A few of you have trickled in, in the last three weeks or so. Welcome to my account. You can call me Shade, or Pablo if we're friends. As of now, this is the closest thing I have to any kind of social media. (I did have a personal Instagram acct but I started taking a few days off at a time, then my abstinences got longer. Finally one day I realized I was tired of the same old shit, & deactivated it)

Feel free to browse my art, but if you go by the playlists you'll get a better idea of how I work. My stuff is fairly well organized that way.

As I said a few entries back, I'm in the midst of a major life transition right now...so don't expect me to post a lot of stuff. I get here & do my bit when I can. Other than that there isn't a lot to report...except that I was doing gesture studies one night this past February in a place with bad lighting. One of the better results:

Fast-fwd to June. I was studying the above in the evening, & the inevitable question popped up inside my head: How would it look if I did this with the tools I've been working with lately? (More than one project has started with what would happen if I did ____?) In doing the following I was only concerned with experimental brush technique, nothing else.

They've been slightly edited for clarity in a perfectly legal copy of Photoshop CS6.

No, I don't pay attention to the ratio. Upvotes & downvotes are mostly done by political tribalists in any case; I give no credit to the opinions of zealots & groupies.

...between Sleepy Joe & the Orange Blowhard:

Best summary of what we're dealing with that I've seen so far.

I truly wish we had better candidates but the electoral system we have now--&, I suspect, any possible version of representative democracy--filters out anyone of basic decency & sound mind long before (s)he would ever get into the White House. On the rare occasion when such a person does win the throne, he soon learns that if he wants to stay in power & get anything done, he had better play the game. Thus, the corruption is not only not removed but becomes more entrenched, the class gap stays &/or widens, & these days, the various factions of the country cohere further into themselves & increase their hatred of the opposing politi-tribes. After all this, I'm supposed to believe in our electoral system as the best possible form of government...

...but I digress.

Aside from the above, there ain't much news in my corner of the world unless you count some 12,000 acres in California burning...but that isn't news. CA burns up every year due to its absurd rules (no forest maintenance allowed anywhere, because removing dead trees & underbrush apparently equals clear-cutting in terms of mortal sin).

Gonna put the land deal in motion this week if everything goes as it should. Will do more art when I can, as always.

The ShadeUncut account is dead. I shut it down a few minutes ago. No sense in trying to maintain two accounts here when I have enough to do as it is. Whatever "adult" stuff I post in the future, I can always make a folder for it.

Haven't been here lately because life has been busy...got a major decision coming up soon. I will try to post here but it won't be anywhere near regular, you can bet on that. In a nutshell: I've had it up to here with apartment life & need a place of my own, but I can't afford an ordinary house. So I've been looking at other options & will pick whichever one is best.

Gonna make the big move this year, I think. It will take a lot of time & effort. I probably won't draw or paint too often for a while.

My theme song is

June 8th Edit: Tonight I'm doing stuff like this:

As of April 18th, 2347 hrs.

It's been mostly wiggling between $2,370-ish & $2,410 for a few days now... Not bad at all, considering the price per oz. was nowhere near that at the end of 2019. Gold has gained a hair over 85% in value since then. I do wish its recent rise was for better reasons, though. (The current Middle East conflict & faltering stock market indexes because everyone is jittery have a lot to do with it.)

gold price per oz., as of 11:06 this evening

It's gone up just over 8% in the last 30 days. Nice.