Dude Can't Draw

Arthur's Seat

2009-06-18T21:28:00.001-07:00

Having miraculously brought our Southern California sun with us to Edinburgh in October, we took full advantage. A warm sunny climb of Arthur's seat was just the thing. Some time to admire the view, taking care not to be tumbled off the rocks by the stiff breeze.

Then off to Duddingston
to satisfy our appetite with a pint, a Sunday roast, and a haggis.

Gravy Robbers

2009-04-08T09:21:00.000-07:00

Okay, this shirt is only funny if you're a fan of Tim & Eric Awesome show on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. I am a fan, and this shirt funny. And I made it. And I got it printed at cafepress. And I cannot WAIT to wear it.

Improvement

2009-03-11T11:37:00.000-07:00

Hey, I consider squeezing 3 entirely different perspectives into a single drawing a freaking achievement!

Okay, maybe not. I got a little lost in the details and failed to work on the drawing as a whole. I didn't take a step back until I was nearly done to notice the utter train wreck (pun) that is the perspective.

That said, if you'd seen my previous attempts to draw this from long ago, the title of "Improvement" would seem far less incongruous. Night and day. I may revisit this one once more and see if I can't straighten out my vanishing points.

Change I can believe in

2009-03-06T07:20:00.000-08:00

This turned into a well timed coincidence. I drew this end of January, not realizing that in less than two weeks' time was the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth.

I've been doing a lot of reading lately, and much of it involves, either directly or tangentially, the brilliant work of Charles Darwin. So when, as part of a short-lived "draw every day" challenge between a friend and myself, the theme "A New Outlook" came up, this is where I went. I've never really drawn a portrait before.

Shout Out

2008-12-15T10:37:00.000-08:00

I just need to post a big thank you to the site Great Wall. A while ago I had a custom giclee print made to hang at home. First of all, the price was right, the service was excellent, and the quality of the print was amazing.

That would have been more than enough to recommend them. But they've gone above and beyond. Several months ago, while we were dealing with the water damage in our condo, the hanging hardware on that print failed. It fell off the wall and incurred some minor damage. It was a small scrape and a dent to the bottom edge of the frame. It was really unfortunate. But the damage was slight, hardly noticeable even knowing it was there. So I figured I'd rehang it. So I emailed Great Wall asking for advice on an alternate hanging solution.

I did not expect the response. They apologized for the mounting hardware failure and said that if I just took a photo of the damage they'd send me a replacement print! How awesome is that? They even had no issue with the fact that it then took me 3 months to actually get around to taking the photo of the damage(we went out of town right after I got the response and it had totally slipped my mind).

So if you're looking to get prints of anything, or happen to need a huge wall mural from somewhere that's going to treat you right, Great Wall is a great place to start.

Progress

2008-11-20T22:41:00.000-08:00

Verifiable "Aha!" moment here. The details of this drawing are starting to come together. I went through several iterations of that column before my drawing instructor gave me a tip that tied it all together.

I'm less enamored with how the additions seen here turned out. It's on the right track but not really capturing what I want. My instructor has tried to steer me in another direction, but I haven't liked that either. I might have to revisit those though because I'm getting too lost in the details.

Bonus points if anyone can identify the house I'm drawing.

Architexture

2008-11-15T17:52:00.001-08:00

I've started working on a drawing from one of my favorite photographs. This is one small detail and I'm pretty happy with the results so far. It's just a draft, but it's coming along well.

I've learned a lot doing this drawing and have surprised myself. I selected it as a stretch goal, figuring I'd pick an element or two to work on and not really turn it into a finished piece. Now I'm certain that I'll be able to create something I'm happy with.

Click on the doors to see the state of the rest of the draft and then try to guess what I spent my last drawing lesson focusing on.

Actually, that's not really true. While I did learn the wood texture technique I'm trying here, I actually spent the bulk of the lesson on my first attempt at the drawing as a whole. Again, surprised at how well it went.

