High On Poker

No online poker and all work makes HighOnPoker a dull blog.

That seems to be my internal motto lately. I’ve been working hard at the office, juggling cases and making things happen. Things have been pretty exciting, with some new large cases, a new associate who does my bidding, and a action packed schedule, with near daily depositions or inspections. Hell, tonight at 1am, I have an inspection at a meat processing facility. That’s all I can say on that subject, but I can assure you that a 1am inspection is not the norm.

Fortunately, the lack of online poker has resulted in some positive things. Mostly, it’s been an artistic Renaissance for yours truly. In high school, I was an art enthusiast, but the feeling that others were better always held me back. When I did something, I wanted to be the best. So when college came around, I basically abandoned the arts and focused on more important things like drinking and getting laid.

Interestingly, when I started to play poker, I didn’t suffer from the same problems. Even when I was losing consistently at online poker,  I still loved the game. I think that part of me was ingrained as a young kid. I always loved games. Now, this part is going to sound a tad conceited, but I was also a very smart kid. As a result, when it came to a lot of mental games or even video games, I had skillz. After a while, I developed a perverse love of challenges when it comes to games. It’s not there with most things. If its an athletic competition, well, frankly I can’t really compete with the best. If it’s a work thing, I don’t want the competition. But if its a game, I like to know that I can lose and that there is room to grow. If you win every time, what’s the point?

Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather win than lose any day of the week. But losing at poker, at least initially, was part of the appeal. It meant I had room to grow, and challenges to overcome. Hell, its enough to make me want to check out websites that review online poker rooms to find out if any of the US-facing sites are worth checking out.

But back to the art. With no online poker, I’m like a heroine junkie who finally kicked the habit but is suffering through the reality that life is just boring. Most nights, if the TV is on, my hands are just aching for something to do. It used to be online poker. Now, it’s back to art.

So, what have I produced so far? I have two wire sculptures that came out fairly well. The first is of a lizard of sorts, intended as a gift for my brother-in-law. He didn’t love it, so I decided to do a smaller version of a piece I created in high school called Tug of War. The piece is a skinny wire figure and a fat wire figure playing tug of war, all done with one continuous piece of wire. Pictures to come soon of both pieces.

The other two pieces were pointelism pieces, pen and ink drawings consisting solely of dots. For the first one, I was inspired by my new cat, Deuce. I was literally looking for something to do one night when I decided to start sketching the cat. From the sketch, I became inspired to delve into pen and ink, one of my favorite mediums. From there, I decided on pointillism, as a throwback to my HS days, when I made a pointillism skull, a complete knockoff of a project my older brother was doing from school. The result:

Admittedly, the picture was before the piece was completed, as you can see from the left side. Once the cat was done, I decided that it was too plain, and opted to add the 2d motif (after all, my cats full name is Deuce Diamond).

From that piece, I became inspired once again, this time from the cats of wifey Kim’s good friend Genny. Genny’s cats, Tiki and Moe, are orange in color, so I decided to try something entirely new (to me) by using four different colored pens to create color and depth in a pointillism drawing. The results:

In this case, the paper was a bit warped, since I was scanning it on a crappy scanner and the paper was too large. The impression, though, is there.

So there you have it. No online poker makes idle hands, and idle hands make art (its better than some of the alternatives).

Until next time, make mine poker!