tiny deaf ears as they squealed for his attention.

      “Fine.” Michael threw back the comforter and stomped over to their cage. Both of them looked up at him and started cooing. Michael rested his head against the door frame in resignation. He couldn't stay mad at them when they were so happy to see him.

      Michael popped the cage open, scooped Sampson out of the corner and Apollo off the roof of their tiny house. He carried them into the kitchen with him and dropped them on the counter. He filled a small bowl from a Tupperware container by the sink with all natural guinea pig pet pallets.

      He turned on the coffee pot and grabbed an orange from the fruit bowl. They all ate together, Michael passing Apollo and Samson little pieces of his orange. Apollo purred as Michael scratched his head and Samsung nestled beside his arm resting on the counter.

      Halfway through his cup of coffee, Michael picked up some discarded rind and a kitchen knife. A couple of cuts and he had made the perfect guinea pig helmet. Another piece of rind became a shield and a toothpick became a sword. A red dishrag from the linen drawer became a cape for Samson, decked out in his warrior ware.

      Michael snapped a picture of Samson majestically standing on a banana, sword and shield in hand, his helmet sitting low across his eyes. He tagged the picture “Samson in victory” and posted to his Twitter account.

      Michael had four likes and three re-tweets before he finished disrobing Samson and getting both guinea pigs back in their cage with some fresh water and enough food to last the day. They watched with their beady eyes as he came out of the shower in his teal blue towel. Michael lounge on the couch and went through his e-mails on this phone.

      He turned on his stereo and danced to his room to get dressed. The piggies started purring again when one of Michael songs came on. Three outfits later he came back out, poured a cup of coffee in his eco-mug, slipped on his gray pea coat and fuchsia scarf with the gold and aquamarine pheasant stitched at the end and headed out the door.

I read the first page to my friend and she said that I can't do this story like most of mine and not finish it. We have discovered over the years, it is really the journey that I love and not the finished product. When I have a deadline or a due date though, that becomes my goal and I can finish stuff. Ideally, I would have an editor who breathes down my neck to get my stories out on time because otherwise I just piddle around and doodle like this one here below.

 So there we have another installment in what I have decided to call "Plastic Bags." I know that is kind of a weird title but it really works for me.

Alright, night.
KB