The African Yorkshire Terrier

In the early 1900s it became fashionable for adventurous souls in the upper-crust of western society to travel to Africa -- the Dark Continent -- for the thrill of hunting on safari. It was not uncommon for the more daring women of the time to accompany their men into the wilds of that uncivilized land.

Many of these refined ladies brought along some of the accoutrements of their fashionably pretentious lives to make the hardships of the safari less traumatic. It was not unusual to come upon an encampment to find a wind-up Victrola playing wax records or a full-length mirror set up inside a woman's tent. A very popular comfort for the ladies was the companionship of a lap dog. Sadly, a number of these domesticated and defenseless critters wandered away from the safety of their campsites and were tragically lost to the perils of the savage land -- or so it was thought.

During the past decade, from the remaining wildernesses of Africa, there have been reports of large packs of very small dogs lurking in the jungles and roaming on the veldt. These accounts were not given credence until recently, as the frequency of these sightings has increased, and the carcasses of several beasts -- victims riddled with hundreds of tiny, vicious bite-marks --  have been studied.

The few human witnesses to the attacks of the African Yorkshire Terrier describe the dogs as swarming and overwhelming their prey much in the manner of the piranha. It appears there is little defense against the quick, painful, skin-pinching bites and high-pitched yapping as they circle and confuse their quarry.

So far there have been no known human victims. Why not? It seems odd considering their seemingly fearless attacks on water buffalo, hippos, and even the occasional lion. Scientists have not yet been able to study these resourceful beasts but the popular theory is that they still retain the instincts that cause their domesticated cousins to fear being stepped on by someone with heavy shoes.

 *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Acrylic painting and story by me, about 12 years ago.

I was looking at Valazquez

And he was looking right back at me. So I doodled him. If he bothered to doodle me I bet it looked pretty good, although maybe not; he didn't seem willing to show me.

While working on a dull project at my place of employment I hacked out this quick study during short breaks, as a little reward for myself. I need some propping up now and again.
j

Draw!

(To be read aloud, with deep voice and a cowboy accent. Excerpted from "Quick Draw Pete's Bloody Revenge," a one-act play by Fontaine "Colt" Sneckler, 1954.)
...Many are the tough-minded hombres who have laughed at the fiesty fellow from Injun Meadows Gulch. He is a peculiar sight and might bring a chuckle to the throat of the uncouth cusotmer who finds humor in the unusual characteristics of others.
...He is tense and walks stiff legged. He speaks in a high, shaky voice, slurring his 's' sounds. He blinks a lot and so dense and so large are his eyelids that you can hear a tiny, wet sound when upper lid slaps lower.
...That might seem funny to folks who don't know about him and, like I said, many are the tough-minded hombres who have laughed. Yes, and a good number of those hombres are rounding up cattle for Jesus.
...Laugh too hard and he will call you out. "Shay your prayersh, varmitt," he's been known to say. And that is how it goes.
...He faces you and waits until you are ready. Still and stiff he poses like a statue, chubby hands out and over the butts of his six-shooters, a fierce grimace draws the corners of his mouth down. Silent he stands, save for the tiny lip-smacking sounds of his blinking.
...When you are ready-- your belt tight, your holster tied down, your hands poised to grab iron-- he stops blinking. He stares at you with those eyes, and you know they see all and they are just waitin' for your hands to move, or even twitch. Suddenly, he ain't so funny anymore.

The End

.

An Erstwhile Confidant...

