Dead Pets Society

For some reason we started a tradition in my fam of pet names starting with the letter "S". Why? Well, my brother and I, in our infinite childhood wisdom and creativity decided to name our first cat Scott - after the dog next door . . . As per why Sophie is faceless, she's not actually dead. Yet. But she's getting up there and I wanted to get a head start on the whole set.

Matchbooks! America's Design Library!

Michelle picked me up a sweet matchbook collection at the Brimfield (MA) Antique Show for 5$! This is but a taste. I hate to be one of those illustrators who moons over when overthing was illustrated but uh . . . I'll draw Mister Pancake! I love the processed color palettes too and the hand drawn type - especially the PROX logo.

Cleaning up the Gulf

Reports are not good. I saw a short video on the NYTimes site about how folks are just waiting around to start the clean up but are being told to hold off. That's gotta be a terrible sense of foreboding.

Dinobot!

I know a dinobot when I see one, and Autobot "Sludge" was outside my house all weekend. He had been tearing up the street on Vanderbilt using his foot-stomping earthquake thing disguised as a loud metallic chewing up of the concrete. He would have been tired, which is why he didn't try to contact me. I did not, nor should any one ever, attempt to feed a Dinobot luring them with hand held energon cubes! Their primitive minds will not distinguish your hand from the cube!

Swedish Torture

Pineapple Face!

Manuel Noriega has been in the news of late, and I recently listened to the This American Life episode "My Pen Pal" in which he figures prominently. It must be a strange life to be bounced around from prison to prison - Miami, to France, to . . . perhaps back to Panama. You can say a lot of bad things about Sr. Noriega, but he did facilitate one of the great nicknames in history - Pineapple Face. Brilliant.

Valeriya Volkova

If you haven't seen her work, you're in for a real treat. Part of what I like about her work is that we seem to be interested in the same things, especially buildings, squares, and rectangles (to be broad about it:)). In fact, there's a really fun overlap with her pool piece (above), and a little watercolor doodle I did a few years ago! She totally kicked my ass on this one.

Captain Phil Harris - RIP

I've probably spent more time than I should watching Deadliest Catch marathons. It's a pretty great show, partly because of the beauty of the tossing seas, partly the amazing bounty of crab, but mostly because of the guys who man the boats, and Captain Phil in particular who passed away from a stroke at 53.

Mini-illos!

It's fun to work small scale, especially with some "for fun" editorial pieces. This top one about the Icelandic volcano eruption and the flight rerouting all over Europe, and the bottom one about a fire at a local pizza place.

Blues Highway!

Piece for the April issue of GO Magazine for the great Shane Luitjens depicting a combination of a few stops along the Blues Highway including the birthplace of James Cotton, the crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul (which is actually just a legend attributed to Johnson, but which probably was really about Tommy Johnson), a farm where Pinetop Perkins worked, and the venue run by Hardface Clanton who helped launch many blues careers.

Another little spot for the same ish - this one portraying the Friendship Oak, which if you stand under will you stay friends forever.

Snappah!

I've been working on a short comic based on some music fables written by a friend. The characters are all animals, and my character was "the Critic". I chose to portray him as a snapping turtle. Of course the week I finished, I went down to see some of my fam in Virginia and ran into this 18 inch snapper sunning herself on the grass. A perfect opportunity to get some reference immediately after I could have used it. Ah well. It was still a pretty awesome sight.

Congrats, Mr. President!

There is a classic sense of American obstinacy. Usually, we end up unlawfully invading another state, maintaining discriminatory legislation, or doggedly adhering to a plea of innocence to a charge of infidelity. Rarely is it displayed in the cause of half-assed reform. It's not glamorous. It's not sexy. But, by gum, we got ourselves some honest to goodness health care reform. Half-assed reform, but reform nonetheless. Six months ago with the Tea Party screaming at town halls, death panels around every corner, and more caricatures of the President as Hitler than was tasteful under any circumstance, I thought health care was as dead as your neighbor who couldn't afford health care. And yet, President Obama stuck with it, bored the entire country, and got it through. Kudos, Mr. President. It's a big W. Have yourself a beer summit.

Doc Jingle!

Need something for that hard to please nephew? How 'bout a Gap Kids shirt drawn by me! (You can buy it here) I had a lot of fun doing this tee, and it strangely coincided with a piece for GO Magazine where I also did a one man band as a spot for part of a larger piece. No joke - same two week span. It was nice to have the smaller GO piece done to help out with the bigger GAP piece. Weird how that happens, huh? (One-man-band pieces are also nice for having an excuse to listen to some Hasil Adkins!)

