Mom has been working to prepare her residential rental property for new tenants, and that means overhauling the upstairs bathtub. The previous tenant used it for dying wool, and now the formerly white tub is very much not white. The tub is in such bad shape that she would probably consider replacing it if not for the fact that it is nearly a century old, made of cast iron, weighs a ton, and will never fit down the stairs. So instead of replacing it, I am resurfacing it. Or at least, I'm supposed to.

This is not a horror story about how an enamel paint job went awry. No, I haven't gotten to that step yet. This is a story about how a bathtub full of water ended up coming through the kitchen ceiling.

Step one in resurfacing the tub requires clearing away the old caulk and scouring the tub clean prior to sanding the entire surface. All of that went reasonably well. It was even surprisingly easy to remove the metal drain and overflow plate considering the tub's age and mistreatment. The problem was that all the water I poured in to rinse out the scouring cleanser somehow missed the drain pipe and instead flowed directly down the interior wall to emerge through the overhead light fixture in the kitchen below. (I wish I could show you a picture here, but I was too panicked by my discovery of the waterfall flowing from the active light fixture to take the time to grab my phone for a selfie.)

My working theory is that too much water pressure dislodged the drain pipe enough that much of the waste water overflowed the crack between pipe and tub. But given that on disassembly for cleaning, the kitchen's florescent light fixture contained what can only be called a "rust puddle," it sure looks like this leak has been dripping for a while. Considering how well the last tenant treated the tub, maybe in this specific case, it's not all my fault?

The silver lining to this otherwise very unwelcome rain cloud is that after a good mopping with every spare towel I could borrow from my aunt who lives nearby, the kitchen floor is now cleaner than it has been in ages. The next tenant might be cooking in the dark, but at least the floor is spotless!

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Here's an update on the "unidentified" character I teased I was painting last month:

As you can see, after the wood is cut and primed, I sketch out the details of what I'm painting and fill in the blocks of solid color. I generally use cheap acrylic paints for these, so this usually takes three or more coats. Except in cases where I need to delineate large areas of shadow (as I did with Smokey Bear), black is usually only done very last. In SpongeBob's case, green will probably be last, because his yellow body is outlined in a kind of puce on the show.

I still haven't decided whether there will be any additional color shading. SpongeBob is only rarely shaded on teevee, but he is frequently shaded in video games and in the movies. I'm waiting to see how it looks with detailing before I make that decision.

I'll keep you posted.

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Smokey Bear turned 80 on August 9. That was during the Olympics (when I had Izzy out front), so it took me a little extra time to get this big boy to the street.

Obviously, I cannot take credit for that design, just the painting. (I'm pretty confident that the original line art was by Rudolph Wendelin.) I didn't even take any liberties with the colors, as the U.S. Forest And Service has very strict Smokey Bear Guidelines: "Smokey always appears only with his traditional blue jeans, belt, buckle, and 'campaign' hat. Optionally, he carries a shovel."

I'm not interested in running afoul of the USFS, no sir. They employ bears.

That bit of fluffy white you see at the bottom of the image isn't fire-fighting foam: it's Henry the Poodle, who refused to get out of the frame. Oh, Henry.

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Want a sneak peek at an in-progress yard sign in my studio right now? Feast your eyes on this (first-coat) primed sheet of plywood!

In animation, they say good character design is a figure you can recognize by its silhouette. So I probably don't have to tell you who that will eventually be a painting of.

Speaking of design, I was often asked in art school why I would bother doing so much prep work before I painted, as if suggesting there was no point in painting something if I already knew how the finished product would look. (I was also told my work was often "clever in a bad way," whatever that means.) Maybe the finished work of abstract expressionists reveals deep truths about, er, something to its creators, but even if that's true, maybe I just don't like surprises or, as the inimitable Bob Ross would call them, "happy accidents."

I have a good friend from college who still believes that my work is craftsmanship, not art. To be fair, he doesn't mean that as an insult. We both have nothing but respect for great craftsmen. I once knew a very impressive young draftsman at J.C. Booth Junior High School who could recreate freehand anything he could see at any size. He was a craftsman, and I still think his work was pretty darn good.

I'd define craftsmanship as the ability to execute a plan skillfully. But someone has to create the plan in the first place, and the ability to visualize that plan is what makes someone an artist. The greatest artists lie in the Venn Diagram intersection of craftsmen and artists. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, Bob Ross... they could all think up a great idea and execute it. That kid in junior high lamented he couldn't draw anything from imagination. I hope he kept trying. I happen to believe that while not everyone has the natural tools to be a craftsman, anyone with an idea can be an artist.

I don't mean to suggest that I'm the equal of Bob Ross, and maybe I do tend to overthink (and underexecute) my pieces, but I will insist I'm an artist.

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Eleven years ago, "friend" Keith predicted that my then-new DC Bullet tire cover would outlast the Jeep. I'm happy to report that he was wrong.

The Jeep is still going strong, and it's time to unveil this decade's tire cover!

Yeah, it's still black and white and red all over. When you find a color scheme that works, why change it?

As for that new url, try it yourself: wriphe.com/poodles

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Happy Valentine's Day!

Footnote 1: Yes, this will eventually be displayed by the mailbox in the front yard, but it's pretty obvious that Oscar's native habitat is among the junk piles in my messy, messy studio.

Footnote 2: I started this piece back in April 2023 and have only just now finished it. While Oscar's fuzz did take a long time, most of that delay was because I was working too hard in 2023. Blech. I promise not to do that again.

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Last year, my Lucy painting had rocks thrown at her head. This year I gave her some protection.

If this doesn't work, I might have to get her an offensive line.

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It's not much of a tail, but I'm sort of attached to it

Sure is a cheerful color. Guess I'll have to get used to it.

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I'm not sure I would call myself a connoisseur of kids cartoons, but I sure liked 'em a lot when I was a kid. And a teenager. And an adult. And now as old man. The good ones remind you what's great about being a kid. The best of them remind you what's great about being human.

If you have little kids right now, you can already guess that I'm talking about Bluey.

Bluey is an Australian Broadcast Company/BBC show about talking dogs. More accurately, it's about raising children by allowing children to be children, but it takes place in a world of talking dogs. I'm not so nuts about children, but I love talking dogs. Especially this one.

click image to toggle 3D on/off

That's Bingo, Bluey's little sister. Mom's beau asked why I would paint Bingo instead of Bluey. The answer is pretty simple: I like Bingo better.

She's my kind of talking dog.

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Today was the 100th annual Georgia Homecoming football game. As is often the case, it was against Vanderbilt, who played UGA in the very first homecoming game on November 18, 1922. As is often the case, the Bulldogs won big. (To be fair, Vandy won 12-0 in 1922, and went on to finish the season undefeated, their second undefeated season in a row. Obviously, 1922 was a different time.)

Despite the score, I had a lot more fun this week, in part because the Dawgs scored early (and often), in part because Mom came with me, and in part because we arrived a hour before kickoff and got to watch plenty of Homecoming pomp.

One thing worth documenting: As I've mentioned before, UGA has replaced paper tickets with e-tickets, accessible only on smartphones. I had both tickets on my phone, and both had to be scanned for Mom and me to enter the stadium. However, after scanning the first ticket, my phone received a text notification... which temporarily locked out the ticket app. Oops! It was no big deal at the time — we were, in fact, the only people in our line — but this presages potential trouble on a busier day when, say, a boisterous (read: drunk) Tennessee crowd comes to town.

From now on, airplane mode.

(Side note: It didn't help anything that my phone case broke on Wednesday. So I did what anyone would do and fixed my smartphone with duct tape. It really is good for everything!)

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