I ran into an old sketchbook of mine. He is a tattered, hand-made, shabby fellow with warped illustration board covers; covers decorated with a collage of magazine cut-outs. We were close companions, he and I, and we traveled within my arm's reach of each other. He was often open on a table in front of me or perched on my knee, attracting the eyes of the curious. Many strangers complimented him on his appearance and I enjoyed being seen in his company.
...Time passed and pages filled. Without blank paper for me to draw upon my interest faded. I continued to carry him because I was used to being with him. When introduced to strangers he seldom failed to impress, but friends tired of him. "Very nice," they'd say, "but haven't you drawn anything new?"
...I began to feel dissatisfaction for the quality of his content and I was slightly ashamed of his demeanor. The images he wore so proudly I began to consider inexpert-- not his fault, it was me who was changing. The fresh-faced character of the covers suffered from unsightly, premature erosions-- again, my fault. I was careless with him. He was jostled about in my bag. I left him alone on the floor of the car when I didn't care to tote him around. He began to bend and to peel beneath my siege of inconsideration and disregard. Wrinkles and pockmarks were showing on his faces. The twine that held him together at the spine frayed and broke.
...If I wasn't careful when I pulled him free of my pouch-- to dig for keys or gum-- pages would tumble out and land awkwardly on the ground. I'd help him up, brush the dirt away, try to straighten out the latest bent corner, slip him into his jacket and hope that no one had seen him embarrass himself.
...At last, I placed him in a portfolio. I placed that portfolio in a box. The box was put away in a closet. Upon occasion I would find him while rummaging through things. I'd be happy to see him. The pleasant memories of our months together would return, and I'd flip him open, forgetting about the missing twine. Like autumnal leaves the pages would descend and more small pieces would break away.
...Putting him back in order, I'd look him over. "Eh, not very good," I'd say, lacking the wisdom and the tolerance to accept him for what he was; for when he was. Disappointed, I'd press the covers closed and, dispirited, the pages would cling together to stave off shame and loneliness there in the portfolio, in the box, in the closet.
...I had been so proud of him once.

...I rediscovered him this month and, hey!, he's pretty cool again. Maybe it's been so long since I made those drawings that the journal has at last achieved the status of "dignified older gentleman." I fashioned the journal and vandalized the interiors in mid to late 1994. (Whoa! I just figured out how long ago that was.)
...There are only 16 pages but they are artfully filled with sketches and xeroxes of sketches, pasted down and drawn upon yet again in hopes of integrating them with each other. It's a nifty patchwork compilation.
...Animals drawn at the zoo are placed next to people I captured on the train during my many subway commutes to school; studies from old magazines reside next to aimlessly doodled abstractions; and quotations of charm, profundity, or weirdness are scattered throughout. It was a conscious exercise in creating art that was reflective of what I was seeing and doing at the time. It is a portrait of the artist as a younger man.
...Perhaps it is I who is the dignified older gentleman, and the journal a freeze-frame of the savage youth searching for voice, building reservoirs of experience to sustain him. (I wasn't very "savage" though. Kinda wimpy, really. Heck, I was drawing!)

...With the desperate courage of youth I drew directly in pen, shunning the notion of erasing. Each intended stroke, a treasure; lines mislaid were accepted as visible scars; as punishments borne without vanity; mistakes left clearly in view so that I could not forget to learn from them.
...Sadly, I used rubber cement to paste everything in place, so a few pieces have gone missing. Most of the glued parts are loose and threaten to fall away when I turn the pages. It is like handling an ancient sketchbook found in the ruins Rome, but with drawings of Joseph Campbell, O.J. Simpson and Snoopy in it. One must be gentle or it is diminished by each viewing. Of course, every page is covered with those yellow stains left by old rubber cement, adding to the aura of age.
...Fortunately, when I purchased my first scanner (and felt the compulsion to scan everything,) I scanned this sketchbook; I could tell, even then, the poor fellow was destined to crumble. I still have those files and you can see the destructive decay of the rubber cement had not yet taken hold. In these images, most of it appears to still be intact. I didn't have a copy of the cover so I scanned that this morning and there it is, up there at the top.
...(While scanning the cover I dropped a couple of pages and about seven glued-on drawings let go. It was like I'd dropped a handful of confetti. The lesson here? Don't use rubber cement on your artwork!)
...
That was a long way of saying, I haven't drawn anything lately. Here's some old crap.

The End
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Pablo and Me

Last week, from the library, I checked out "The Mystery of Picasso" on dvd. If you haven't seen it and you have any interest in watching The Man paint, it's terrific. You get to see Pablo, bare-chested and chain-smoking, in the studio taking on a string blank canvases. The canvases never stood a chance.

