Hey, let me drunkenly animate your photos in about 25 to 60 days!

i will whatever it takes

in my head, i thought "but silby did, and i really appreciate that", and then i said a version of that out loud afterward

and you know what, a priceless thing was that for once i had a counterpoint to the "digital art is worthless" thing, both for myself and form them. that's what really felt good (and also weird!) at that moment <3 <3 <3

is this getting to satanic for a home (jaq not allowed to answer!)

https://i.imgur.com/nSkFMbR.jpg

no such thing imo

achievement! first larger painting sold to someone i didn't know at all! it's the "It's All Over" one i finished just last week

or excuse me, i forgot that i titled that one "chicken coop at stone ridge" since that what it was before i painted over it

STONER RIDGE

https://i.imgur.com/YxCv8dH.jpg

nice portrait!

thanks forks! it's always weird with pastels because at any second you can just blow off all the excess chalk and powder and it completely changes everything. i took the piece of paper above and blew the biggest chunks off of it, kind of spotted in with a paper towel in some spots, and put it up on the wall. and then it's weird to decide whether or not to spray it with fixativ at that point or keep it like it to keep adding to it

i finally finished my first big commission, one i had been working on since june. and i just realized i fucked up something, at the very beginning, when i bought the canvas. i bought one brand new, first of all - that was a mistake because it's much less expensive to stretch your own. secondly, i accidentally bought a canvas that was "hand-splined", also known as "gallery wrap".

the vast majority of canvases are the normal "stretched canvases" with staples on the back. it's the default. you can easily take these canvases off the stretcher bars for shipping (rolled up in a tube, the easiest/cheapest way), and they are suitable for framing. looks something like this:

https://i.imgur.com/u65xlpc.jpg

instead, i accidentally bought a "hand-splined" canvas, which is to add insult to injury, is more expensive. this method uses a minimum of visible staples and instead the canvas is tucked down into this little gap around the stretcher bars, including a little plastic "spline" tube that goes around the perimeter. looks like this:

https://i.imgur.com/LzCUP2a.jpg

you can't really take these canvases off the stretcher bars. you, can but it's apparently a major pain in the ass. plus, the way they treat the corners (the "gallery fold) means that they made cuts to the fabric in order to get it to lay flat. this means that even if you did manage to get the canvas off the stretcher bars (for shipping or framing), it will be more difficult to re-stretch because it's missing chunks of it that were previously cut out. this is hard to explain.

in short, i finally finished this bigass painting, and now i have to tell them that it can't be framed, that the shipping is going to be really expensive, and that if they want to try to take it off the stretchers it's going to be a pain in the ass.

i just feel destroyed

like, i don't know whether to frame it go about it like "so this painting is actually gallery-wrapped, so no need to frame this one, and it can just go up on the wall as is!", or "so, it turns out that you can't frame this one, due to the way the canvas is wrapped around the stretcher bars (link to stretcher bars, link to gallery-wrap blog from 2015). and, oh yeah, i think i'm going to have to find a big crate to ship this to you in?"

i guess i could offer a discount since i fucked up, but i already spent four times (2 full months) as long on it as i had originally budgeted/planned on (2 weeks!). i have very little to sell for the upcoming month because i've spending my time on this giant piece of unframeable garbage instead :(

my tactic would be to contact the buyer and share all of that information directly and frankly (including how you feel about the situation) and ask how they'd like to move forward. They may not care or they may be willing to pick it up/have it dropped off at a later date.

it's just...SO much information. and in my previous communications i've made the mistake of just being WAY too much like myself, just talking way the fuck too much, too much, too much. i've been trying my best to just shut up and get to my point with them. but now i feel like i just opened up the most complicated situation, one that takes 5-10 minutes to figure out, and doesn't have a clear answer. it's not the end of the world and i'm sure it'll work out, it's just a big commission and i was really hoping they'd love the painting and tell all their friends etc. now i'm 99% sure it's going to be like a "funny story" (at best)

i've been feeling good, despite what i've been saying this. wrote this a couple weeks after my dad died

https://i.imgur.com/ZHdxEYV.jpg

just for context, my dad was named Earl Grey

dumb

https://i.imgur.com/WBlgZOo.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/uGAfALL.jpg

not dumb. i like it. i want to stop thinking "dumb", i know others want that too, to the extent that anyone cares

i am, currently, at my low, at a sustained high, and out of control, and perfectly control. chicago bears fans are screaming down the street. the alienation is near-total, but also i have so many people around that always encourage me, and i feel very lucky. everything at once. arcade fire #whoasongs

Your work is interesting to me!

doing a sale on my ol' instagram (@zach_tbd) tomorrow evening!

this will be my second monthly sale (and 3rd total since last year), and i've tried to change a few things from last month. i'm only putting up 10 items, rather than 30, to start. last time i did 3 instagram posts with 10 pictures in each, with captions explaining that you had to go check out the other two independently, sorry, etc, along with taking 30 photos. holy shit, it was bad. this time, there are only 10, which will go in one single 10-image megapost.

