Summer Fun!

So, yeah...I'm still working on my new piece. I know, I know...I took more time on this one than I have on my last two or three. I 'finished' the BG and I am now priming the characters in the foreground. In my defense however, the weather has been great and we have had our first official camping trip of the summer to Priest Lake, ID. Of course work has been ramping up and with nice weather comes drinking. It goes hand in hand, and with me it usually did... ;-) Anyway, I digress. I have an update shot of my new piece and I'm hoping to have it done here in a couple weeks. This weekend which is to say my Mon-Tue is a weekend at home before we head to the coast next week. It's only been three plus years since I've seen the ocean...and having lived very near and sometimes very very near it my whole life, I am looking forward to it. Alright! here is an update if the new acrylic;

As you can see it's still relatively unfinished, but I'm hoping to have some more paint on canvas today or tomorrow. The blocking in of the charcacters is next and it usually goes fairly fast after that point. I have'nt used a lot of movement in the past so this is a new experience for me. Now, lets move on to some other news in my life....paddleboarding! I absolutely love it. I will probably not kayak again and plan on selling my own as well as my wife's kayak. I think for our older puggle alone the transition has been great. Stan has plenty of room, and he's not in a constant state of flex to stay on the slippery surface of the kayak. Also, the amount of mobility one has on a paddleboard over a kayak isn't even comparable. I was able to stretch and even pulled off two inversions the first time I ever tried. The paddling was a lot easier as you have multiple positions you can paddle in. I think riding ON the surface of the water as opposed to IN the water makes for easier paddling/tracking.

The boards we chose were 'touring' boards meaning they are longer wider and track better with one long skeg. This makes for less paddling on long trips and an increased payload. Skatinger 'Octopus' runs 11' long and 34" wide with a payload of up to 420 lbs. To inflate takes about 5-10 mins. and deflate is about half that. Of course moving the board around outside of water is great. After lugging kayaks around for years, it's nice to not deal with the weight. I believe the total weight of the Octopus is twenty pounds. So yeah, paddleboarding. Last topic for the day is horror! not just any horror, Stephen King horror. Particularly, the Novel and its adaptation Needful Things. I recently read the novel and remember the film quite well with Max Von Sydow as Leland Gaunt and Ed Harris as Alan Pangborn. In my opinion the one of the many reasons Kings novels are so hard to adapt into film are his thoughts and ideas that push the story along when you are able to read into it. A movie will just get lost in all of the details, so a lot of directors try to 'simplify' things and this loses impact within the story. So, I had heard there was an uncut version of Needful Things which exceeds the US theatrical version by over an hour. It was apparently released a couple years ago. I found it, and watched it, and yes. This version (though dubbed for language) is hands down better than the theatrical version. If you are a King fan I recommend watching this as it's much more comparable to the book. Well, I hope y'all have a great afternoon as we hunker down here in the upper left USA. Take care, and I hope to have a new update very soon!