face study for an oil painting. (this oil painting, in fact.) charcoal & blue chalk on newsprint.
Author: kai
quick sketches.
1. tiny figure study, blue mascara and chinagraph pencil (approx 3 inches)
2. face study, blue and yellow chalk & charcoal
what, is my terrible beauty making you uncomfortable
wait no come back it is normal to feel fear in the face of the sublime
ps this is actually my passport picture, nobody steal my identity please ty
Ok technically I didn’t take these photos but they are *my* optic nerves so I am still taking some credit.
(My beautiful maculae have been the subject of admiration.)
((Either I have handsome eyes or exquisite freckles or I make pretty patterns when I spill my wine on the pristine white shirt fronts of gentle Latin scholar-aesthetes, who knows.))
Liquid latex peeling like skin from an unfinished oil painting.
sketchbook, face study. graphite & white pencil on recycled paper.
Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium.
When the mechanism that allows me to feel things is broken and I need to force an emotional experience, I sometimes go to this place and wander around these coin pushers and claw machines and Buck Hunt and Ridge Racer and Time Crisis, and for some reason the juxtaposition of things I like with things I hate does the trick and I leave feeling either really good or really bad.
In here are things that are tacky and shiny and colourful and trivial and beautiful and anthropomorphic and nostalgic and weird. And also things that are cynical and misogynistic and exploitative; and seedy and greedy and hopeless; and violent in a way that’s cruel instead of cathartic.
Some days I want to step into this strange glittering cave, and walk past all the kitten-eyed kids trying to win keyrings and sticker tattoos, and then walk past all the rows of dead-eyed adults mechanically pumping the slot machines, and then keep walking to the games at the very back where there’s never anyone around, and just play Dance Dance Revolution by myself.
On a conscious level I really like hares but on a subconscious level I find them horrifying and vast and monstrous and they trigger some kind of arachnid reaction
because they are cute like rabbits but JESUS CHRIST WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR GIANT MUTANT LEGS
