Get Up and Dance to the Music

Alright, so it's been a while.

To tell the truth, I haven't gotten to do a whole lot of finished drawing lately. Mostly, it's been a lot of back to basic with the most loathed of modern words: practice.

I'm largely self-taught, and the few art classes I took never did much to stress technique and craft. That was something I came to appreciate as I got older. It wasn't all about some bullshit notions of style and some personal vision. And though that may be true for some, to achieve the type of look that I have always wanted to achieve, it came down to technique and craft.

In the last few years, I've been proud to call a number of my peers mentors. Their advice has brought me along by leaps and bounds. That, and practice. And well, a little bit of reckless experimentation.

So while the above was just meant to be a quick throwaway piece as a part of my practice, it came out far more finished than I had hoped for.

Guess I can always count on funk.

Enjoy.

For Observation...

"I Have Come from Heaven to Stay Your Anger..."

Athena.

That is all.

My Idea of a Father's Day Card...

I was a movie fanatic from a very early age. My dad enjoyed a good flick, but was never as crazy about the celluloid as I was. There were, however, three things we could almost always agree on to sit down and watch together: any Bond film, the Clint Eastwood catalogue, and anything starring the late great Peter Sellers...especially the Pink Panther films. I couldn't say what it was, but I remain a fan of all three to this day...and we do still take one in from the above categories over the holidays and whatnot.

So abhorring most anything to come out of the card section of the local drug store, and being able to draw, I laid down this illustration on some nice watercolor paper to serve as my card. I believe it's from The Pink Panther Strikes Again, which features what is probably the best of Inspector Clouseau's training duels with his man servant, Cato (Burt Kwouk).

And on to a Warm Bed and Rest...

The long journey across the hotel lobby calls this week to a close. Cheers!

A Time for Tea

Today's piece had its debut delayed, but everything finds its time and and place. And now, like its central figure, one can relax, take a sip, and enjoy the view.

Above the clouds

We'll close out this week, with another flight of fancy.

I've never counted drawing architecture as one of my strong suits, but it's never too late to expand one's repertoire. The more you draw, the easier it is to draw anything.  The easier it is, the quicker you can draw things that, in many respects, you could care less about but that expand the depth of your imagery.  And now that I sound like some motivational art text book, I'll bid you adieu.

Donar's Oak

Today's drawing is an illustration for my new short story, "Donar's Oak". I'm very proud of the drawing and even more proud of the story. Both are definitely some of my best work.  So once your eyes do scope over these lines, please take minute or two to look over my words!

"Donar's Oak" can be found here!: http://jottify.com/works/donars-oak/

"Fuzzy Wuzzy was a Bear..."

More whimsy in ink.

“Yet nothing did he dread, but euer was ydrad.” - Spencer

As I'd been encouraged to include more flora in my drawings, here is today's bit of whimsy.

"I Have Sung Storms to Sleep."

The Golden Age of American Illustration Show I took in at Pepperdine continues to put a bee into my bonnet. And if the stings are inspiration, then Sting me, by God, Sting ME!  Although arguably, a wasp would be more appropriate. I'd hate to think I make one decent piece and never get another dose.

In any event, the show had several pieces by two of my favorite pen & ink men: Charles Dana Gibson and Joseph Clement Coll. Master draughtsmen both, Gibson had a gift for beauty and elegance with a dose of humor under the veneer, and Coll...criminey...Coll wielded a pen more elegantly than most can wield a brush. In some ways, looking at their work in person could convince you to never fling ink again, but all too often, aiming for the stars helps you to fall in just the right range.

Having said all that, this piece was another inspired by classical mythology, in this case, the death of Orpheus. When the "father of all songs" failed to bring his beloved back from the Underworld, he was said to spurn all affection and was eventually ripped to pieces for it. (Although, as this is the internet, I feel compelled to mention that in some versions of the stories, he only spurned all women and turned to boys.)  His body floated down the Hebrus river with his lyre still playing a mournful tune that bummed all of nature out until he emerged into the sea and washed up on the coast of Lesbos. My drawing enters the scene there, as a bather discovers the musician's remains.

For Me Ma...and Me Gramma...

For Mother's Day, I did a pair of cards for my mother and grandmother. I figured some classic storybook imagery would be splendid.