if all goes well tonight and tomorrow morning (still working on stuff), i will have 3 new paintings for tomorrow, a couple older ones at a discount, a decent (i think) older one (december 2020) that i found behind a shelf last week, a couple new pastels and graphite drawings, a cool one (i think) that's pastels on a print of a painting from earlier this year, as well as a couple new prints

this is the pastel on print. i like this idea, in general, of being able to draw over old paintings, and also it's a way to take a print that didn't sell (like this one, which was in the third in an exclusive series of three) and throw stuff at it

https://i.imgur.com/XsldHWX.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/gnWrgbf.jpg

this was the biggest one, 60x40", and i was lucky to sell it before it the sale

https://i.imgur.com/udjUFTC.jpg

one more

https://i.imgur.com/z0lsQlt.jpg

inside your head is drippy, i like it

That last yellow thing is immensely powerful

thank you both, so much.

forks, i keep starting new paintings with the idea that i'm going to be very formal and draw some straight lines. rarely turns out that way in the end, but some day soon i'm going to do something strict with masking tape and play by the rules!

jonathan h.m. thank you! that's an iphone pic so zooming in is pointless, but this afternoon i'm going to take a fancy camera shot of it. there are some interesting details in it, i think, because it started with pressing/imprinting newspaper photos/headlines into wet oil. first time i tried that (second time was a disaster, but i learned a lot!) but now i think i could have more control over it for the next time

playing by the rules is highly overrated unless it comes natural

The two things i've done with stuff I'm not happy with:

1. tear into squares and stick (in the original formation) onto some randomly/rapidly painted shapes
https://i.imgur.com/aJeUjPm.jpg
Yeah, still hate this one

2. Just paste some bakeproof paper over the top to obscure the details (like mumbling the poorer lyrics in a song you wrote), throw some new paint over the parts you're particulary ashamed of. It may even be possible to pass this off as a deliberate statement, ahah yes uncomfortable memories as seen "through a glass, darkly", so deep
https://i.imgur.com/yyhPlyN.jpg
Actually find this one much improved

yeah i like the second one! face silhouettes on the lower-left are like keyholes to language :D

throw some new paint over the parts you're particulary ashamed of. It may even be possible to pass this off as a deliberate statement,

i do this all the time and enjoy the cliche of it. it's one of the best parts about painting, taking something that you spent so long on and just covering it up or scraping it off or whatever. i have had long had a kind of self-destructive/impulsive tendency, and i find it matches up really well with working on a couple paintings at a time, because there is ALWAYS something that looks bad or i think could use a change or two.

Also just DESTROY the ones I really like, or more often give them away to some random person I know I will never see again, deliberately no tdocumenting them beforehand. Like, the idea that I will leave nothing when I die, but somewhere in ughLondon some family will have something of mine on their kitchen wall, "who painted that Mammy?" "I dunno, some boy I once met..."

Except The Big Green One, no-one would take that, either too big or too green. So I hung that one until Cat ripped off a corner, then put it in a cupboard. Then when Cat is dead hung it again, New Cat is eyeing it up though so maybe a repeating cycle

I think it's my greatest work, though I may be confusing the etymological meaning of Great=Big. Certainly my biggest work, painted on the back of some wall lining paper, cos we do what we can with what we have available
https://imgur.com/a/Shqe8gi

damn i fucked that up, wait a minute

https://i.imgur.com/HvrK4w2.jpeg

how large is it??

also, is Cat one cat (feline), the idea of any cat (feline), or a person (human) named Cat?

you don't have to answer any of those questions, i'm just throwing them out there :)

Maybe not as big as I may have accidentally implied, like 24"x50" Cats were assumed to be specific felines, yes

ok, doing the sale on my instagram now, with this main hub post with everything listed and the prices

phew, sold a couple early on. feels good to get past that "no one is showing up at the party" phase

I'm doing my Monthly sale right now! If you use Instagram just refer to this main post with all the details: https://t.co/ifSLqi3yNE

If not, I'll post the 9 pieces that are for sale here as well and you can DM me here if you're interested. I'll edit the thread as things sell. <3 pic.twitter.com/6FQqbZyiiD

— Zach TBD (@weinventyou) October 1, 2021

in the spirit of openness and honesty i will say that the universe will someday end

this art is formally normally known as PRINTS

come on

i was working overtime

GODDAMMIT

this art is formally known as PRINTS

*long shot of people walking around all normal like*

i am still angry that this awesome pun isn't trending but here are some prints

https://i.imgur.com/ddVwnPo.jpg

so, i got divorced and then moved to St Louis. i've been busy building my new studio, which is another way of saying "i've been building wall-easels on my living room wall so my dog doesn't lick the paint"

i'm starting up a small cassette label. i dub them all on my own. so yeah, it's that level of quality. at the same time, i sell them for as cheap as I can, and I get to make the art for it. this is for the first release (probably the only), which is a collab with me and C. Vadi. soft drive, four of horses, cover something like this:

https://i.imgur.com/xS0SZ7l.jpg

it's improvised synth but i swear it's good

That’s a lot of news! Cool painting. Everything ok?