Poem

I liked this title and I don't know why. What it did was inspire me to get back to a medium that I hadn't done since art school: relief print. I decided to do a treatment of a poem in the way I'd done one in relief class. I took a haiku and did a very small print based on it. I don't remember the exact poem but it went a bit like:

Now, the fireworks
are over for the night
ah, how vast and dark.

Of course, you don't get to see the print. Only one has survived and hangs on the wall of a friend's condo. He won it at a raffle at a seminar at our aikido dojo.

Anyhoo. I haven't had time to do the actual carving, what with another trip to ride The Queen Latifah Trail in MA and some freelance web design work (Woo hoo! Firewood money!). So, what you get is a sketch for the print done in illustrator. It will be much cooler carved and printed. I think the composition is missing something. Perhaps the angles need tweaking. Any thoughts? The poem it's based on is below.



poor crying cricket
Perhaps your little husband
was caught by our cat

(by Kikaku)

Listening to: Fibber McGee and Molly episode: "Egyptian Good Luck Ring" (1940)

discovery

This was a pretty good topic, I thought. I had the basic idea on Sunday and sketched it out rough. Two more sketches later, I decided to attempt a scratchboard of it.

Result = failure.

Ah, well, can't win them all. So, in the need to get something up by Wednesday, I offer the third-round sketch placed in the semblance of an old-school sci-fi magazine cover. I would love to see this painted don't have much ability in painting. I actually entered art school hoping to be a painter, but sucked very much. I was so bad in fact that my instructor was so impressed with my progress from the fall to spring semester that the upped my grade from a C- to a C+. Luckily, I discovered type...

So, here it is. Just imagine that this was painted by Frank Kelly Freas or someone of his towering ability.



A used bookstore in town has a display of three items that the owner bought at an estate sale. Three pristine Fantasy and Science Fiction magazines and the original paintings of their covers! He has them displayed without price in a hidden area of the store. He showed them to me after I'd come up to the register with couple of 'golden age' sci-fi compilations.

Listening to: "Dawning of a New Era" by The Specials

Geeky

Four things:

First, about the title. It just didn't inspire me. It was the 'y' that did it. If it was 'geek' it would have opened up the field of ideas to at least include a certain type of circus performers. However, nobody ever refers to the guy who pounds nails into his head as 'geeky'. 'Geeky' just seemed, well, lame.

This dislike of titles seems to happen often to me. I must be less about the titles than what I want to get out of IF. I want titles that are rigid enough to provide direction, but open enough to allow depth. I'm not talking Hemmingway, but I need a title that whispers a story. What a title like 'geeky' feels like is just an exercise. Like, I should practice drawing a geeky person because a client might need a geeky person. That doesn't work for me.

Second, about the work. I didn't put a great deal of effort into this as you can see. I did a quite nice small sketch. However, when I transfered it and began inking, I found that the vellum I'm using, while good for penciling is terrible for inking. At least with a crow quill.

Thirdly the subject. This is a portrait, from memory, of a girl I saw in the grocery store a few weeks ago. She was about 5' 4" and had a small smile on her face that I completely failed to capture. I also failed to notice what was in her cart because I was *ahem* reading her t-shirt...

Here you go:



Four. This is selfish of me, but, if you've read down to here, you'd find that par for the course. I was really disappointed that only one person left comments on my work last week. It's got lots of problems that I would want to rectify, but I was hoping to get some comments on whether I'd succeeded in translating a story in a single comic page.

Ah well.

Listening to while I post: "Clubland" by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. (is it me or would the young Mr. Costello punch the old Mr. Costello in the face for being in ads for credit cards and luxury automobiles?)

twist

First the art:

As I said last post, I've been listening to old sci-fi radio dramas and they've inspired me to crack open my old golden age sci-fi compilations. I really enjoy the ones that were decidedly un-edgy, hopeful and humorous. Many of these humorous ones features Twilight Zone-esque twist endings, so I decided, as an experiment, to pick a short story and attempt to condense it down to a single standard-size comic page. The story is Allamagoosa by Eric Frank Russell. The story won a Hugo and is very funny. I don't think I did it justice, but it works. Read the full story here. It's a very good read.

