Self-Promotion:
One Million-to-John
Before starting with the boring Blog stuff, just to explain the image, I've always been a fan of "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension" (1984) and was thinking about doing a series for that in the near future. So, I was primed for something Buckaroo Banzai-related and thought about the infamous Watermelon scene with Reno (Pepe Serna) and New Jersey (Jeff Goldblum). And, yeah, I know New Jersey isn't wearing his cowboy hat in the scene, but it made it easier to identify him from "Buckaroo Banzai". Well, I mean, for those of us that are into some of the more weird, cult movies from the 80's. This is one of those "If you know, you know" type posts.
On to the regularly unscheduled program: OK, this is weird... While I do check my views semi-regularly, I really don't pay them much attention, aside from "Oh, hey, that one was surprisingly popular" (the word "popular" is doing a lot of lifting), or "Oh, that thing I thought would knock everyone's socks off went nowhere." C'est la Vie. But, I am no way a slave to the Algorithm and don't bother too much one way or the other, for better or worse. I'm accustomed to my current level of mediocrity, I suppose.
But, like watching the calendar on your computer roll over to a new year, or your car's odometer get to 100,000 miles, or some similar numerical milestone, I did the same when it came to this Blog. I noticed it was probably a few days from 1,000,000 views, so I checked a little more often just to see if I could watch it roll over. Oddly, it worked out and I watched it tick up throughout the evening from 999,457 to 999,999 to 1,000,000. Ah, that OCD dopamine reward!
This is the 15th year I've been doing this Blog, and I've been doing my Figure Drawing one for 16 years, and both of them just crossed the 1,000,000 Views within a few weeks of each other, so that's very strange. Why, it seems like it was only yesterday when I was celebrating 100,000 views (actually, it was about 9 years ago in Feb. 2017). The thought of 1,000,000 views on either one of my Blogs--let along both--is mind boggling and somewhat humbling. What can I say, I'm a man of modest needs.
I noticed a large jump on the number of views and visits to this Blog starting in early 2025 about when I dropped the series of "Tron" digital paintings, and things jumped again the past few months in 2026. While it is nice to think the growth of the Blog is people finally coming around and recognizing my (cough) genius, I'm sure it is mostly due to scraping from A.I. Bots and whatnot. Nothing has really changed as far as I can tell, just "Number go up". Shrug.
Random bit of oddness: Of all the stuff I've done the past couple years when things really picked up, while there are many close runners-up, the most popular post so far was for Super-Grover. Huh. While I find it amusing and am not entirely displeased about it, I will admit to be somewhat surprised about that. I mean, it isn't even all that good of a Super-Grover digital painting and probably one I should have done traditionally, IMHO. Ah, well.
Anyhoo, I'll rub some Preparation H on my head to reduce the swelling from crossing the threshold of 1,000,000 views and get back to trying to figure out what I will be doing next. Speaking of, I should be dropping the last of the "Dune (1984)" series in a few days, and desperately trying to figure out what I will be doing for "31 Days of HELL-O-Ween". I've grown a bit bored with painting still frames from various Horror Movies, although they are fun practice to work on some painting skills. So, we'll see what happens with that. Something... different, I hope.
Thank you to everyone who has stopped by to gawk at my humble Blog--even if it is just in the same manner people rubber-neck at a car wreck. It is all greatly appreciated!
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STEP ONE: Here are the digital pencils done on a 2,000px x 2,250px @ 300dpi.
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STEP TWO: And here are the digital inks.
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STEP THREE: And here is the final image. I kept the colors relatively flat, but put a paper texture over top.
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Done digitally with Clip Studio Paint.
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