Witnessing his work as it takes shape is great fun. I enjoy watching artists work, whether in action or by looking at the sketches and studies that pile up on the way to a finished piece. You can see the artist thinking, and thinking is the most important part of the artistic process.

But what I really dug about the movie -- selfishly -- was seeing him struggle. He's going along, painting up a storm and things are looking good, but then he hits a bump. He retreats. He rushes forward. Dead end. He starts over. Another dead end. Ha! Take that, genius!

Of course he manages to come out pretty well at the end of each effort, but we can take heart that he did have moments where he was stumped. And we have to be impressed by the amount of effort that he had to put forth to find a resolution. It's not always easy, not even for Picasso.

This week I was asked to do an illustration for a story about micro-blogging, with the focus being on "Twitter"-- something I'd heard of but I didn't know what it was. After a discussion with the writer and a little research I started working on this.

I had not drawn since seeing "The Mystery of Picasso," and the first searching marks I made were the eyes and nose of the man at the keyboard, and the bird on his right shoulder. Obviously, Picasso was playing in my head, influencing my vision and nudging my hand.

"Pablo," I said, "if you will not let me go then I cannot see where this will end. How can I paint like you for a newspaper article?"

"Shut up," he said. He appeared before my mind's eye, the cigarette in his paint-stained hand drawing a cubist's dismissive gesture in the air. "Just go. You will know what to do."

I gave in and painted in a trance, hearing his whispers. But, when I came to the word balloons for the birds I found that Picasso had gone. "Pablo," I asked, "what do the birds say?"

Silence.

But then Charles Schulz appeared and my struggles were at an end.

The End

I-Sci-Fi 3

The following text is a short excerpt from "President Ventman's Wife is a Martian" by F. Webber Slingbrook, published in the March 1947 issue of Interesting Science Fiction.*

The man standing guard-- a Martian soldier, blue-skinned, almond-eyed-- gazed across the empty reception hall in the mountain-top castle located on Blynt's Peak in Mars' northern hemisphere. He was bored, but sharp and vigilant. There hadn't been an intruder this deep into the Martian kingdom for over 400 years but this was his job, and so thorough was his training that he was diligent in his duty even though the oppressive, silent monotony would crush the soul of most men of action.

This day, however, was to be different. Something happened. First, a noise -- a scraping noise -- coming from outside. And over there, across the hall, through one of the tall frosted windows he saw the silhouette of a man. Puzzled and amazed the guard walked across the room, closer to the window. So puzzled and so amazed was he that his training failed him. So peculiar was the occurrence, so far outside of what he thought could ever happen was this unforseen circumstance that his gun was left forgotten in its holster. It is impossible, he thought, that a man could be outside that window-- the building was high atop a mountain. And the building? It was tall and featureless on that side. Impossible!

But, despite history and despite reason, it seemed that the impossible was possible.

The window slowly opened inward, and there was a man there-- an Earth-man; short, stocky, a pale pink color, very ugly-- and he was standing on the sill. The Earth-man was plainly surprised to see the Martian. For a moment astonishing in its length, two men from two different worlds stared silently at one another, exchanging only meaningless blinks of their eyes. Finally, the Martian soldier exhaled. A slow wheeze of air escaped from him and nothing more. It did, however, end the lull and the human intruder was the first to seize the initiative.

"There you are!" He hopped down from the window and snarled at the guard. "You've really done it this time!"

The Martian took a step back. Confronted by an aggressor, his training began to take hold again. The man of Earth saw one of the Martian's blue hands fall dutifully toward his holster. Firmly and with a venomous tone the Earth-man said: "The Queen is so angry! And she mentioned you by name!" The idea of the Queen's anger bearing his name chilled the Martian. Did she even know his name? It did not matter. The instincts for his duties were buried beneath his fear of the Queen.

 "Me?! Wh-what did I do?" squeaked the blue fellow.

"What did you do?" shouted Dalton Trencher, astronaut, expert pugilist and adventurer from Earth. With a great flourish of hands and the strongly projected emotings of a practiced thespian, he sputtered angrily before squealing in a manner mocking the Martian's own quivering voice. "'Me?! Wh-wh-wh-whhat did I do?!' he asks! By God, you heartless devil! Put up your paws and show me what you're made of!"

