My walls are perfectly painted bitteroot pink, cocoa and sage. I don't stand for brush marks. I make sure the edges are clean and the coverage is even, and the mistakes are minimal, and I don't even bother with drop cloths or that insidious blue tape that never works anyway. To put it midly, I am the picasso of house painting.
But I don't have any art on my walls. Whatever I draw or paint, I give away to friends, and when I moved from Chicago to Los Angeles in February, it was literally a grab-n-go situation. I threw some shit in my car, threw the rest out, packed up the girls and left. Because of this, and the giving away, my perfectly painted bitteroot pink, cocoa and sage walls are bare.
In an effort to put up some art, but not waste too much time doing it, I went to the Michaels down the street from me in Burbank, where at ridiculously inflated prices you can get nylon brushes, oils of moderate quality and prestretched and preprimed canvases for ten times what you'd pay Dick Blick or Pearl. But...time...I couldn't waste the time. The money was secondary. I barely have time to pee.
The concept behind the big painting was simple. A blood pink base color (two coats--shitty oils) and the black sillouettes of two naughty and suspicious dogs, one short and squat, the other skinny, a princess. I laid on the pink and let it dry, high up where no tail could "add" to the art.
A few days later, it was time to apply the silouettes. I did so pretty quickly and was satisfied with the result, perhaps there was too much black slopped on but then I didn't have much time to get it right. I was off to the gym.
When I returned, only the outlines of the black figures remained. The black paint, which I feared I had applied too quickly was smeared away in inch thick strokes, the size of a lot of things, but also a doggy tongue. My first thought was, "Oh, that's good," but the paint had to have gone somewhere.
At this time, the Heeler was peeing in the middle of the living room floor, nervously and with her tail banging into the planks. I kneeled down to inspect her snout, and sure enough, the white spot beneath it was missing. In its place was smears of shitty black oil paint. On her tongue was oil paint.
While spongeing her off, I couldn't help but admire her work. She's quite the talent. Just when I thought she had no other redeeming qualities aside from her looks, she goes and makes a masterpiece.
Posted by Tucker Max at 7:58 PM