Sketchblog

Street scene

2008-01-13T19:12:00.000-08:00

Worked on this three or four hours today, and I don't know whether I'm committed enough to it to do the remaining six or so it will take to finish it the way I've envisioned it. (I'm finding that ten hours is the magic number. That's about how long it takes for me to get something so finished that i'm ready to send it out the door.

It takes alot of work to make something look like it was made with construction paper and craft glue.

all this stuff

2007-10-04T11:03:00.001-07:00

The bother-in-law* has posted, more succinctly than I ever would have, the explanation:

And I know, it's been a while.
It'll be a while longer, terribly busy.
As are we all, I suppose.
And yet.
There's all this stuff, you see.

(Haiku formatting mine.)

*The typo was accidental at first, but was also perfect, though not, I assure you, true.

Prehistory

2007-07-31T19:08:00.000-07:00

Here's some stuff from a hundred years ago that doesn't really fit in anywhere now. First off, another Mingus:

This is from a Death of a Salesman production that featured Brian Dennehy:

This is a drawing that wasn't of Alfred Hitchcock, but enough people finally had 'recognized him that I would consider just claiming that it is, but it's not a very good likeness of him, so what are you going to do:

Here's a line drawing of the School of Visual Arts, and I know Milton Glaser did teh poofy flower logo, but as far as I'm concerned, this one remains the real thing:

And finally, some spot illustrations that I wish I had in a nicer format than this squashed .jpeg, but wishes horses beggars.

Unfair

2007-07-29T17:28:00.001-07:00

Probably good for nothing at all unless you click to enlarge (not that it's good for much if you do).

I don't remember

2007-07-29T12:16:00.001-07:00

who he was, but he looks like a very nice man.

Judy Garland & Susan Sontag?

2007-07-28T17:33:00.001-07:00

Maybe? Who knows?

Mingus

2007-07-28T17:21:00.000-07:00

Look, it's time I start filling this blog with some of the self-obsessed dross for which it was created. Near-finished illustrations are nice and all, but they aren't sketches.

If I keep posting old sketch pages here, you'll see more of Charles Mingus. He's often in my thoughts and in my sketchbooks, and my dream project remains a 200-page comic detailing some episodes from his life. The note to myself on the right side of the image here reads:

Mingus, for all that his experience was defined by his color, doesn't seem from photographic evidence to have been very dark. His Asian-American features ensure that he couldn't 'pass' - but he was complected lighter, like Malcolm - not Miles -

was this one more barrier?

half yaller schitt colored motherfucker.

That last was a phrase that came from, I think, Charles's father - I forget the citation, but it was probably Beneath the underdog or Priestley's book (or Gene Santoro's book, come to think of it). It was not a compliment.

It's small, after all

2007-07-26T19:25:00.000-07:00

Submitted two logos to a competition, a few weeks ago, for a startup site having something to do with social networking. Or, er, something. For the first one, I was encouraged to use the Fibonacci spiral, and represent the company pictographically; for the second, they were looking for something more Web 2.0.

Octopus

2007-07-02T06:52:00.001-07:00

Our exciting digital future

2007-06-14T08:26:00.002-07:00

Supper

2007-05-25T20:09:00.000-07:00

#3, which I got around to in, oh, twelve days. Nuts.

Swing

2007-05-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

Second in the series. Back to the drawing board for two more.

Toss

2007-05-09T19:54:00.000-07:00

At the playground the other day, a mom (a friend) remarked that she couldn't tell who was pushing at the swings, but she knew it was a daddy, because the kids were going so high.

I'd been seeking inspiration for a short series, something current (that shows an art director that I can pop out several pieces in the same style). SO, the first installation in the illustrations for the imaginary magazine article about the way (the moms imagine) that the dads treat the kids.

Girls are cool

2007-05-06T19:43:00.000-07:00

They are.

Periodicals

2007-04-24T05:30:00.001-07:00

For reasons I think I'm still not free to go into, when we went up to Tad's wedding a few years ago, I brought these magazine covers along. I'd forgotten about them and recently stumbled over them on the hard drive.

Last leaf

2007-04-24T05:24:00.000-07:00

Authentic distress

2007-04-24T05:15:00.000-07:00

This was a BEWARE OF THE DOG sign that
got snapped in half by the wind and then buried under the winter snow. I picked it up last week, and it's now got a terrific distressed look that probably would have taken me an hour to cook up in illustrator.

Zap!

2007-03-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

I know that a bunch of image files got deleted from this blog; I don't know how, but I did it while I was uploading the last bits of the regular site (I synchronized backward, like a Bizarro-world web updater: "You, empty folder! You take precedence over full folder! Now me will throw up for breakfast!") I'm going to leave the resulting screwed-up blog entries where they are, with the thought that at some point I might go through and reload the image files. Also, I might sprout wings.

P.S. I'm already aware that while this is a nuisance in a journal devoted to the adventures of
my children, or my own sporadic bad ideas, it renders a blog devoted to hosting image files completely stupid. Yes I know this. Please don't tell me so.

Walking on, um,

2007-02-21T19:20:00.000-08:00

At one time in my life, I didn't have children. At one time, my day was my own.

At one time, I was free to light a reconstituted eggshell dramatically and take pictures of it.

Forty-one pictures of it.

I think it's safe to say I squandered some of my resources.