The guard was baffled and nearly helpless, but the sight of the Earth-man, his fists clenched and held up in front of him-- a universally understood sign of an invitation to a fist fight-- offered some kind of hand-hold for his reeling senses and appealed to his warrior's heart. Here was an opportunity for a trained soldier-- a soldier lost in a fog of unexpected occurrences, with no clear course of action and no hope of receiving orders from central command-- to lash out and hit somebody.

The absurdity of the situation was weightless. It did not matter that he was on stale guard duty mere seconds ago, and now found himself squaring off against an alien intruder from another planet. To the Martian's panicked mind, here was a much smaller man standing ready to brawl, practically asking to be beaten, and tell me, what man-- man of Mars or man of Earth-- doesn't perk up to that? What could bring more pleasure than engaging in a quick sparring session with an opponent who, after a quick assessment of size and weight, was not likely to be much of a problem?

But Dalton Trencher had been a problem in the ring, as a sparring partner, for the great Joe Louis. "Mr. Louis," as Dalton told the story, "was caught off guard in our first session and I landed a few shots that I thought might have done him in. But Mr. Louis climbed back into the ring and I'm proud to say he gave me a beating he told me he HAD to give. Otherwise, said Mr. Louis, he felt would have to hand me his championship belt before I walked out of the gym that day."

The Martians had been listening to radio broadcasts from Earth for decades and the broadcasts of heavyweight bouts were even more popular on Mars than on the planet where they took place. It is not an exaggeration to say Joe Louis, in the cultural perception of Martian civilization, was the most terrible warrior and most admired person on that distant planet. Martian women coerced good behavior from their children by saying "If you don't eat your Vlarfrak, Joe Louis will get you with an uppercut." Martian men, in a culture where toughness is the highest virtue, would praise the greatest of their warriors by saying, "he's a real brown bomber!"

This Martian soldier had listened to many of Joe Louis' fights; he marveled at the descriptions and hoped one day to travel to Earth to see the great Joe Louis beat somebody in the ring. In spite of the Martian appetite for boxing and the pride his people took in the development of those skills, the thought of getting into the ring with Joe never crossed his mind-- it was practically unthinkable.

As the soldier eagerly readied himself to box the Earthling, he could not know the quality of fighter looking into his eyes from behind heavy fists. Had he known, he might have remembered his weapon.

Dalton threw two hard left jabs, and the blue man gasped in pain. He had not seen the first jab.
The second jab he saw but he could only shut his eyes as those knuckles cracked against his cheek.
The Martian's sense of perspective and duty returned as the pain of the second jab took effect. Slugged into submission by the inflicted agonies of the Earth-man's vicious punches, his confusion was gone and there was no doubt of what his course of action should be.

The Martian's survival instincts roared to life and tried to assert themselves. But the jabs had done their work on him and, instinctively, he knew a strong right hook was coming in over his dropped defenses. He tried to raise his shoulder a bit, hoping to deflect the finishing blow, but he also knew it was too late. He gave thought to a short Martian prayer and -- eyes shut, teeth clenched -- sleep came with a thudding suddenness. He settled to the floor and was still. A single tooth cartwheeled and clattered away from the unconscious soldier, roster-tailing a tiny path of spittle and blood.

*     *     *     *     *     *

Trencher took a deep breath and held it. Silence. Good. He glanced back to the window and saw the rope ladder dangling outside; his rocket ship hovered twenty feet above, waiting.

He ran across the large high-ceilinged room and grabbed the handles of an enormous pair of white doors. At his touch the doors slid sideways into the walls and Dalton found himself looking out onto a large and elegantly furnished balcony. The high peaks of the Martian landscape were seen beyond the railings, a heavy white fog swirled above, below and between the peaks. A red moon hung low in the purple sky.

