That smell is me burning up the clutch

Can you hear the gears grinding? Smell that chemically-rubbery-smokey smell? That whining sound coming from the differential? That's Season Two of The Year of Magical Painting lurching forward.

Lurching forward with, of all things, this:



This is a still photo of Big Fidel taken moments after all the Christmas wrapping was pulled away. More or less where we left it when we plunged into The Annotated Spitzer. In a perfect world I'd also post the video of the unwrapping, but I haven't had time to upload to YouTube.

In the meantime, suffice it to say I was a bit shaken by how far astray one painting could go in such a short period of time. I mean, I thought things looked pretty good during the Seventh Inning Stretch. You?

Anyway, after a couple of days of anxiety I got back on the horse and made some changes. The biggest one (albeit one already predicted in these very pages) is the deletion (if that's the right word for taking a razor blade and just cutting the fucking thing off) of the entire left column of boxes (Talk about obscured boxes...). Which, of course, yielded this:

Quick note: I can't stand the color correction here. It should be more vibrantly orange and green. Like this font color.

But back to the narrative: I just couldn't stand to look at that finger another minute. I've subsequently dealt with the whole mouth problem by (engagingly enough, if I do say so myself): a) fixing it, and b) adding a cigar to disguise the lame manner in which I fixed it. As is often the case, when I say "fixed" it, I mean started to fix it. There is clearly more work to do, both on the cigar as well as the rest of the damned thing.

Here's a close-up. It was too wet to get a full shot, but tomorrow will no doubt bring one.



Nonetheless, we here at TYOMP are now tootling down the road again, sanguine--as is our fundamental nature, listening to The Floating Men and throw long-necks at any State Troopers we pass.

Life is good.

Although I still can't believe nobody bought my painting.