Crazy Paint Day

After reading Hyperbole and a Half and LOLing loud enough to concern my family, I thought it'd be appropriate to talk about one of my own crazy experiences.

I go to Autistry studios on request to do a painting for their upcoming fundraiser last month. I wake up late, and not to mention tired, so I grab a mug of coffee on my way out the door. My mother who drove me should've known better - she was there when I was duck-stepping through the hardware store with my sister after my first latte, why would she give me coffee again?
Anyhow - we arrived to meet with Robert Evans, the artist who was there to help us with things like brushes, color, ect.

On a side note, if you have time to look him up, he's fairly well-known for doing things like the dog for the rootbeer can.

Yeah, this one.

Robert showed us some of his paintings before we scattered to get our pictures started and by this point the caffeine was starting to affect my system. My hands were a little twitchy as I did the wash for the background, and downright shaking while I drew my characters out in pencil.

On top of this, I was getting crap from Daniel - another student - for taking so long.

It took at least an hour to draw my characters and lay out the brickwork used in the scene, and by then things were going terribly, terribly wrong for me.

I am the shortest person in my family at 5'3, and the handmade tables in the cold warehouse were too low for me to use on a swivel chair. Therefore, I was kneeling on a rolling chair trying to put a good effort into a painting to be sold for a few hundred dollars while my thigh and ass muscles are quivering like a chihuahua pulled out of a swimming pool.

All of this was so distressing - the shaking, the cold, and the time limit - that I barely had the capacoty to figure out what everything would look like. The characters I was portraying had never been put in color before, so eyes and hair was a new issue.

I ended up giving my supposedly 100% Japanese guy blue eyes and his Japanese friend light-colored brown hair and green eyes.

My caffeine-addled brain apologized, saying his mom was now European.

Even with my efforts and others' attempts to help me soak up the coffee with pretzels and food, I didn't finish the painting until a week later when I came in for my regular workshop.

Can't win 'em all, especially when you can't hold your mocha.

-Much luvz, Hideki.

PS - the painting was my second for a fundraiser and sold for $400. The first was for Jennie McArthy's  (spelling?) Comedy Night and sold for $600.