There was a small table set with shining utensils and fine china. Fancy pastries were stacked on ornately decorated platters beside a silver tea-pot. Standing next to the table,wearing a robe of the finest silk, was President Ventman, elected leader of Planet Earth. A long hand-rolled cigarette rested on his lower lip and it wiggled as an expression of bewilderment when the President recognized the man before him.

"D-Dalton Trencher?" The President stammered. "How the--"

"Mr. President, sir." Dalton put his hand out and by reflex the President responded. Dalton grabbed and shook, and he was pleased at the firmness of the President's grip. Dalton felt great pride in his leader; despite his kidnapping, despite his abduction and imprisonment by the Martian scoundrels, it was bracing to find that the leader of the Earth was still able to take you firmly and confidently by the hand. Indeed, the President's well-practiced handshake was strong and smooth; so smooth that the equally strong handshaking motion of Dalton Trencher's grip didn't ripple the tea in the cup that the President held in his other hand.

"You've got the bastards serving you tea, sir?" Dalton laughed. "Absolutely ripping, sir! What a story to tell the boys back home, sir!"

"What?" said the President.

"That's all right, sir," Dalton tried to take the tea, but the President pulled it away. "You'll be safe in just a few minutes, Mr. President."

"I am safe, Trencher!"

"Thank you for your confidence, sir, but I don't think we'll truly be in the clear until we get aboard my ship."

"Your ship? What are you talking about?" The President grimaced angrily and took another sip from his cup. "I'm not getting on your ship!"

"Look out, sir!" shouted Trencher. He lunged and slapped the cup from the President's hand. It shattered on the marble floor and Dalton was relieved to see that the liquid didn't eat into the surface. "It could be poison, or worse!"

"Trencher, come here." Angrily, the President stomped over to the balcony's edge. "Look." President Ventman pointed to a nearby peak, similar in height to the one upon which they were now. It also had a Martian castle built on its top. Further down that mountain was a man-made cave, and out of that cave came a narrow road. Trencher saw that the road passed over a bridge, to another peak, and continued on an elevated ramp which eventually entered into another cave about fifty feet below where they were standing.

"Ah," sighed the President. "Here she comes." Out of the distant cave came a sight that put a cramp in Trencher's throat. An absurdly tall, regal, blue-skinned woman emerged wearing a pale, purple jumpsuit and a domed helmet of shiny metal. She came forth riding a peculiar vehicle -- part scooter and part war-bot -- standing on a wheeled platform towed by the menacing machine of destruction. The war-bot responded to buttons and levers arranged on handlebars held by the Martian woman. Her gloved fingers moved gently, expertly over the controls and her deadly transport rolled silently and swiftly along the roadway that ended in the cave below them.

"Holy smokes!" exclaimed Dalton. He knew who she was: Madame Essima Fondrey, Queen of Mars and sworn enemy of the men of Earth! Twice this cruel giantess had led attacks upon the Earth, the horrific results of which included the cleaving in twain of Earth's moon and the destruction most of the public buildings and bridges in the states of Tennessee and Kentucky.

"Quickly, sir, to my ship! She'll be here in moments." Trencher turned away from the approaching horror to see that the President had walked back to the table. He was calmly chewing a mouthful of pastry and he was dropping sugar cubes into the next cup of tea.

"I shall wait right here," the President said around a too-large bite of delicious pastry. He swallowed part of it and continued. "You, on the other hand should probably leave-- I might not be able to prevent her from setting the war-bot on you." He sipped, washing down the last of the bite, and added, with a pensive expression: "Although she would probably demand the satisfaction of demolishing you herself for intruding, uninvited, into her personal apartments."

"What is going on here, sir?" Trencher felt the urge to slap the President to his senses; it was not a thing to consider cavalierly, but if President Ventman didn't start behaving sensibly then he would have to! "What kind of evil power does that foul female Martian beast have over you?"

Here, the President stiffened. The scowl he cast upon Dalton Trencher was pure Presidential fury, and the strength of his gaze drew upon the incorruptible authority of the constitution and the power given to his office, and to him, by the people of the United States of Earth. Trencher had never been one to flinch before the anger of another man, but flinch he did. He flinched mightily and a sweat broke out upon his brow.

