"Je t'aime...moi non plus..."

Today's quickie in ink was something of an unexpected surprise.  I was taking in Antonio Margheriti's gothic mystery tale, Seven Dead in the Cat's Eye (1973), wherein a series of strange murders takes place in old Scottish castle, when who should appear as the Scottish inspector...celebrater chanteur Serge Gainsbourg (1928-1991).  Granted, many Italian productions often featured curious international casting...that wasn't what was surprising...I just didn't expect to see Serge.  So this was my quick ode in ink to said surprise.

"No. It's Pronounced 'Eye-Gore'...."

Marty Feldman (1934-1982) was a British writer and comedian, perhaps best known in the U.S. for his role as Igor in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein.  It was perhaps between that and his appearance on the Muppet Show that created my lifelong fondness for this funnyman (well...those...and yes...Yellowbeard.)  Feldman also wrote for and starred in the pre-Python series At Last the 1948 Show with John Cleese and Graham Chapman, and Terry Gilliam did animation for his solo series, Marty.  The above sketch was taken from the Italian Comedy, 40 gradi all'ombra del lenzuolo (aka. Sex with a Smile, 1976) in which Feldman gives a hilarious turn as an invasive and unstoppable bodyguard.

Pulp, Glue and Words....

The time has finally come to unleash my literary...ahem...fury on an unsuspecting world.  (Unsuspecting because there were a whole lot of folks who didn't even know I'd written the damned things.)  So, I'm proud to announce that I'm releasing my first two novels via Createspace (Amazon's publishing arm.)

Book 1 - Memories of the Children of Death:

Description: God’s conscience tells him to leave. His lapses in memory make him a danger to himself and everyone else.  Kato’s faded out.  Pixie and her robot, Bill, have been attacked by roving gangs of vampires and clowns.  And Io loves him, but just wants out. The more God thinks, the fuzzier things get, and the fuzzier they get, the more it makes him sick.  On the rollercoaster of endless nightlife in this city of the future, a fuzzed out brain was the order of the day…but as the frivolity passes, the truth sneaks out of the shadows to spoil the party.

Memories of the Children of Death follows a group of friends who, as their worlds drift apart, pursue the truth behind the shadowy figures and strange occurrences that tug the  strands on the web of roads and train tracks that flow between the superstructures that truly touch the sky.

(Available Here! and on Amazon)

Book 2 - Rubber Finger #11

Description: Magnus Freelyson has problems.  Only, he didn’t used to.

Magnus had been a quiet cog in the massive machine, the Giant Rubber Monster Inc., that owned half of the world.  When the company’s head, Fred Freely, appears to have died mysteriously, Magnus suddenly finds himself in the captain’s chair. But it’s not just running things that he’s going to have to get used to.  For one, he now knows that Fred’s his father, and that’s just the start of his new family problems. Betaville, owner of the other half of the world, has already begun to clamor at the gates in search of a conquest that will end the decades old stalemate of consumption. But smack in the middle of it all is the path of red herrings, bizarre plotting and a host of clones and doubles that Magnus must unravel to find the true Fred Freely… who might not be quite as dead as everyone thinks…

(Available Here! and on Amazon)

"If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others?" - Candide

This little fella, modeled in a way after the looser illustrations of Doré, is an idea I've been toying with for a series of short tales.  His costume is cobbled together from period clothing featured in the group portraiture of Dutch master, Frans Hals. Hals, though not as well known outside the art world as his contemporaries, had a style and technique that was very influential on both Impressionists and Realists alike, such as Monet, Whistler and Courbet.

In Tribute to King Kirby...

This sketch, a bday gift drawing of a friend, was a quick tribute to comics great Jack Kirby (1917-1994).  Kirby, who helped create Captain America, The Fantastic Four and the X-men among others, is one of my favorites for sheer crazy, gigantic, wild imaginative inventiveness when it came to colossal sci-fi technology.  Kirby covered whole pages with clunky and chunky colorful machines that radiated fire and lightning between huge arrays.  Anyhow, this was a stab at capturing and collaging together some of Kirby's visuals.  (And yes...I realize I should've colored it...)

Lightnin' & The Blues...and Reds and Yellows...

This quickie of Lightnin' Hopkins, my second, also started as a paint test warm-up.  But since I warmed up with it over several days, it sort of got finished.  Using Lightnin' as a subject again was largely inspired by a collaboration by Jim Mahfood and Jason Shawn Alexander of Miles Davis and Son House which I believe will be on display for Art Basel in Miami this December. I suggest you check it out...assuming I'm right.

Paint Test Gone Too Far...

Today's quickie wasn't as quick as it was meant to be.  I was doing a paint test/warm-up for an illustration I was preparing to act as the cover for the release of my upcoming book.  I scanned through my photos for a snapshot of anyone that had some contrast and some color to it to try and mimic, and fell on this one of my friend Kate.  Instead of just blocking in some color and getting ready to move on, I worked it and worked it and it sort of came out finished.  Naturally, I had by then run out of time to work on the book cover.

Glass Bubble Helmets...

David Lynch once made a great point in an interview that all the science (aerodynamics and whatnot) placed on design would forever eliminate things that were just cool from common objects, like fins on old cars.  The more I thought about it, the more I agreed.  Let's face it, most objects rendered under pure, streamlined, utilitarian design are also kinda boring.  I mention all this because I figure it'll also kill all those crazy ideas of the future that the men of the past were so crazy about creating.

