Skip to main content

Project March: Looney Tunes Paintings

 The What

To paint a series of Looney Tunes backgrounds.

 The Why

I really enjoy painting, but I don't make the time to do it enough. The last painting I made was just over a year ago. The one before that was the year before. In the spirit of my monthly projects, I threw "painting" on the list of options not really sure what the focus would be. And there are fewer things that terrify me more in this life than the proverbial blank page/canvas.

So I needed a focus.

Nearly every Saturday afternoon, my man-friend and I frequent a bar in downtown Chicago where we enjoy beers, burgers and heckling our favorite bartender. It's become somewhat of a tradition that the bartender will change the channel on the television at the far end of the bar to show cartoons, simply for our viewing pleasure. So the two of us will sit there for a couple of hours, indulging via our stomachs as well as our eyes.

A couple of months ago, man-friend and I were discussing the artwork that goes into cartoons and he introduced me to an Instagram account that features posts of Looney Tunes backgrounds, sans the characters.

I. Love. It.

I decided that "at some point," I was going to paint one or two of these backgrounds to have hanging in my house. But it's very difficult to pick just one or two backgrounds. There are so many beautiful choices.

And I guess that's the lightbulb of the whole thing. Why do something "at some point," when March was calling!

How It's Going


It's going well! It's March 6th and I've already completed two canvases. I'm energized about the project, inspired by the art, and quite frankly, simply can't wait to keep going.

I felt so accomplished after having completed the first one (the classic "That's All Folks!" background). The part that keeps hitting me with all of this is that I could have gone the whole month or year even having not picked up a paintbrush. The total number of paintings in 2023 could have been zero.

But now, it's two. So far!

I had been afraid that if I chose "painting" for the month, I'd quickly run out of steam or get frustrated, but having this taste of success under my belt, even if the rest of the month sucks (which it totally won't), the whole thing has already been a massive win in my book.

Popular posts from this blog

Project February: Humorous Essay Writing

 The What Humorous essay writing. The Why This one was an easy choice. I'm currently enrolled in a class at Second City called Writing the Humorous Personal Essay . The class only runs through the end of the month, so, bingo! I took Stand-Up 1  through Second City late last year, which culminated in a final performance in front of an actual audience. Now, it wasn't quite my debut Netflix special; it was friends and family members of mine and my fellow classmates, but man, what a rush. It was something I signed up for to get me outside of my comfort zone and something to push me to just try . I fully intend on taking Stand-Up 2  at some point during 2023, but I needed a break. It's exhausting  going to a 3-hour class once a week where you're expected to perform and think on your feet. Not to mention that I feel I'm still changed from the pandemic, and I've grown more... anti-social? How It's Going The month is not over yet. And man, February has flown by. But...

June Ambitions

 Dear Diary, OMG, it's been forever . Enough of that. It has been a few months, but life happens. What did I do in April and May? I'd say I spent my creative time in May "doing art." Mostly I was getting back into the habit of drawing in a sketchbook with some kind of regularity.  This carried over into May, when I also completed this painting, which kind of started the whole, "I want to paint Looney Tunes backgrounds" thing in the first place: Also in May, I told myself that I was going to "write more." This did  happen to an extent. And I think more importantly, I realized that if I want to achieve that goal, I work better if I have some kind of outline and some kind of guidelines. But as everyone knows from all of history, setting and keeping to new habits is very difficult. Especially when you're the only one to hold yourself accountable. However, where the writing was sparse, I'd say that my mind was alive with new ideas and forming so...

The Year That Got Away

June was the last blog post that I wrote this year, which might seem like I fell off the face of my own planet, but it's understandable why that was a breakpoint in 2023 for me. June was so different than I could have imagined going into 2023. I spent ~3 weeks on the back side of June in Connecticut, house/cat-sitting for a friend. Things I experienced: the idea of living on the east coast the idea of living in a small town being able to go for a wide variety of hikes solitude homesickness new art experimentation cats The trip wasn't something I knew was on my horizon going into 2023. I had had this daydream during the pandemic that I could just pick up and go live anywhere for a while. My work was fully remote, so the world was legitimately my oyster. The part where I got stuck and never took the leap is the fact that I'd be paying rent at home, and also at whatever romantic location I chose to relocate to temporarily. So when I was asked by a friend if I wanted to stay in...