"Mr. Trencher," said President Ventman, with indignant scorn for the man who had come to rescue him. "That foul female Martian beast," he said, putting down his tea and resisting the impulse to pick up another pastry, "is my wife!"

The End

*It's fake. I made it all up.

.

100

Hello, I'm typing this from the very top of on-line journal entry #100. It is, more likely, #110 or so due to some deletions along the way, but the number on the post list says 100, so this is where I must put the plaque. I don't believe that a pedestrian activity should be revered for its numerological significance but those two zeroes, side by side, are staring me down and not blinking. I must take a moment to twitch, to smile and to drink a celebratory beverage. My morning coffee, of course.
...I never thought I'd get this far. I'm not good at keeping a sketchbook, I'm not good at keeping a regular journal, and when I started this project I thought I would be too self conscious to keep at it for very long. There are more than a few posts in the wake of this one that I would like to swim back to and push under; I've done it before. Deleting posts, however, feels like it goes against the aesthetic current of the blogging enterprise and I will try not to do it again. I might edit some of the text, though – there are shrill whining sounds leaking from some of those floating corpses back there that are unappealing to the living/breathing September-2007-editor in me.
...I was writing the Hawkbot Berserker entry when I took notice that 100 was coming soon. I thought I should work up something really fun! I've enjoyed creating the slightly goofy sci-fi paintings I've done in the past and it's been a looong time since I've made one, so I thought I'd start turning that crank. (Some examples here, here, here, here, here and here)
...Well, it's over a month later and I'm still cranking, with a good deal of cranking left to go. It will have to wait. This is what I have. It is not the "special" event that I was aiming for, but as I said at the beginning, it's not about numbers. I suppose, in my eyes, it's about doing something I like to do and nailing it on the wall for other people to see. Hope you like it.
...Pencil, Brush, dried out Pitt pen on yellowish card stock.

The End.
.

Hawkbot Berserker

I was sketching without plan, without purpose; doodling and daydreaming, and this drawing started to take shape. It began as a man in armor, but moved briskly from man to machine. Some kind of Berserker, I thought, as I almost always do when I draw a menacing robot.
...I read "Berserker" by Fred Saberhagen when I was about 12 years old. It had a cool Boris Vallejo cover with spaceships blasting away-- a sure sign of quality as far as I was concerned-- so I figured it was going to be a great book; and it was! It was a collection of short stories about robots that seek to destroy all life, wherever they find it-- at least that's my 12-year-old self's quick and dirty summary.
...How could you go wrong with that? More Berserker collections and novels began to appear after I made my way through the first book-- most of them with Vallejo covers! I ate 'em up. Killer robots and Boris!
...While in the midst of my Berserker frenzy, I found Saberhagen's "The Empire of the East," a sci-fi-fantasy story that absolutely blew me away-- I read it several times during high school. I bought anything with Saberhagen's name on it. The assorted sci-fi novels, his Dracula series, the first Swords trilogy; he has been favorite of mine all of my life.
...I haven't bought any of his books since the early '90s-- not for any reason other than I haven't done much recreational reading at all since then. Even so, Saberhagen's work has remained vivid in memory, and I often think about his stories, especially when I'm doodling robots. His work has been a cornerstone in my imagination for about thirty years.
...I checked in on his website for the first time in a long time and I see that he passed away on June 29th. Bummer.
...I wrote an email to him last year, the only time I've tried to communicate with a celebrity-- I'm too bashful for that sort of thing and it was out of character for me. I'd been inspired to do it because I had recently opened a box and found my stashed-away Saberhagen collection; I hadn't realized how many there were! On the shelf it's a stretch of paperbacks longer that my arm. Looking at the covers and flipping through them took me to a time when I really enjoyed reading for pleasure and there were no pleasures that were as satisfying to the imagination as reading.
...I wrote and thanked him for the great books, confessing that I hadn't been keeping up, but that I was re-visiting the old work and looking forward to what I'd missed. He said:

Hello, Jeff --

Glad you like the books. And, thanks for dropping a note.

Hope you enjoy reading the later books.