The Baggage of the Overlook...

Somehow the last sketch led to this old-fashioned bellhop.  So, he's the follow up.

All Hallow's Eve...

I figured this one was appropriate for Halloween as I was told that it looked like something out of The Shining.  On a strange side note, I once met Joe Turkel, who played the phantom bartender, Lloyd, in the Kubrick film (He's perhaps better known as Dr. Tyrell in Blade Runner), at a breakfast place in San Diego.  Of the rather lengthy number of entries on the "People I Least Expect to Run Into Today" list, I must say that he ranked rather high.  But he was very polite, and I was happy to give him the newspaper from our table.

From Across the Table...

Another quick collaboration with Jason Shawn Alexander.  He spent a section of the evening doing half-faces with most of those present, including Jim Mahfood, David Mack, and others.  A fun night and a fun experiment. (Psst...I'm the one on the left....but you already knew that.)

Double O Jonzo

Not really a quickie sketch so much as a quickie painting.  A gift for a friend who needed a little secret agent flair in his life.

Princess Dragon Mom...

This sketch isn't of the evil villainess I used to title this entry.  It's merely one of her mutant henchman from the bizarre Shaw Bros. knock-off of Ultraman, Super Infra-Man (1975).  If you never saw this one as a kid or aren't quite the trash cinephile I find myself being from time to time, it's essentially a bizarre, incoherent mess about ancient demons wreaking havoc on the earth, until a super-scientist creates a bionic man to fight the evil.  It's far less Lovecraft than it sounds...and is more rubber monsters in a kung-fu movie with a certain hint of the 60's Batman TV show.    Now you might say, "But, Ry-Guy (I hate it when you call me that), Ultraman wasn't exactly Ingmar Bergman."  No...no he wasn't, but on the sliding scale, this pushes him much farther in that direction.  Ah yes...Witch-Eye was what the subtitles called her...

Weird Figures...Straaaaange Figures...

Mondo Candido (1975) was a strange modernization of Voltaire's Candide, and the only fiction film by "schockumentary" directors Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, makers of Mondo Cane (1962).  This time, Candide not only travels through a variety of places but also time, in a very similar look and spirit to the films of Gilliam and Jodorowsky. The above sketch is of actor Gianfranco D'Angelo as the Barone.

"If I were my father. I'd have you tortured..."

Claudia Cardinale was born in Tunis to Sicilian immigrants to the Northern coast of Africa.  In 1957, she won the Italian embassy's "Most Beautiful Italian Girl in Tunisia" pageant which sent her on excursion to the Venice film festival where she began her work as an actress.  A sex symbol of the 60's, Cardinale appeared in two of my favorite western films, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968, d. Sergio Leone) and The Professionals (1966, d. Richard Brooks) as well as playing the lovely Princess Dala in Blake Edward's The Pink Panther (1963).  (Her "drunk" scene with David Niven is incredibly charming.)

Random Ronin...

I'm not really going to try and explain this one.  It was another drink and draw and I was drawing a blank.  Not very visually stimulating, your average blank.  Then I remembered a favorite Japanese woodblock print, so I started sketching and smearing...and eventually ended up with this cute li'l devil.  Go figure.

The Center of the Galaxy

Sagittarius, the ninth symbol of the zodiac, contains the densest part of the Milky Way as it lies near the galactic center. The Babylonians identified the symbol with Pabilsaĝ, the tutelary god of the city of Isin (now in modern Iraq).  The Greeks later associated him with Chiron who was the mythological tutor Achilles.

As a fun side note, the Greeks sometimes described centaurs as drunkards who could not handle their liquor, and yet drank all the time.  Interesting, considering what was going on when I drew this.  Not half-bad for a drawing of a horse at a gallop with no reference.

Hey There, Li'l Fella...

Another entry from one of the drawing sessions with Jason Shawn Alexander, Jim Mahfood, Dave Crosland, et al. (Yes...I'm aware that his arm's way too long...)

Crashing Toy Trains

This was a late entry from a late night drawing session.  And no, it was not reflective of my condition at the time.

"If I could find my head, I'd go get it examined."

Perhaps Stanley Donen's best known film, amongst a cavalcade of good ones, is Singin' in the Rain (1952), which is not only a musical that even musical-haters might enjoy, it's also a fantastic recreation of the effect that the introduction of sound had on motion pictures.  I was introduced to Donen by Saturn 3 ( 1980), which, despite a promising cast, director, a script by British novelist Martin Amis, and one of the craziest robot designs of all time, ends up being a dull throwback to cheapie 50/60's scifi movies (it's too competent to contend with the abysmally trashy fun of a Robot Monster (1953)).  But my favorite Donen vehicles, outside of the Cook & Moore spectacular Bedazzled (1967), are Donen's two Hitchock knock-offs, Charade (1963) and Arabesque (1966).  While Hitch still produced a few more films during this time, Hollywood seemed to be looking for someone to fill the suspenseful void.  Many tried, and while some are good campy fun, only Donen's really hold up and stand on their own from Hitch's mold.

The above quickie was inspired by a lobby card of Sophia Loren from Arabesque.  She's quite the stunner and far more the femme fatale foil for Gregory Peck, as compared to the chemistry of Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant in Charade.