One of my many time-wasting hobbies (a nice way of saying obsessive-compulsive black holes of life-absorption) is going to Goodwill and buying cheap junk/garbage to repaint and make into something more beautiful. I recently made another trip and purchased the thing you see in the first photo paffooney. I know that the picture doesn’t show how really bad it is. It is a good sculpture that can be turned into something with the right paint and the right skills. But it has age damage, paint splotches, stains, and moldy spots that don’t really show up in the picture. I am showing it to you now before the adventure begins, and I hope to do another post when I have it cleaned and repainted so that I can amaze you with the difference. This is a terrible time-waster that I will do because I can, and it is not meant to satisfy anybody but me.
It is not, however, the first such project. And it takes time to get to everything done. So, naturally, I have other works in progress I can show you. There are other things I have started and not yet finished.
This little beauty is actually a perfume bottle. For some reason the marketing team thought it was a good idea to put perfume into a little smiling girl who you have to twist into two pieces at the waist to get the perfume out. She was originally two separate pieces that were two solid colors. I have finished cleaning her and put yellow enamel on her hair and added white to the eyes and blouse. I know it makes her smile particularly creepy to have pure white eyes, but, hey, I’m not finished with it yet.
These schlocky little Christmas ornament angels are simply white with no ceramic glaze of any kind. They cry out for paint and color. I honestly believe I can paint them and not spoil them. In fact, I’m fairly confident that my attempt will make them better.
The owl is actually a lamp. You can tell by the cord coming out of his butt. But, of course, no bulb in there, and no way to be sure if it even works as a lamp. I am not risking a fire by plugging the thing in. But painted as an owl, it could easily become a deterrent to squirrels who want to eat apples from my wife’s two young apple trees.
Tom Sawyer here is apparently a cologne bottle, or possibly a very weird place to keep whiskey. He is very like the girl perfume bottle in that you open him up by twisting off the top of his torso, but he’s much bigger in size, suggesting they are not a Tom and Becky sort of pair. He has a hole through his right hand, top and bottom, which probably means he once had a fishing pole. His plastic top half has significant sun damage and the top of the straw hat apparently melted a bit at one point. So I can definitely do something with him to make him better and worth more than than the 50 cents he cost me.
I fully intend to re-finish all of these projects and post the results on this blog. Don’t hold your breath waiting for me to finish them… you could easily turn purple and die doing that… but I do intend to start work on these things soon.
Catch a Falling Star 
Gray Morrow
Comic book artwork grabs me constantly and makes me wonder about the lives behind the pen and ink. Artists basically draw themselves. Whether you are drawing Tarzan, Buck Rogers, or Flash Gordon… when you draw them, you are drawing yourself. My first encounter with Gray Morrow was when he drew Orion in Heavy Metal Magazine (the English version of the French Metal Hurlant).
He was capable of drawing both the grotesque and the beautiful. Violent action juxtaposed with soft and romantic moments filled with subtle colors and complex emotion. I began thinking that Gray Morrow must be a complex and interesting human being. I was soon to discover his other selves. He was the artist behind the Buck Rogers strip starting in 1979. He and Marvel writer Roy Thomas co-created the muck monster Man-Thing.
He also worked on Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and The Illustrated Roger Zelazny. Unfortunately he died in 2001 at age 67. Luckily an artist puts himself into his work, and for that reason we still have Gray Morrow with us. It is a kind of immortality.
This cover from Monsters Unleashed gives you an idea of how well Gray Morrow could draw.
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Tagged as Buck Rogers, comic art, Flash Gordon, Gray Morrow, Tarzan