This week your humble blogger is still coping with The 2023 PopCult Gift Guide, which winds up this week, and I didn’t have any time to whip up a new piece of art, but I do have a failed curiosity from over the summer to share.

What you see above is a Chicago scene, inspired by a photo I took at The Quincy Station on The L in the Loop. I had the idea of eventually painting this scene, but this is a bit of an experiment.

Whilst rooting around in my archives, I found one unused piece of Craftint DuoTone paper that I bought back in 1988. I also found two bottles with the “developing” solution. Amazingly enough, they were not totally dried out. I have no idea how that didn’t happen. I hadn’t taken any extraordinary measures to store them safely. But there was a little bit left in each bottle.

Craftint DuoTone was paper with a pre-printed cross-hatching pattern which you made visible by painting the shadows with the solution. This turned the faint blue lines black so that they could be reproduced.

The piece of paper I found had faded to the point where the blue shading lines were barely visible. I decided to try and use it anyway. I drew out the scene with my Blackwing Palamino pencil, tightened it up with a charcoal pencil and wax pencil, and then applied the developer solution (which, by the way is highly toxic, which is why they don’t make this stuff anymore). It worked, in spots. There was a bit of an iffy section near the middle where it didn’t work at all, and other areas where it was spotty. The trash receptacle looked so bad that I went back over it with a heavy charcoal pencil.

And it stank. Seriously, I tossed out the bottles after a couple of hours because it smelled so bad. The art was put into an old magazine-sized comic book bag with a dryer sheet, where it sat for months.

It was, in the grand scheme of things, a pretty huge waste of time. If I want that type of shading I can do it in the computer with hardly any effort at all. This was just me trying to do some real-world art while my fingers were working. I may revisit this scene in paint in the future, but since this piece was sort of done and had finally quit stinking and I didn’t have anything else ready, I figured I’d share my failed experiment with you.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a brand-new episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM a brand-new edition of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

Happily, I have playlists for these shows.  At 2 PM Nigel Pye brings you an hour of Psychedelic Shack, and this week he has some more contemporary mind-expanding aura chex mix for you, along with some vintage goodies. Check out the playlist…

Psychedelic Shack 083

The Kinks “Animal Farm”
Polyphonic Spree “Shadows On The Hillside”
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets “Pillhouse”
The Beatles “If I Needed Someone”
Jimi Hendrix “Purple Haze”
Madness “Round We Go”
Tina Turner “Under My Thumb”
Nazareth “Morning Dew”
Rupert Hine “Kerosene”
Jerry Harrison “Fast Karma-No Questions”
Lucid Sins “Catch The Wild”
The Searchers “Popcorn Double Feature”
The Settlers “Major To Minor”
The Flying Machine “Strawberry Fool”

Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM.

At 3 PM Herman Linte takes over with a two-hour mixtape edition of Prognosis.  This episode brings you two hours of Peter Gabriel, recorded live in concert in 1983, when his band included Tony Levin, Jerry Marotta and Larry Fast.  Check out the playlist…

Prognosis 110

Peter Gabriel Live

“Across the River”
“I Have The Touch”
“Not One Of Us”
“The Family And The Fishing Net”
“Shock The Monkey”
“Family Snapshot”
“Intruder”
“Humdrum”
“Games Without Frontiers”
“Lay Your Hands On Me”
“Solsbury Hill”
“I Don’t Remember”
“The Rhythm Of The Heat”
“D.I.Y.”
“I Go Swimming”
“San Jancinto”
“No Self Control”
“On The Air”
“On Presuming To Be Modern”

You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM.

At 8 PM you can hear an encore of The RFC Black Friday Christmas Special.

Monday at 9 PM the Monday Marathon presents ten hours of a selection of our afternoon music specialty shows.