On a trivial side note: Some of the most iconic story book art of all time would be the Wonderland and Looking Glass illustrations by humorist and political cartoonist John Tenniel, while all but the first of the Oz books were illustrated by one John R. Neill

The Kick is Good

...And the disparate imagery comes to a close for this week.

Piloting the Underground

Of late I've been particularly inspired by the draughtsmanship of the late 19th/early 20th Century illustrators, and have been making an effort to incorporate their since of line into my own work. Funny how some it adds some weight to the silly sh!t I come up with to draw sometimes.

Play Ball

This week's series of sketches feature some of the playful interplay of disparate imagery. Enjoy.

A Ride Through the Garden

It's been a longer hiatus from the blog here than I thought. Alas. 

Well, I'm back today with this piece that I finished a short while back. A bit of fun, a trifle. I had never considered really pursuing this watercolor over ink drawings, but after my trainwreck piece became such a hit, I've given it a few more shots. So far, the response has been quite positive. 

I certainly hope you, the viewer, enjoy this one. We'll see what else I can whip up for your eyes soon enough.

"If I Only Had a Heart..."

I must have Oz on the brain. It is in the air...and in the theaters apparently.

Anyhow, this week's only post is my second random depiction of the Tin Man.

"Bring in that Floating Fat Man...The Baron."

It was in high school that Dune, the movie made a return to my attention when me and a friend popped it into the VCR late one night. This touched off a run of collecting Dune paraphernalia, starting with one of my high school girlfriends picking me up a Rabban action figure, in bubblepack, from a local comic shoppe for my birthday. From there, I ended up with the comics (amazingly illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz), the kid's storybook, the movie poster, the other two Harkonnen action figures, the movie cards, and other trifles...and the movie magazine that I had seen in the grocery years before.

In any event, anyone who's been following the posts this week had to know who was coming last...The Big Man...Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. I would put Vladimir up there with the best in terms of villains based in excess.  Though there is no mention of his disfiguring skin disease in the book, it is hard for me to see him otherwise, and was a coup for corruption shorthand by David Lynch in the film. Also, though it is perhaps one of the biggest over-the-top, sumptuous scenery chewing performances of all time, it is damn near impossible for me to imagine anyone but long-time character actor Kenneth McMillan in the role. (For something a little more low-key, I always liked McMillan as the aging safecracker in The Pope of Greenwich Village with Mickey Rourke.) The title for this entry refers to a line by legendary actor José Ferrer as the Padishah Emperor who calls for the Baron as if requesting someone deliver a three-week old piece of roadkill.

"Go Now. Take Him to His Desert...to Die."

I first read Dune in middle school after finding an illustrated copy at a used bookstore, much to the envy of my frequent shelf-scouring compatriot, Matt. I just happened to spot it first. Then, we both spent years after searching for another one for him. This volume featured many of the b&w drawings and full color paintings that had accompanied the story went it had been printed in serial form in science fiction magazines. Now, after a fair few readings over the years, the copy is fairly tattered, but it's been some time since I've come across another one.

Our second Harkonnen is the middle child...and my personal favorite for whatever reason...Count Glossu Rabban, known as "The Beast," the tyrannical governor of the spice planet Arrakis. Though Rabban is a fairly minor character in both the book and the film, he plays a pivotal role in catalyzing many of the major and minor story arcs . In the original film, he's played by one of the all time great character actor bad guys, Paul L. Smith. Smith was the big scary dude in everything from playing Bluto in Popeye  (1980) to the evil prison warden in Midnight Express (1978).

"I Will Kill Him!"

My love affair with Dune, book and movie (the original David Lynch version), have been with me since childhood. I still remember seeing the collectible movie magazine in the grocery store, and being fascinated with the world contained within, but it wasn't for some time after that that I finally got to rent the tape and actually see what I had only imagined. At the time, I think I was around 10, I had almost no idea what exactly was going on, but a kid that age has a pretty easy time filling in the gaps with copious amounts of imagination.

Even then, I had a weird soft spot for the bad guys, The Harkonnen. So we kick off this week with the youngest of the clan: the "golden boy" Feyd-Rautha, who, in a turn of stunt casting, was played by Sting. Nowadays he might be thought of as soft, unoffensive adult contemporary radio fodder but in the mid-80's, with that shock of red hair and a considerable feral snarl,  he made for a satisfying sort of punk rock villain.