Best

Fred

...Neat. Made my day and I'm glad I did it.
...So, here's a berserker. I had been thinking of him as "Hawkbot," uncertain of his character or his intent. After reading of Saberhagen's passing I have decided that he is a relentless destroyer of men and would squash you or I if given the chance. Dedicated to Mr. Saberhagen.

The End.

A Garden Rock and the Importance of the Artist

Last Saturday morning, I spent quiet time on the patio in the company of my cats, my cup of coffee and my sketchbook; and I put those idle moments to some kind of use by drawing a portrait of this rock.
...During that brief sitting I came to know that this rock is a rock like no other rock. See how he sits so unpretentiously in the small plot of dirt that is his domain! See how his friends-- also rocks-- gather around, drawn to him by the natural feelings of admiration that a rock such as he may inspire.
... How often do characters worthy of mention go unmentioned? This is the importance of the artist. Without the eye, without the sensitivity, without the heightened perceptive abilities cultivated by the artist, so many things pass without celebration; so many things pass without notice.
...This rock, despite his sturdy significance in the small community of which he is-- well, the rock-- he might simply have gone on, silently, receiving no recognition for his calm, for his dignity. This is the first time, I am sure, he is praised in so public a forum. This is the first time, I am sure, his portrait has been drawn.
...I take pride in my part in this. Now, his likeness and his story are presented in this age's arena of stories and images, the internet. Judging by recent traffic, perhaps as many as ten people will know of this rock; they will see his portrait and learn of his dignity. Perhaps these visitors will be compelled to seek and to find, in their garden, a rock of such character. Perhaps they will take a moment to appreciate and to praise something of seeming commonness which they can, with an unwieldy aesthetic construct, elevate to a proper state of grandness.
...(It took me all day to write this. Much longer than it took to draw the stupid rock.)
...Pencil sketch, colored in photoshop.

The End.
.

A Cowgirl and the Blues

Whoa. It has been almost a month since my last post. Why?
...Have I lost interest? Has the thrill of being able to draw something and hang it on the World Wide Gallery Wall for all to see lost its novelty?
...Has my scanner been giving me fits? Sometimes working, other times not?
...Has my job and my commute been filling my time and burning me out? Have there been too many long days-- long work days spent sitting in front of the monitor-- days that grind me down and discourage the notion of sitting down, again, in front of a computer to scan, to draw, to color, to type?
...Has the uncertainty of working in a graphics department within the withering newspaper industry frayed my nerves and dampened my enthusiasm with anxieties? Have the jobless bodies of artists and journalists in my foxhole shaken my nerve and led me to dwell upon-- nay "obsess" over what may be my eventual fate?
...Have I purchased a new TV and a DVD player, so that I can now watch movies and be fairly certain that the entire show will play without freezing up? Have I lost an idle hour or two to basking in the glow of the TV's light while Charlie Chaplin waddles, while Humphrey Bogart lights cigarettes, while Harrison Ford cracks his whip and thumps nazis?
...Y'know, it's all of these things. And I can come up with more excuses if pressed.
...This post is for whining. This post has the blues.
...Anyway. Here's a cowgirl! Drawn from an old photo. Had a great time with it. Pencil, ink & brush, photoshop colors!

The End.
...

I HATE TV!

This is the way I feel. Hate it. So, when the editors at work asked me to illustrate this idea for a story it popped out and onto the page (screen) sooo easily.

I plugged in my little TV last week for the first time in a long time and tried to watch the Colts/Patriots game, just because, well, how could you go wrong? Colts! Patriots!

Ugh. Pretty good game but the commercials beat me into submission. I was so worn out I almost turned it off in the 3rd quarter. So many dumb commercials and so many repeated pleadings to watch their crummy TV shows. Every pause between plays was crammed full of "CSI" and "ER" (or whatever) advertisements.

I've unplugged the TV again and put it back on the shelf, and it's likely to stay that way for a long time. Until the next Colts Patriots game, I figure! Or until I feel the need to play my old Sega Genesis.

Painted in Photoshop! It runs this Saturday in the Contra Costa Times and the affiliated papers.

The End.