Oldies

I've been cleaning out my computer and came across some older images - 2002/2003 stuff. This one is still one of my favorites. It's called "Process". The guy in the lower left is the artist, the baby headed airplanes are ideas, and the two headed guy represents the right and left brain each trying to block the ideas from getting to the artist's head - which is often my problem. I feel like I have some really great left brained ideas, that then get overruled by my right brain, and vice versa. My favorite paintings are the ones that straddle the subjectivity and objectivity, and for by those standards, this was a very true painting me. Plus, it was one of the first ones where I used more middle mixtures with high chroma accents, and got away from out of the tube color harmonies.

Play Fake Ball!

As a little gift I, a Mets fan, sent this lil' painting to the Commissioner of my fantasy baseball league, reigning league champ, and Red Sox fan. It's just a little reminder from me that it can seem like you've got things all wrapped up only to have it all roll right between your legs (which will then force a game seven which you will lose).

Kurt Westergaard

Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who drew the inflammatory images of the prophet Mohammed a few years ago for Josh Baker at Metaleap for use in Paste Magazine. If you don't know the story, he's a couple of attempts on his life, the last being a Somali guy who tried to break into his house with an axe . . . As if us illustrators and cartoonists don't have it tough enough as is! You'll notice the angry Muslim man on the right side of the sketch did not make it into the final, and I think it was a good edit. I find my flesh to be rather susceptible to axes.

Thought I'd throw in some process work, too.

Da' Bomber

It's fun to go on the GAP site and see some of the illo I've done for them in use. They're all done about a year in advance so it makes for nice surprises to see what's out at any given time.

Heavyweights

Nothing like a sweaty mass of man, muscle, and pink duking it out. The fight for the World Heavyweight Homoerotic Belt has begun!!

All things being sequel . . .

This is one of my favorite, although puzzling, NY phenomenons. I've seen many examples of these sequel-esque restaurant names around, almost always with Chinese restaurants, but now in my neighborhood there's a new entry. Apparently, there is a bar somewhere named CHANCE. The owners, owing to apparent success, decided to open up a second bar located on my block. In doing so, they decided to pass up the myriad of applicable titles that maintain the congruity using the original name: Second Chance, Another Chance, or any other phrase involving chance (I'm sure you can think of a few) . . . and decided on CHANCE II. Is it the propensity of pop culture? Of too many over promoted sequels? Do people not know enough words? It's probably some sort of tax thing. Even so, I'm disappointed. The "II" will always be attached to a sub-par, uncreative, over hyped version of the original that should take place on a boat, in space, fifteen years in the future - OR as I would advocate, never at all, and certainly, never on my block.

American Medical News . . .

Piece for Annemarie Neff at American Medical News about doctors alotting too much power to their practice managers. I like offices. So many good rectangles!

Tree

Is it time for spring yet?

Tanzanian Snow Day!

Thought I'd do a little snow day painting, and found a good pic to work from in a Salvation Army bought book about Tanzania.

Heavyweights in progress . . .

Working on some more sports imagery. This is a detail of a boxing painting I'm working on. I was reinspired by some of the great Josh Longo's muscle men.

Banshee

One of my points of extreme embarrassment as a child was when I first got into comic books. The characters were new to me, and as an X-Men reader in the Chris Claremont era, the number of characters and universes was pretty daunting. But I was into it and wanted to ask the cooler, older kids about stuff I didn't know, and mostly about the new (to me) character of Banshee. However, when I got up the courage to ask, I couldn't remember his name, and stuttering I said, "You n-n-n-n-know, the loud one?". Not cool. Even in the comic book world of uncool cool.

Simon Says . . .

Here's a piece for Wes Gatbonton at Las Vegas Weekly in more of painted style, which was a lot of fun especially working on a portrait.

And the finish . . .

Dreamin' of summer . . .

A little painting after a sketch I did in August when my Vermont fishing license was still valid. Those were happier times . . .

Only Two Holidays Behind, and off to Society!

Another CityLife illo for the Thanksgiving ish - still catching up on my posts, butIm getting there:). Plus, I got two pieces into the Society of Illustrators which is bo-gnarly and right around the corner, opening on January 8th! Here are the big winners. . .

Hot Dog on a Stick!

Piece for Maureen Adamo for a first person account of life at the famous west coast franchise, Hot Dog on a Stick. Suffice to say, life at the Stick closely mirrors my own restaurant experience, so much so that it reminds me that in my nightmares, Im back in food service.

Cwismas is coming!