Could be worse...

Could be raining.

Which leads us, inexorably, to this:



Which is supposed to look like this:



But which doesn't. Actually it does...a little bit. And that's something. But still.

Also looks a bit like Gary Oldman in one of his woolier moments. I loved him in Dracula, by the way, although he was less scruffy than the way my boy Julian usually rolls (He has a penchant, if you didn't know it, for always wearing pajamas. And that's just for starters, in the scruffy department.). This, for your viewing pleasure, is Oldman getting ready to suck the juice out of Winona Ryder like she was one of those thin-skinned oranges from Florida.



Love the dress. But manomanoman, whatever the hell ever happened to her? She was like the Natalie Portman of her day. Maybe she's in the slammer?

Anyway, back to the painting; a couple of thoughts: First, although it worked really well with the Close painting, maybe floating the secondary grid (which is the one in black and is, for reasons I'll get into at some point, significantly more obviously "gridded" than it might typically be) six inches in from the edge is a bad idea here. Maybe I should just bleed it out on the upper, lower and left hand side of the image the way Big Julian's actual face does in the photo. I mean, you could almost squeak by with the top and side, but the way the bottom of his beard is cut off--really, it's just a disaster.

Second...

Hmmm. Upon reflection, I don't really have a second thought. Just that first one. Which you can read in the second paragraph above if you haven't already. Although it was, you have to admit, a complex one. Probably on some level actually a collection of several thoughts.

Quick note: This would be an example of how, although you are supposed to read the blog from the bottom up (i.e. in chronological order), the posts themselves should be read in the standard left-to-right, top-to-bottom manner. Why I even have to tell you people this leaves me dumbfounded. I mean, do you need me to chew your food for you?

Anyway, all that negativity aside, if we are all agreed on the idea of extending the black grid to the edge of the painting, then I am reasonably sanguine about my chances of pulling the damned thing together once we start slapping on some color.