My illustration is an abstraction derived from the layout of structures and spaces on my squat down by the Big Muddy. The turgid Waddy Loopy is a conduit of Texas Hill Country drainage that lumbers past me on its way to do a bay dump south of here. (See note.)

What a body wanted for his abstraction was clout: hard-edge pigment-power with boss saturation. What a body got was the loose-goose-dookie translucency of tinted water, aka acrylic. Fool, gesso up the cardboard first! Ignore that voice. The point of smearing cardboard is to smear cardboard.

Note
Say “waddy” in Arabic, you’ve said the word for “river valley.” Guadix, Guadiana, Guadalquivir, Guadalete, Guadarrama, Guadalajara, Guadalmena, and yes, Guadalupe are rivers in old Spain. The “lupe” part may be from Latin “lupus” for “wolf,” a mashup from the elbow-rubbing of Semitic and Latin dialects in the good olde tymes. I christen my river The Guadalobo. The etymology has the pleasantly bogus plausibility of popular wisdom.

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