
2025 February 24







Feels like the acrylic ink and/or fountain pen ink infused in clear elmer’s glue phase is fading, I desperately need to resupply and can’t be bothered to buy when four months ago they’d have been bought week’s ago, too many niggling demoralizing metaphors nagging, the above now glued back-to-back and in the paper press to bond with this below, the end product my son-in-law’s giftmas present


Before I forget to archive, I often do when post hexjeffs there before here. Both are currently in a crank paper press while the glue that binds them cures


I currently only use pencil in writing tablet but for years I used fountain pens, it took years to transition and will soon be illegal in America and punishable by death.
I threw away all my fountain pen ink but two, the two I thought could but couldn’t save the pens, Ive emptied the bottle I had of each into a squeeze bottle and infused them in clear elmers glue and stirred for fifteen minutes then upside-downed squeeze bottle then hourglassed it the other way, they don’t stain fingers like when no glue, both in the above, the brown and beloved noxzema bottle blue


Will be glued back to back with the green one below in bricks

While I was ignoring this joint while not painting in Michigan WordPress beheaded the second avatar that haunted the first for weeks though I followed instructions including clicking the vital save button, best surprise of this week, the last time I fuck with the avatar until the next time I do



The post below finished, not touching it again, learn when to abandon, yo, first time I used straight watercolor in months if not year or two. I’ve discovered the longer I let the first draft cure the crisper the wet interaction between first draft second draft – curing prevents the heavier from flooding the lighter. Meanwhile:


Off to the shelf to dry for a week, photo in bad light of best when wet. New black, five parts black, two parts sienna and umber each, one part fire engine red, so far…
Current plan: when canvas and glue/acrylic ink completely dry, watercolor maybe, I know how gouache leaches, watercolor ink?
Another hiatus starts……. now

So to remove one or the other or both and add a new avatar I need register for and teach myself something called gravatar and at first glance fuck that (I would keep and/or replace the red, definitely want to delete me). I just renewed wordpress for another year, it’s not buyer’s remorse, it’s buyer’s self-contempt in service to fine self-servicing metaphors abounding
The above’s paper scissored into a rough circle and glued to the below, scissored into a rough circle, currently in the excellent book press I have access to, once solidly glued it will be put in a box and not looked at again until time to destroy the contents of that box, I know it’s not the best way to express myself to others but currently this is the only way to express myself to me


Dead already by five minutes, deader by the second, clear elmer’s glue and acrylic ink sustain but I insist gouache mirror my joints hike-wrung to death, dyingwet. Self-portrait for my 65th on the 28th

I seethe then go disc
golf, I bought underweight arch
angels for 13
at Seneca. I
make myself this like this. I’ll
hate this in morning


Horses are slaughtered
for watercolor paper
that bleeds at the rate
I prefer. Elmer’s
glue gelatinizes clear
into the amber
I think makes me cle-
ver. Bad fakes good fakes fake am-
ber fakes me fake clean


My aoxomoxoaphase. Dead already except digitally
Wet sopped up before it dried to mud. 6th palimpsest


First two after the two week hiatus, I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I started again and that alone makes the hiatus successful
It’d flashed but never tableted that while most of these meant to spin four-sidedly in your hands I always post here the one of four on each I like best and without fail that one is the one upside-down from the orientation of the hex when permanent compositional boundaries set: whatever I make, upside-down be best and makes me laugh, and that alone makes the hiatus successful


Who I am, who I want to be



This version one, sopped post-photo, see what Sunday

My left eye above, my right eye below



Just now, still wet.
I mentioned at BLCKDGRD a hiatus from these squares the week after next because – I didn’t say this there – my wife will be in Iceland with my daughter for two weeks on their dream vacation
I need process why I do this and need write in tablet with pencil to answer, what am I doing, how seriously do I take this as sustenance if I forget what I painted yesterday and how?
Two hours later (as in just now): above sopped up

The top headshot be dead, the below dying, if alive tomorrow I will kill it



Don’t write a poem about
you and circles I tell me
How writing poems about
circles, the compulsion
to write them makes me
paint circles about circles
And those things I make
which I can’t call art
because there’s boxes of them
I can’t throw away in case
I get famous. Where I spot
on the spectrum I’m not sure
but am glad I was not
my third grade teacher
Why I hate revisions
Why I forget what I made
once I plunge publish
and put in a box and then seal



Yes! I think about the mediums I use and how these start dying a second after applied, this started 30 minutes ago, finished few minutes ago, look at it dull


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Left eye up, right eye down




Full size HERE. There *has* changed though work still to do before it’s here. Manic sideways, me, my apologies, I’m desperate to find solutions I’m too lazy to seek



Fountain pen ink (except for the white eye), expensive from when I diddled fountain pens, I’ve stopped, fine metaphors abound, might as well spill it on watercolor blocks

First self-portrait of 2024, state of mind starting the year, not completely on fire yet. Gouache, watercolor ink, acrylic ink, fountain pen ink. clear elmer’s glue. Will compare to first of 2025 if world (probably, or at least the earth) and me (possibly) are still here then

Awoogahex above one side, an attempt at calm below the other, latest card in Deck of Hexjeffs, glued and bonding for the weekend in the sweet bookbinder’s handpress I have access to, I’ve no idea how many more than 52 there are now and not counting