Biogrty Lives

2008-11-05T09:50:00.001-08:00

I'm at a loss. I should be celebrating the hope filled victory for the best presidential candidate this country has seen in decades. Instead I have to come to grips wit the fact that hatred and lies have motivated half of the citizens of California to vote to strip fellow human beings of their dignity.

No on 8 - Equal Rights

2008-10-29T07:43:00.001-07:00

Apropos of nothing other than the fact that the election is less than a week away and constantly on my mind, I can't help but say something. It's unfathomable to me that Prop 8 stands a reasonable chance of passing in California. More infuriating are the lies and fear mongering that are being used to support it. If it were simply being supported by people who believe same sex marriage should not be recognized, that would be one thing (though I'd still have my disagreement with them). But it's being supported by people who believe it will somehow lessen their own marriage. Or lead to gay marriage classes in schools. Or force their church to allow gay sex orgies on the pulpit. Or whatever other nonsense their lie-spewing church leaders have fed them.

Freedom is freedom. Other people's relationships have nothing to do with my own. My marriage to my wife is no more diluted by two men marrying than it is by the countless loveless traditional marriages that end in divorce. It is unseemly that there is even the possibility of writing discrimination into our state constitution.

I can't wait until this election is over, it's not good for my blood pressure.

Tuesdays with drawing

2008-10-27T20:55:00.001-07:00

What better way to indicate my sudden desire to draw more regularly than to spend an evening not drawing! I'm thinking creatively already.

I haven't been entirely neglecting the pencil at least. I learned a lot drawing this.

An Experiment: Day 1 - The Control

2008-08-19T22:56:00.000-07:00

Once you've learned how to see, you see things that you don't even know you're seeing.

Use-Reference

2008-05-22T15:25:00.001-07:00

Still in the draft stage, but I've made progress on my latest attempt at art.

I'm unnaturally obsessed with Douglas Hofstadter and his philosophy of the mind. Also a fan of Rene Magritte. This piece has been bouncing around my head in some form or another for a long time.

This is rough draft #2. I like it but don't love it. Colors are wrong, spacing is wrong, and yes I'm aware of the misspelling. But it gets the idea across.

For some reason, when I stepped away from it (and specifically, once I took this photo and scaled it down), it struck me that it looks like a book cover. I accidentally stumbled into that odd subset of graphical qualities that most book covers seem to fit into.

Best Coachella Yet

2008-05-02T14:04:00.000-07:00

Yes I've been absent for a while and no I haven't done a whole lot of drawing. I've still got one big project in the works, but it's stuck in draft stage until I get off my butt and buy some paper to make the final product. But I've been a bit distracted.

Our condo is finally put back together after the water damage, so that's one distraction down. Birthday madness begins now with my wife's birthday, my own birthday, and mothers day falling on top of each other as usual.

But last weekend's distraction was the the finest. 3 days of heat, music and art. This was our third April visit to Indio for the incomparable Coachella music festival, and our fist since they went to the 3 day format. Our last attendance was cut short by a family medical emergency, so 3 days was a test. But we did it right, rented a house with a few other couples, having leisurely breakfasts/swims in the morning, and soaks in the hot tub at night. Good times.

The concert itself was off the charts. Blown away by several acts, notably Man Man, Sharon Jones and the Dapp Kings, Holy F*ck, Gogol Bordello Portishead, and, winner for most spectacular, Roger Waters.

I didn't really expect much from Waters other than zoning out to some good music. I knew he could still play and I absolutely love Pink Floyd music, but I figured that after 30 or so years, there wasn't much he could pull out to really get me going. How very wrong I was. Long story short: giant inflatable pig with anti-war/anti-Bush slogans that he released into the night sky ("That's my pig"), and a low-flying airplane with WWII-style shark teeth painted on it dropping Obama leaflets. It was an absolutely otherworldly experience and I'm thrilled to have witnessed it.

Others may have had him beat on their overall performance (I was particularly taken by Man Man's outrageously manic set), but Waters' show was the very definition of spectacular.