Here's the work:



Secondly I've been tagged by swinebread.
Here are the rules:
- Each player starts with eight random facts about themselves.
- Those who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight facts and post these rules.
- At the end of the post, choose some people to get tagged and list their names.

1) I was a hoist operator on HH-3f helicopters in the U.S. Coast Guard. I got out after 9 years because the
new HH-60J helos that replaced the H-3s made me very airsick.

2) I really enjoy the taste of prune juice.

3) I am more physically fit now than I was in high school

4) I find a good mountain bike ride as satisfying as sex

5) I hate my own artwork within minutes of finishing a piece

6) Arkonbey is not a name I created. A very good friend of mine once told me that it was the name he gave his 'minifig' alter ego when he played legos as a kid. I have his permission to use the name.

7) With the exception of a short trip to Tijuana, I have never been off of the continent of North America

8) I have a crush on Queen Latifah (and my fiance approves)

That's it. And, so I tag AndreZero, demosthenes, and Kick Enemy Men (if he ever decides to stop playing WoW and update)

Listening to: X-minus One Radio Drama: "Jaywalker"

Camoflage

Well, I rushed this one a bit and I'm still down to the wire. I'd hate to get lapped by IF.

I was out of town on Friday. Headed down to Mass. to visit my folks and to CT to go to a friend's delayed family wedding reception. It was a good trip. I 'discovered' a bunch of fabulous, purpose-built mountain bike singletrack off of a trail I've been riding for years (For reason of my own, I choose to call the "Queen Latifah Trail"). And, at the reception, I got to see my friend's 53 year-old-mom, my friend's wife and HIS best friend's lesbian partner do synchronized hip-hop dancing (it was his mom's idea). That and I listened to 10 hours of very compelling vintage sci-fi radio drama on the drive. Fabulous.

The drawing was done for IF, but it also wasn't. I had no ideas, so I hit my old sketchbook looking for something to get me going. I found the little robot guy you see. He started as an umpire-bot, but turned into a battlefield medic-bot. I built a little story-snipped around him and this piece is subtitled "Old Number 15". I think it'd be a great seed for a Wierd War Tale.

The inking was fun to do, but I blew off the shading and rushed the color to get this in under the deadline.

Rejection

Woo Hoo! This is my earliest IF post ever.

I win.

Anyway. I did rush this a bit to get the early (for me) post. Thanks to all of those who gave me such great feedback last week; the shadows aren't my best, but they are there. I used this definition for 'Rejection':

"an immune response in which foreign tissue (as of a skin graft or transplanted organ) is attacked by immune system components of the recipient organism".

So, here's rejection:



A no-prize to whomever can name the movie this references (though, remember, you'll be showing your age and/or geekiness by answering correctly). Speaking of no-prizes. The answer to last week's no-prize question was "Sebastian Stark" as played by James Woods in the TV show 'Shark'. The key to the answer was the fact that I said 'attempting to portray" and not "what he looks like".

What I'm listening to while posting: "Man, It's So Loud In Here" by They Might Be Giants off of 'Mink Car'. ( I like this song and like TMBG, but I didn't buy this album because it came with a giant sticker that read '
"featuring 'yeah, yeah, yeah!' from the Chrysler commercial!" and a Chrysler logo)

Suit

Hey, I'm back.

I managed to fit three references to this week's topic into my piece! It isn't bad. I really have to work on my inking style; my pencils look good, but when I ink, it loses something. Of course, part of me worries that I'll never get a style. The other part worries that I do have a style and it isn't good. Heh.

I took reference photos of myself for this. I was wearing a pretty nice, immaculate, vintage, single-breasted, two-button gray pinstripe suit that I got at a local used clothing shop for $15. The jacket fits great, but the trousers are about 6" too long.

Anyway, here's the ink:


and here's the pencil:



And a no-prize to whoever can identify what television lawyer I was attempting to portray.