Speaking of books feature image

Speaking of Books…

topdogArt and Design 2 Comments

You may or may not remember my post from last week regarding my Father’s Day gift of four used books from The Kid. Books and writing have been on my mind a lot lately. As I get older I start to think about the things I’d like to do before I croak. I recently told a friend that writing a novel is one of those things. Of course, I’ve been thinking of doing that for …

Mosquito Dream

Mosquito Dream

topdogStories 1 Comment

The following is my entry in a 100-word Flash Fiction Challenge held recently at WritingForums, where I am a member. Everyone voted, and this story won First Place. Before posting it here, I fixed a couple minor punctuation inconsistencies. I also removed one inconsequential word and added a very important word (“Smiling” in the last sentence) which in my view makes the story stronger. The total word count is 100.I died in disgrace. There is …

temperatures

Hot All Week

topdogRural Living Leave a Comment

This morning at 10:00 a.m. I checked the temperature in the shade of our deck. It said 90°(F). That’s 90°. In the shade. At ten in the morning. I don’t enjoy heat waves. My comfortable temperature range goes from 25° to 85°. So while I’m cool with cool, hot ain’t so hot. These temperatures are supposed to stay with us all week and will probably continue in the 90’s for most of the summer. How …

Fathers Day Books

Father’s Day Books, For The Win.

topdogStories 3 Comments

I had every intention of writing a brilliant blog post today. Perhaps something deep and acerbic on the confluence of politics and art (“AOC’s Post-Modern Napkin Scribbles Win Critical Acclaim”). Or perhaps a somber overview of our collapsing civilization from the viewpoint of opportunistic extraterrestrials (“Dear Humans; We’ll Take It From Here”*). Maybe a long treatise on fake-conservatives and the demise of decent hot dog stands (“Grilled or Boiled? The Important Question Tweeters of NRO …

Digital Painting Demo of Brooks

topdogPet Portraits 3 Comments

This digital painting demo was created way back in November for a Christmas pet portrait order. In this demo, I show the whole screen including the software palettes and my reference images. I use an older version of Corel Painter (from 2019). My current system is a bit slow for the latest versions. Typical of software these days, there’s a lot of feature bloat in the newer versions anyway. The final size of this portrait …