Uncle Josh on Finishing the Hat

My church choir does an annual fundraiser of Broadway tunes. This year I tried to sing “Finishing the Hat” from Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George. I even painted two pointillism hats to donate to the auction that accompanies the show every year.

Let’s just say that several mistakes were made.

I am a failed art student. Back in the 90’s I thought I was going to go into theater professionally, but my girlfriend at the time pushed me into art and graphic design. I cannot draw. At least, I couldn’t draw without looking at the paper like the teachers wanted me to. My natural technique of sketching loose lines horrified my negative-space addicted instructors. Computers were just becoming a useful tool in art and my first graphic design instructor didn’t trust them because he didn’t know how to use them. By my last year I was an expert in Freehand and Quark X Press, which everyone uses today, right?^[1]Fortunately user documentation was really good and taught principles and how the apps got there. They also came in box sets. I regret dumping those books because they were excellent. Even Microsoft … Continue reading Anyway my degree ended up being in “Liberal Arts” which is a generic get-out-of-college kind of degree.

The art supplies have been in storage for decades. The local Craft Warehouse is closing, and everything is on sale, and I had this shoot-for-the-moon idea to actually paint a hat for both shows. A lot of money was spent on paper and paints. A lot of time was spent trying to figure out how to paint like Seurat. A lot of time was spent painting.

A total of $25 was raised in the auction by them. Because a friend bought one.^[2]The auction brought in over $5,000 over two nights, so my raindrop wouldn’t have been missed.

But what this travesty has done in unlocked my old desire to create art.

The idea of pointillism appears to me in a mathematical way. I had hoped to use only the primary colors, but as I have also spent a lot of time in ray tracing and computer graphics, I’m used to an RGB color model instead of using the CMYK model paints use. Creating the color blending only with points is actually not how Seurat painted. There was a basic wash of color and then instead of dots, he used small strokes, which I used to indicate the woven texture I thought the hat would have been made out of, although it’s quite possible the hat was actually felt. He used more than three basic colors for everything, too.

The next travesty was my performance of the song which I won’t torture anyone with. Lets just say I learned a few important things:

1. Sondheim can be fucking tough to sing.
2. Mandy Patinkin is a hard act to follow (as is Jake Gyllenhaal)
3. Even dropping the key down wasn’t enough for me to hit the high notes successfully.
4. I completely failed in my preparation of the song.

I did not practice nearly enough, or well enough. I tried visualizing my performance, but most every time I thought “here’s my song” the song I sang last year came out of my mouth^[3]”Who I’d Be” from Shrek.

In the end I couldn’t remember the words and I couldn’t hit the notes. I am disappointed in myself for these failures and for letting my bad mood affect others. The importance of paying attention is yet another lesson I have to re-learn.