Anyway, here are photos from the weekend. Many of day 1's photos were taken by my wife, while I took the vast majority of day 2 and 3's shots.

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

Meetings, meetings, and more meetings

2008-04-15T16:33:00.001-07:00

Three hours of meetings today. Somewhere in the middle of hour 2 I drew this, one of my coworkers across the table. It was all that was keeping me awake. Sorry about the image quality, I just snapped a shot with my cell hone camera.

Artomat

2008-04-10T11:34:00.000-07:00

Remember these? Outlawed in the 80s, cigarette dispensing machines used to be a common sight at every restaurant, convenience store, supermarket, etc.

Well, someone had the bright idea to rescue these stylish relics and repurpose them into something not only legal, but damned clever. Namely, dispensing small, cigarette-carton-sized pieces of art!

Head over to http://www.artomat.org/home.html, find a machine near you, and maybe even submit your own art and make a few $.

Meanwhile, I've got a new piece in the works that I hope to be posting soon.

Water blogged

2008-03-24T09:34:00.001-07:00

I haven't felt much like drawing or posting lately. For the last week we've been dealing with major water damage to our condo. We've had to have the entire first story floor pulled up, drywall cut out, and we've been living in our bedroom since last Saturday. It's not fun.

But that's no excuse to drop everything. I've haven't been entirely idle. There's not much inspiring in our bedroom, but I have occasionally pulled the sketch book out and done some exercises. This is a quick sketch of my wife in graphite. Similar to the style of my last post, but with an emphasis on speed. I'm working on getting basic gesture lines and shapes down quickly so I can get better at sketching live subjects. Getting better all the time, to coin a phrase.

Beautiful friend, the end

2008-03-12T08:45:00.000-07:00

This is from the final session of my drawing class. We played with chalk pastels. I now love this medium. This drawing here was literally my very first stab at it. I was shocked at how easily I was able to come out with something I liked. Definitely going to have to revisit this and see where I can go.

So my class is now over. I really enjoyed it and I think I really benefited from it. I'd like to see what I do on my own for a bit, but I'm likely to seek out more instruction at some point. I actually wouldn't mind taking more from the same instructor. The consistency would be nice. It's funny, though, I don't like the style of her pieces. But I think that may be a good thing. It'll prevent me from mimicking and rather force me to focus on using the techniques to create my own style. The contrast will do me good.

My wife asked me an interesting question when I showed this to her. "Do you consider any of these sketches 'art', or is it just messing around?" My answer? Who the hell knows. I mean, this is just a crappy newsprint sketch pad, and I'm just sketching things to work on one or two particular techniques, I'm not trying to make any sort of finished product. Plus, most of the source material used during class was magazine ads (this, for example, was for some diet food or fitness water or something), so it's not like these things are particularly meaningful.

That said, I don't think there's a clean line that can be drawn (so to speak) between "art" and "not art". A drawing like this definitely has some artistic value. At the very least, it imparts a certain amount of information about my style and abilities. The sketch pad as a whole is a record of my slow learning process, which has artistic value. There's nothing in there that I spent enough time on to call a completed work, but there are things in there that I will surely reference and that will inform anything I do make from here forward. So in that sense, yes I do consider it "art".

Absence makes the eye grow fonder

2008-02-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

It's one of those things you tell yourself over and over, other people tell you over and over, but it's hard to remember. Sometimes when you feel like everything is coming out wrong, you have to step back for a bit and get a fresh look.

I've been struggling with the latest techniques from my drawing class. It's just not coming together for me. I know it's largely a matter of practice, but it's been frustrating in comparison to everything else I've learned, which seemed to sink in pretty well. In last week's class, we were drawing animals from photos using some specific techniques. It was not going well. I hated everything I was doing.

But last night I pulled my sketch pad out to flip through and came across this giraffe here. It was one of the last things I drew in the class, and when I was done, I was sure it was crap. I was completely dissatisfied, and didn't even think it looked anything like a giraffe.

