"Bore-ealis" + "Vigil"

This one came about early in the season, maybe October-ish, when the first inevitable wave of "GO OUTSIDE AND LOOK UP" posts when the aurora makes its appearance.

Nothing serious here, I just figure everybody's entitled to a little exasperation about the recurring wonder of the northern lights. Or maybe I'm just jaded over yet another magical miracle of Alaskan amazeballs. It's like the folks who live around Denali who never bother to pull over and rubberneck anymore when "the mountain's out,", or swear & swerve around the majestik møøse on the way to work.

Filed under “Oops, well… THAT didn’t work out at all the way I expected.” Sometimes you just crash & burn… watch in horror as the slow-motion art-wreck begins to manifest itself out the other end of the implement, be it a brush or a pencil or pen. Case in point being this example of an absolute disaster of a coloring that reminded me of someone on a bad acid trip after eating a couple pints of Chunky Monkey + a half-dozen Muppets, do some shots of tequila and then vomited it all up on a sheet of paper. On the other hand, maybe someone out there will really love it and want to own the original. I mean, failing to express your vision just adds more fuel to the fire for inspiration – that’s why we experiment. You should ideally be putting out a high enough volume of work that the occasional disaster doesn’t hamstring you, just shrug it off and keep on cranking. The reality of it all is probably half of all creativity is simply rooted in a desperate attempt to fix what you’ve fucked up. Maybe my whole artistic life is just attempting to salvage something out this mess I made - at least make it worth a laugh.


And here's another bonus double-header on account of building up an overabundance of seasonally topical material. I thought about making a new/different post for a Saturday, but that would entail more work to stay abreast of the blog, and juggling timely updates would mean paying attention above & beyond the one day a week I devote to concocting accompanying liner notes to the cartoons.

This was done during my month-long residency downtown at the Morris Thompson Center back in February. It was inspired by the herds of anxious tourists who were visiting Alaska in hopes of seeing firsthand the aurora borealis. This is invariably a setup for a disappointment as there's anecdotally about as much of a chance of that happening as there is catching sight of Denali. Not to mention the equally elusive truth-in-advertising behind - in the eye of the beholder - marketing such an elusive and ephemeral occurrence.

My advice? Simple: just drink a shitload of water right before going to bed.... pretty much guarantees a night of repeated status updates while peeing off the porch.

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