Tom Ray

Maybe the name was mentioned somewhere recently? I'm not sure. I didn't even really know what they looked like until I looked it up.

I had a few items to send out to my podcast supporters from my eBay store and then did a live stream on Instagram while I listed more items to sell from my shelves. You can see more of the stuff that I've been collecting on my eBay store Tom Ray's eBay store - https://ebay.to/2vMYStC

And the second you walk away from somewhere they would wipe it down which makes sense too.

And it was such a silly thing to burn. Wasn't sure if our smoke alarm was gonna set off one for the whole floor on our building or not. 

Jenie Gao is a full-time artist, creative director, and entrepreneur. She specializes in printmaking, murals, public installations, and arts project management. She strives to create records, cultural cornerstones, and community landmarks that claim space for diverse identities and connect us with our ecosystems. I got the chance to meet Jenie and talk at the studio she has here in Madison.

I just realized that it was a year ago today that we got the keys to the train .

So I guess I'm still going for my check-up Monday. I was not expecting that response.

Check out all the fun stuff I have at my eBay store  https://ebay.to/2vMYStC Okay! This is another one of my pop culture roadshow things where I look at some of the toys and collectibles that I have and try to learn a little something about them. This one actually connects to a lot of the previous ones that I've done with a common element. What I noticed was, I have a lot of books I have a lot of puzzles I have a lot of games and one thing keeps popping up on them and it's this Whitman publishing company Racine, Wisconsin.  Items in this show Big Little Books, Barney Baxter & Jack Armstrong  Walt Disney Flip-it Book Whitman Huey Dewey & Louie round puzzle Donkey Party Game 1970 Betty Crocker Recipe Card Box Dell Comics Daffy Duck Krazy Ikes

I wish we would have had the time to set everyone up before the city-wide quarantine happened. Being able to see their computers would be so much easier. 

In an episode of my podcast with comic artist Carli Ihde she mentioned some one-off comic book stories that influenced her artistically and with their stories. The best part is that they don't involve any previous knowledge of comics or superheroes, so it's a great place to start! All these books are available as digital or physical as well. The Pro The Pro is a prestige format one-shot comic book written by Garth Ennis, with pencils and lettering by Amanda Conner and inks by Jimmy Palmiotti. A parody of mainstream superhero comics, the story details the brief career of an unnamed prostitute given superhuman powers by an alien called the Viewer. The Pro reluctantly joins the League of Honor. Just when you think Garth Ennis has gone too far, just when you thought it was safe to walk the streets, just when you thought no one would go near the idea of the world's first superhero prostitute... here comes THE PRO! NOTE: This comic is for adult viewers only, due to

It looked like something that would have been in one of the new Star Wars movies.

Another thing I've been meaning to do for a while. 

This is a vlog I started about how I'm running my own business from home. Spent the day packaging some stuff I'm gonna send out. But, the day I started recording this the world had just begun to change as I found out when I tried to get a coffee.  You can visit my eBay store to check out all my retro items from the 1960s - 1990s https://ebay.to/2vMYStC

I know it was totally obvious that was gonna happen in a comic, but it really did happen.

Carli Ihde has worked for comic book companies such as DC , IDW and Dynamite . Carli is a freelancer here in Wisconsin and has also created murals, installation art, chalk drawing and currently is working as a tattoo artist.

It's hard not to listen to her while I'm doing mine.

I've been meaning to try this for a while but kept forgetting. I'll post what I did when the episode with artist  Carli Ihde comes out this Sunday.

It feels like it was a spot in my brain I was looking at to see it up there. 

By that time I had spent almost an hour trying to figure it out. But it's one of those things where it would have kept bugging me until I knew why it was happening.

It's at that point of the year where I still smell a lot of fireplaces. I love that.

This is a cartoon short that I made a while back. I had this animated series idea that I was kicking around about a monster that lived in a house that was haunted by humans. I never really finished writing the story itself. But I did do this. One day I was in my kitchen and I kept hearing this chirping noise. I looked out the window and the chirping noise was actually this chipmunk right outside the window eating an acorn. I had my digital recorder with me and I recorded the sound. I decided I would animate the sound I recorded just to do kind of a mood for what the character and the look of the cartoon would be like. The whole thing took just a few hours. But this is all I've ever really done with the idea. I've always wanted to try and finish the story.

It was funny we talked to people all day it seemed.

At jobs I've had over the years doing web development they always ask me to find out how to do things like this. I thought I could share with people what I learned in case they would like to know. Here is the video I made about it  https://www.tomrayswebsite.com/2020/03/from-train-car-how-do-i-live-stream-my.html

We were just down at the train car doing our weekly "has anything changed" stuff. It hasn't, we still can't get in there. But, I keep getting a lot of questions today about band shows getting canceled because of people wanting to prevent sickness in public places. I’ve been getting these questions because my band Lorenzo's Music, we've been live streaming for some time now. We've been doing live events because a lot of our listeners that we have are actually overseas. So we actually do a lot of live streaming events. I thought I'd just offer up some simple ways to do it and a way to even sell tickets. We've done it with three camera setups, private groups, we've done it just turning on the camera at practice. I would say the easiest way to do it is straight from my phone on Facebook. The condenser mic on the camera is perfectly fine. If you actually wanted to do an event, say you got a show canceled and you wanted to stream live and charge a

Martel Chapman is an artist around the Madison area. As a kid, his interests were very similar to what mine were back then, comic book art and listening to rap and metal music. Then he found the music of John Coltrane and it changed everything for him, including artistically. Now his style is more Improvisation in sound; improvisation in form.

It made total sense to me.

I don't even really remember why I started listening to it.

They way they spoke I thought it was something I absolutely had to do right now. Like I was going to have to run right in. But a year?

It's like I'm still going to be late for something but I don't have anything I need to go to.

Our mutual pranks started when the first week I worked with them they put my coffee mug in jello. We've had fun ever since. 

I thought it was a funny comeback but I'm not sure they even heard me.

It was actually kinda cool I was able to fix it from my car. And I got like 5 more comments like that on YouTube too. Random words and a number. No idea what they mean. 

TacoCat Creations was born out of a need for cool, quality, and unique cat toys and accessories. Megan started out making products for a pet store she worked at. Eventually, it turned into a full-time business and her partner David was able to leave his job and join Megan to help it grow. Also I decided last week when I began working full-time on my own thing here that I was just going to start doing everything under my own name from now on. The Tom Ray dot com URL was taken, so I'm going to just put my name in front of what I do and the new website is now https://www.tomrayswebsite.com :) And the podcast is now called " Tom Ray's Art Podcast ". You can hear more at the beginning of this episode.

When I decided I wanted to try and do something different with my life back in 2017 I didn't know what I wanted it to be. I was also afraid to put my own name out there. But now that I'm giving it a real try I figure it's time to just use my own name for it.

Seems like I'll have to.

It wasn't involuntary, I just noticed I kept doing it. So I'm trying to stop doing it.

Right?

They've been walking around the building so much in the past year the novelty has worn off. They may as well be giant robins.

It was a unique day. 

J.L. Westover is the artist behind the webcomic Mr. Lovenstein . His work is known for its dark humor paired with a soft, cartoonish art style. I got the chance to meet him and talk about how he made a living out of posting comics online.