Amazing what a week will do. I was surprised to see it and recognize it as a giraffe. A pretty severely deformed giraffe, but definitely a giraffe. And, more to the point, with some depth to the face, which I thought for sure I had botched entirely. I guess it was just a matter of being fatigued from 2 hours of frustration and just being too close and too focused on what was wrong to see the whole picture.

All that said, I haven't hated everything I've done with what I'm learning. I was pretty pleased with this kangaroo and especially with this elephant. These are two drawings that I could never have made 6 weeks ago.

[sorry about the dark images. These are on cheap newsprint and are too big to get on a scanner, so I had to take a photo]

Emergency Lemon

2008-02-21T11:23:00.000-08:00

There's a story behind this one that I'm sure is only amusing to me and the person on the other end of an IM conversation. It involved Trader Joe's, lamb kabob, and a very dry serving of tabbouleh (or tabouli, or tabouleh, or however you want to spell it). Thus, the Emergency Lemon was born.

Personally, I drew the box with the lemon and smiled. I added the reamer and laughed out loud.

Ironically, we had just gone over perspective in my drawing class when I drew this. I even had a debate with the instructor over one-point perspective and the fact that, unless you are looking dead straight on at the subject, there's technically no such thing as one-point perspective and that it's just a convenient shortcut because the actual perspective is hardly discernible in that case. So yes, I'm well aware that the front plane of this box is utterly wrong. And yes, it does bug me.

Mod round 2

2008-02-19T08:47:00.001-08:00

More of the same. Just experimenting with shape and color, using one of my favorite doodles as a starting point. This was also my first shot at playing with pastels, a brand new material for me that I clearly need to learn more about.

Rediscovered

2008-02-12T08:40:00.000-08:00

You know, I hated this when I made it. I hated it and I forgot about it. But I stumbled across it this morning, and I don't think I hate it anymore. I still don't like it, but I don't hate it.

This started as a pencil drawing. I'm unnaturally obsessed with the ever popular mid-century mod look, and this was my first real crack at putting my spin on it. I scanned the drawing and wanted to get nice clean bold color in it. But I need to figure out how to compensate for the jagged edges inherent to a scanned pencil drawing when filling color.

In which Dude learns to draw

2008-02-05T08:55:00.000-08:00

I'm jeopardizing my integrity, risking turning myself into a liar. Dude may soon be able to draw.

I've completed 3 sessions of an 8 part intro drawing class. I don't expect to come out of it as Rembrandt, but I do hope that it'll give me the foundation to actually develop drawing as a skill. Perhaps I'll actually then be able to set out to draw something and successfully draw it, rather than randomly doodle until something kinda looks good.

Week 2 was all about "blind contours". Drawing while looking only at the subject, not at the paper, and never lifting the pencil. The result is, understandably, a mess. But it's not about the result, it's about training the eye and mind to outline shapes and connect that to hand movement. The one shown here was my best effort of the day. These were my initial attempts. I got lost in the details and ended up just going over the same spot on the paper. It'd be nice to be able to say that I started there and progressed until I was doing ones like the main image here, but no. It was pretty up and down for the whole class. Just gotta remind myself that it's not about the product (no matter how much "better" the instructor's example was).

These three were a good effort, I thought (even if the one in the middle looks like something from the old Disney cartoon Gargoyles).

My Google Footprint

2008-01-28T11:54:00.001-08:00

I use a visitor tracking site called "StatCounter" to keep track of the endless throngs of people who show up here. Among the info I get is how each visitor managed to navigate to the blog. Did you find my blogger profile? Did you click the link in my signature on a message board I post on? Did you go straight from a bookmark? Yes, I know who you are and where you've come from.

