I Feel So Violated

I don’t consider myself an artist.  I really REALLY don’t, because I’ve seen real art, and love to look at real art.   I know real art is something you suffer for.  Real art is something you are driven to create.  Real art is something which transforms both artist and viewer, and leaves a lasting impression on both.  I… doodle.  Often.

That said, I really love creating pure black and white images.  If not plain black and white, then I love making images in 16 colors or less.  Whatever it takes to make an image recognizable, without being a full color image.  I often start with a photo, strip it of color, then use a brush on Windows Paint and begin slowly creating large areas of color and smooth transitions.  The end result, if done correctly, should look like something which could be easily screen printed.

One example is my Twitter avatar, which is always 16 colors or less.  I started with a photo of myself, and have drawn all the changes thereafter.  Another example, I’m happy to say, is currently @LucyBall15‘s Twitter header image.  That image took me about a day, and ended up using 6 colors (including black and white) to create a recognizable image of Lucille Ball.

Sometimes Google Creeps Me Out

The common denominator here is that I need to find a photo to paint on top of, just to get shape and basic color ideas.  So I recently wanted to doodle some tentacles.  You know, like octopus, squid, or any other cephalopod would have.  Don’t judge me!  Anyway… here I was, actually GETTING computer time, and not after 9pm when the kids go to bed, and I went over to ol’ Google images to search for tentacles.

Oh. My. Fuck.

Okay, I know the Japanese are fans of tentacle porn.  I do… I don’t lead a sheltered life or anything.  But I didn’t know that particular love had infected the entire interwebs and googlenets to the point that a search for ANY image pertaining to “tentacles” would return mass results of boom anime babes (thanks Barenaked Ladies for that term) being tentacle raped.  I mean, MY LORD, talk about a search term which is NSFW!  Don’t ever run that search.

You’re running that search right now, aren’t you.  Seriously, stop.

No, SERIOUSLY.

SEE?!  I warned you!  I told you it was horrific!  And yet, you wouldn’t listen.  Seriously, I feel like Google images tentacle raped ME.

No… I said rape, not grape. Also, WHY is this an actual BEVERAGE?!

I suppose it’s all my fault, really.  I mean, I could have easily had the parental controls set on my Google search strings, but it normally isn’t necessary.  For one thing, the kids refuse to use my old computer.  For another, it’s not like I searched for “Asian bondage porn” or “barnyard foot fetish” (is that a thing?  It sounds like a thing.  If it isn’t a thing, give the internet five minutes, it’ll be a thing.)  I searched for the appendage which cuddle fish use to navigate the ocean depths and give each other hugs (and not rape schoolgirls).

In the end, my exclamation of “oh my lord” caught he attention of the kids, and I quickly hit the X button before they got a look at what I had on my screen.  I came back to Google after the kids had gone to bed and grabbed this image:

Which, I LOVE.  What a perfect photograph of a tentacle.  And then, I promptly turned it into this little doodle (after several hours of work):

So, there it is.  It’s kinda cool… totally something I could work into another image or turn into a stencil or something.  Still… even after all my work, there’s the images of the original Google search burned into my mind.  It may look like an awesome black and white image of tentacles, but to me it will always be more like…