I hoof it to the big ol' barn and I don't really see anything, at first. But then as I start to look at some of the finer details, I see that someone has painted things with pictures and images. I see a very large wash tub with a cute painting of a platypus on it. I do believe that I have just hit the jackpot! As I step into the barn, I hear someone humming from inside one of the big stalls. I peer into the stall and I see a big ol' sheep! He's all fluffy and woolly, and stuffed into a pair of farmer coveralls. He has paint smudged here and there on patches of his wool and across parts of his coveralls. He has buckets of paint strewn about the stall and a big paint brush in his hand. He obviously hasn't heard me walk in as he hasn't stopped humming and wiggling his cropped tail about while he paints the wall of the big stall.


I accidentally kick over a bucket which startles him and causes him to leap and loudly shout out, "BAAAAA-AA-A-A-A-AAA!!". He looks at me with his eyes all big and his nostrils all flared out. "What the hay?!!!", he snorts at me. I laugh as I introduce myself. He laughs and says, "Darn it girl! You gave me a lot more curl with that scare tactic of yours!" I apologize and explain to him that I was some how pulled into this strange place. He says to me, "Oh, by the way, my name is Lousy Day, or LD for short. I see that you are, um, a villain?!!" I saw that he was starting to back away from me, and then he suddenly trips backwards over a bucket of paint. I start laughing and he says to me "BAH! Now look what you made me do!" We both laugh so hard we start snorting like piggies. As I help LD get all cleaned up, I ask him if he wouldn't mind sharing some of his art work with me.


I ask LD how long he has been a member of the City of Heroes family. He thinks for a moment and sheepishly says, "Oh, for exactly 57 months which makes me an olddddd sheep!". I giggle and ask him about some of his early work. LD says to me, "I never really considered myself artistic - it was after college that I got into drawing. I guess I could have been artistic if I had the desire when I was young. I started playing the violin when I was like 5, but not by choice. I played it for years but never improved much because I absolutely hated practicing. Same story with piano. I did like building spaceships with Legos , and I think I drew some cars with crayons when very young. I didn't engage in a lot of artistic activities once I was in school, though. The thing with me is, I can't be forced into doing something and do well. Ironically, music became my passion in college, and that is when I came to the bitter realization that I should have practiced hard when I was young."



With curiosity, I ask LD if he has any favorite CoX pieces that he has completed. LD motions for me to follow him up the ladder to the hay loft. But instead of there being stacks of hay bales, there are pails of paint and brushes every where sitting on top of a huge tarp that has been spread out across the wood floor. On the walls, there are awesome looking murals. LD smiles brightly and says, "I have two. First is Comrade Hero and Graviton Girl. Personally, it is a monumental piece for me. I wanted to see what I could do, and I stretched myself in every way. I remember the sketch alone took 20+ hours to get where I was happy with the composition, anatomy and details. Painting the piece took even longer, because I had to study what colors look like under certain lighting conditions. Do you see the blue in Graviton Girl's costume and the US flag? It is not blue, but actually red with lower saturation. (You can use a color picker in a painting software to verify this.) Our eyes perceive it as blue because of highly saturated reds around it.