Phil Jones

Hallowe'en Haunted Maze

This Hallowe’en we put together a “haunted maze”, or really a short, winding tour through my sister’s back yard. I’ve always wanted to put together a haunted house, and as a kid I loved visiting houses that went the extra mile to create a spooky experience for trick-or-treaters. The weekend before Hallowe’en I brought all the props over to Jenn’s and I spray painted them with various grays and a rock texture. We had a few hay bails, which will be used to plant garlic, that we used to block out the path. Jenn made some stakes, and our friend Mackenzie figured out where each grave would go. A couple of spare tires, a frame with chicken wire over it, and a rusty, busted... We finished carving, sticking, hanging, lighting, and positioning everything just in time for our first little cowboy trick-or-treater. I rushed on some makeup with a vague idea of a grim reaper, somewhat à la Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. What resulted was actually a lot more like The Babadook. It certainly stunned, scared, and otherwise creeped out plenty of people. The whole thing was very well received, by kids and parents alike. We had a line all the way out to the street at some points. Kids would come back a second time, not even to get candy, but to experience it again. We still gave them candy, of course.We’re already figuring out how to top it next year.

Recent Art and Vacation Wrap-Up

In July 2023 I did an outline of a razor blade on Kurtis’ ankle. As you can see, it's pretty rough, with some double lines, and some less-than-full lines. Kurtis was well warned what he was getting into. I did two other tattoos that same day, and came up with the name “Janky Tats” for my tattoo endeavours.This past July I filled in Kurtis’ razor blade with black. Kinda. This is the first... L’s been on vacation for the past two weeks, so we took advantage and did some camping and touring. We went to Bon Echo Provincial Park, a place I’d only been with my family as a child, and was entirely new for Laura. This was L and I’s first camping trip alone!We arrived at the campground after driving through blinding rain and a tornado warning. We picked up some firewood then drove to our... All photos above by Laura.We also took a day trip to Prince Edward County, a small-town peninsula known for it’s many, many wineries and its peculiar, incredibly popular beach Sandbanks. L had visited last year with a friend and wanted to share the experience with me, so we went on a whirlwind tour.We started at Three Dog Winery and shared two flights with charcuterie. This turned out to be our... All photos above by Laura, except the ones of her, which were taken by me.We went for an easy hike around Pink Lake (which is actually a gorgeous emerald colour). I’m pretty sure I’ve done the hike before, possibly in CÉGEP, but it was Laura’s first time and we both loved it. We heard at least five different languages as we passed different groups on the hike. Parking was quite the ordeal. It’s... I finally downloaded Nomad Sculpt on my iPad Pro this weekend and played around with it. The first thing I did was sculpt the same weird demon face I always seem to sculpt when I’m trying out a 3D sculpting tool.

A Wonderful Weekend

L and I spent yesterday out casually cycling and trail-walking in the shallows of Gatineau Park, then lounging in the dappled shade under a tree in one of L’s favourite local parks. L painted the deep landscape in front of her; a park, a soccer field, a baseball diamond, a mosque, and an office tower. I painted this character I had drawn back in 2018, from someone else’ drawing. I don’t even... On Saturday we biked to our favourite doughnut spot, SuzyQ, and ate our bounty lounging on a picnic blanket in a park around the corner. We also finally made it to La Fiesta Latina, a fantastic Mexican place, just a couple doors down from L’s weekly restorative yoga class at Iron North.I finally fixed the Nihilist Dominos site, which was broken due to deprecation of certain PHP tags. So those...

Just finished adding all my old WordPress blog posts into Statamic. Still have to finish all the post type design and figure out the list view. I'm back, baby!