Art History for the Confused

Quick note: These read a little easier if you click on each page individually.

Would You Drink 32nd Street Merlot?

This is a second go at an illustration for a project on designing a series of themed wine bottles. My team chose a city theme, with my friend Adam creating the illustration for the "Penthouse" Chardonnay and Derek doing the tagging on Train Yard -- another red wine.
Perhaps I'll post a photo of the series when I have it, if you're interested.

Here's the buzz

Been busy with school work this week -- and seeing some flicks at the wonderful Cleveland International Film Festival.

Today I had to get back to the school work stuff, so I've been sketching bees for an illustration pertaining to the dwindling bee population. Maybe I'll post more as the project develops. Here's just a loose little something from the sketchbook.

Quick Sketch

Make It Shut Up

Someone recently said, sort of casually, "Everyone wrestles with the insecurity demon."

Funny thing was, this guy seems like someone who NEVER wrestles with it.
But I do.
The insecurity monster is a little like Smedley, my food-anxiety goblin, only maybe nastier. Much meaner. Equally relentless, though.

Anyway, this guy has really been rearing his ugly head recently. (Well, they both have.) He has a lot to say about my decision to leave a well-paying job to go to art school (which is an excellent place to learn how much you don't know). He's got opinions about my age, my skills, my character, my habits, my potential -- you name it.

So I thought I'd draw him, and then I'd tell him to shut the **** up. Yes, that was a swear word in there. That's how strongly I feel about his need to go.

Regarding the very loose likeness of myself in the second picture, by the way -- I think I've been inspired by recent study of the Fauve painters, who liked lots of garish, emotional color. I'm a bit garish and emotional myself.

As The Night Wore On

Three things I will never understand.
1. Why people "friend" people they don't know on Facebook.
2. Why people name their kids after themselves. (No offense, it's common practice and tradition -- I just don't get it.)
3. People who don't let their animals on the bed.

As to this last: Half the reason I HAVE animals is so they'll curl up next to me during slumber. Yes, it creates interruptions. Lots of interruptions. Did you know that a 10-pound cat can generate heat up to 130 degrees while sleeping? Of course that's not true, I just made it up. I think. But they're all like menopausal crones, every last one of them.

And did you know that a 130-pound dog grows more bold as the night wears on, stretching across vast bedspread territories until her mistress has contracted, potato-bug style, into a tight ball? This IS true. I have the stiff neck to prove it.

Fur at the head, fur at the feet. It's claustrophobia-inducing. It's cramping. It makes for a restless night.
And yet I wouldn't think of closing the bedroom door on them.

How do you feel about travel?

I wonder how many people are like me: They like to travel and see other places. They like thinking back on places they've visited. But the travel itself is tinged with anxiety, ambivalence and a pull toward home.

How do you feel about travel? I'd love to hear.

Sketcher's Overwhelm

Sorry to say that while there's a pill for all kinds of symptoms and syndromes and disorders and dysphorias, there is no magic pill for that which we sketchers know as "sketcher's overwhelm." That is, you're in a place just bursting with visual stimulation -- exactly the kind of stimulation that you think you want, as a draw-er -- and suddenly you can't draw because, well, where do you start?

Such was my dilemma the other day when Katy and I visited the Buckhorn Exchange, a century-plus restaurant and tourist hot-spot in Denver. The menu is decorated with dishes like rattlesnake and "rocky mountain oysters" (kack), and the walls are decorated with just about every kind of dead animal you can imagine. Not a place to take your Peta friends, friends.

I couldn't NOT draw there, but then again where to start? I picked out a little corner of a wall and just thought to myself, "I'll do just ONE head. Just one. And then if I feel like I can add another, I will."
Thus, between my bean soup and my chicken sandwich, I grabbed quick sketches of the animals you see here. Later, I decided to brighten up the page with some quick checks reminiscent of the table cloth and curtains in the Buckhorn.

If you were super dedicated, you could click on the picture and turn your computer sideways to try to read between the checks, but there's nothing real exciting there. Just a list of things we did that day.

The Estes Park page

This is the page I did after we came back from Estes Park.
No, we did not see any bison. Perhaps if I'd had a live reference, I wouldn't have made him purple. :D

Boulder; Estes Park

A view along Pearl Street in downtown Boulder. The guy on the bench sat down after I had the bench all together, but I decided not to let that stop me from putting him in. You don't get such a strong feel of the view, but DANG am I proud of those bricks!




Here's Katy in Estes Park, Colorado, just before the snow started.

Pardon the blur ...

We're on the road and scanless, but I thought it might be fun to post as we go, so I shot this page with my iPhone. Hard to get it close and sharp.

Anyway, Katy and I are in Boulder, visiting the university, where I'm sure she'll want to go. It's a different world out here, as I remember from my first visit (I was younger than she is now) and as she's discovering. We couldn't help but notice that the plane to Denver had a higher-than-usual ratio of attractive people on board.