Mushrooms. Drew them today.
Part of something much, much bigger, in case you couldn’t tell.
Raccoon tracks in the snow
Our friendly neighborhood thief making his nightly rounds left us some footprints.
Hot Cocoa @TomatoPieCafe in Lititz
Look at the great design I got on my hot cocoa at the Tomato Pie Café in Lititz, PA! Isn’t it beautiful? So simple, but so appreciated. I’m not a coffee drinker, and this is the very first time someone fancied up my hot chocolate. It was hard to get started on the actual drinking of it!
It takes so little to amuse me.
Super Secret Picture Book Sketch
This is what I’ve been working on while you weren’t looking.
My first hand-lettered greeting
I’ve finally hand lettered and designed my first publicly-available greeting card.
It all started with a drawing in my sketchbook. Just a few ideas I threw together. Note the “Thanks You.” That was intentional. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to just say “Thanks” or if I wanted a full “Thank you” so I created both.
Next I brought the image into Illustrator and created a vector version.
I opened that in Photoshop and played with different backgrounds and blending modes until I was satisfied with my design.
I’m selling the cards through Zazzle,
and I’d love it if you hopped over and took a look!
I’ve stopped denying my past (art)
After years of avoiding the portraits that I drew and painted way back when I was just teaching myself how to make art, I’ve finally decided to embrace them and give them their own pages on my site. The problem was that the people in the portraits were pretty much celebrity-types, and I was sure that would diminish the work.
Not anymore.
After looking back over some of the work, I realized it didn’t matter who the images were of; what mattered was that people saw them. They’ve been in the basement molding away for too long, and it’s time they saw the light of day. So here you go:
Portrait gallery 1
Portrait gallery 2
The image above is a drawing I started of Eric Clapton that never got finished, and probably never will. But I like him anyway.
Mental Health Day on the Bike Trail
I work at a computer in a room without a view.
Well, there’s a view, but it’s through a window that’s behind me,
and I don’t get much done if I sit and stare out of it as much as I’d like.
So we decided the day was warm enough,
and the rain was crossing its legs,
and we weren’t getting any younger.
Bottom line: There’s no substitute for the real thing.
Go play outside.
1964 Was an awesome year
First off, a little Art Modell irony: On December 27th, the Cleveland Browns defeated the Baltimore Colts 27-0 in the NFL Championship Game.
The first computer program written in BASIC was run on May 1st. At 4:00 a.m.
1964 was the last year the U.S. Mint made their quarters out of silver.
Roald Dahl wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The U.S. Surgeon General announced (for the first time) that smoking could be bad for your health.
Jeopardy debuted on March 30th.
The Munsters and The Addams Family both debuted that September.
That stop-motion Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas special? It debuted on December 6th.
The Ford Mustang was born on March 9th and unveiled to the public on April 17th.
And Shea Stadium opened on April 17th, too.
The day before that, on April 16th, The Rolling Stones released their debut album, The Rolling Stones.
February 9: The Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan show for the very first time.
And then, nine months later, I was born.
On a Thursday.
50 Years ago right this very minute.
Some other people who were born in 1964 that you may have heard of:
Nicolas Cage
Michelle Obama
Wanda Sykes
Rob Lowe
Tracy Chapman
Russell Crowe
Crispin Glover
Hank Azaria
Stephen Colbert
Suzy Kolber
Lenny Kravitz
Courteney Cox
Yeardley Smith
David Spade
Barry Bonds
Sandra Bullock
Keanu Reeves
Janeane Garofalo
Diana Krall
Marisa Tomei
Teri Hatcher
Eddie Vedder
Remember Remember the 5th of November
And as for November 5, say happy birthday to Vivian Leigh and, like, a gazillion other people.
I’m going to draw all day, and tonight I’m meeting some old and new friends at my favorite eating and drinking establishment where they already know what to pour in the glass they set on the bar in front of me.
Yeah. 1964 was an awesome year.
Little Rooster (color and sepia)
I’ve been working on new color versions of Little Rooster, mostly because I was concerned about the logistics of using analog pastel. My concerns were primarily with shipping and scanning and not being able to fix the pages before sending them out. So I’ve messed with some settings in Corel Painter, and I have two new color versions of Little Rooster to show you, both completed digitally. Digital will be better in the end anyway, I think, just for ease of changes and the power of the “undo.”
Before I started digitally I made analog color swatches of the pastels I had used in the original version, scanned the page in, and sampled the colors to create a palette. I changed the sepia colors from the original though. I wasn’t really satisfied that I couldn’t find real pastels in the color that I wanted, so when I went digital I made sure it was more in line with what I had had in mind. Sepia, not brown.
I was also worried that digital would look, well, digital, so I spent a lot of time messing with brush opacity, paper grain and paper contrast settings to get a look that was more in line with an analog feel.
Anyway, here are the new Little Rooster (reality) and Little Rooster (fantasy).
Toothless
Interesting conversation I had today, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
First off, I’m feeling a little like Hiccup’s dragon in the book and movie series, How to Train Your Dragon. His name was Toothless, for obvious reasons that I’m not going to explain. I had a certain body part “extracted” from my head today. (I think they use the word “extract” because it sounds more sterile than “pull.”) It wasn’t pretty. I have a feeling they never are. Bone loss, two cracks and a bad root canal. It happens.
My conversation:
Me: Can I have those? (Pointing at the bloody tooth pieces on the dentist tray)
Dental tech: They aren’t sterile.
Me: I just want them to make art.
Dental tech: I suppose you could soak them in bleach.
Me: O.K. I just want to make something out of them.
Dental tech: They aren’t sterile. Your mouth is full of germs.
Me: It’s my blood.
Dental tech: But if somebody else touches them…
Me: We’re not going to eat them.
Dental tech: But if they touch them and then touch their mouth…
Me: It’s for art. Nobody will be touching them.
Dental tech: If you put a sign on them, “Do not touch…”
So. I have pieces of my head wrapped in gauze in a sterile plastic pouch sitting in front of me as I type.
Next up: work on that sign…
Another figure drawing (especially for that art director who saw my kid’s illustrations and thought I couldn’t draw)
I drew this one with conté crayon and pastels on green paper. She’s quickly become one of my favorites.
(P.S. He told me I should look into figure drawing sessions because you can’t distort a figure until you learn how to draw one.)
GAP bike trail: Confluence to Pinkerton Tunnel
Today’s bike ride on the Great Allegheny Passage took us from Confluence, PA to the Pinkerton Tunnel (please consider donating to get this tunnel back into usable condition) on the other side of Fort Hill, PA. And then, when we got back, the bonus came in the form of an incredibly delicious black bean burger chaser at the Lucky Dog Café.