But my favorite entries in the log are always the ones that clicked through a Google search. It shows me exactly what they were searching for that brought up the blog, and which entry was brought up. These are the searches currently in the log:

How to draw nicer
Draw the statu [sic] of liberty
johnen vasquez
inspiration for a pool side story
Drawing from photographs a copyright infringement
vodie
draw like johnen
how to draw a pool side
draw good enough for college [my favorite so far]
drawing odd characters
step by step how to draw birthday things
types of line regarding drawing
draw paper birthday
how to draw like johnen
how to draw many dudes

My, I imagine that all of those people doing "how to draw" searches were pretty disappointed in their Google results. And at this rate, I'm going to attract the whole of the Jhonen Vasquez fan base. [here's where I admit spelling his name wrong...twice. Thank God for the edit button]

I wonder how much this post is going to throw Google off.

Couldn't have been a nicer day

2008-01-16T14:24:00.001-08:00

Flashing back for a moment to our October vacation, this photo was my favorite of the countless I took of the Statue of Liberty. Hard not to take a good shot, of course.

I'm also particularly fond of this one. I love the somewhat disorienting mix of scales, between the massive base of the statue, the comparatively minuscule people, and the distant but huge city. Makes a nice statement, no?

And of course I had to play with the telephoto lens. Can you believe the color of the sky that day?!

A series is born

2008-01-09T23:22:00.000-08:00

Ever since I finished my first mixed-media piece I've been contemplating trying my hand at it again.

That first one came from nothing more than a desire to have something colorful and graphic on the wall. If I were to try again, I wanted it to come from a place of a little more meaning and be a little more thought out. I had doubts that I'd be able to come up with a vision and execute it.

I'm pretty pleased with the results. It's not precisely what I set out to accomplish, however the final result came about very organically and satisfied my overall intent. I won't go into great detail about the inspiration, other than to point out that my vast fan base of regular readers might recognize the base image and I'll mention that I've titled it "Windy City". It's not meant to be particularly literal, but for me it all has a connection.

I'm encouraged. I may continue to delve into this format.

Lost

2008-01-07T11:21:00.001-08:00

Third in my college doodle series. Yes, it has a solution. No, I don't have it solved anywhere. Yes, it took me forever.

Pieces of Beat

2007-12-27T16:42:00.001-08:00

This is rubbish. Oh, there are individual bits I like, but I was trying to capture a moment and a feeling and it failed miserably. Even knowing what I was trying to recreate, I can't see it in here.

Whoopee.

Regarding Shape and Line

2007-12-17T14:40:00.000-08:00

Nothing earth shattering here. Although I'd be curious as to people's reaction to this one. What they think it evokes. This is somewhat of an experiment. I've taken a specific image and generalized it in hopes of invoking some part of its impact without being literal.

Poolside Inspiration

2007-12-06T17:01:00.000-08:00

3 days in Palm Springs does wonders. Drew this in October on what's become an annual getaway over Columbus Day weekend. Three days of a tight-knit group of friends, secluded in a rented house (for used to be a small hotel, but that's no longer available. Sad story...) with nothing to do but eat, drink, swim, and create. Heaven.

Can't say that this represents any particular piece of the backyard's landscape, but it's got elements of the foliage back there.

Into the archives

2007-11-21T11:41:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I forget that I have a whole stash of drawings to, well, draw from.

Dating from ca. 1997/1998, this followed the completion of the doodle seen in this post. In creating this, I made a conscious effort to create negative space, though I did my best to NOT consciously direct the overall composition of the whole. It was an exercise in tedium and took me months' worth of lecture hours to get this far. I developed a sense of wanting to balance the size of the individual boxes as well as the size and spacing of the negative space. Like I said, I was trying not to direct the end product, but I definitely would decide things like, "I've done too many small open areas, time to leave a big one," or, "That last set of boxes was too regular, I should start adding a bunch of weird shaped ones."

I think I had the goal of filling the whole page. And I don't think I chose to stop where I stopped, I think I just ran out of school year and never picked it up again.

The full size image is pretty large, any smaller and the detail started to go away.

The old country

2007-11-20T10:39:00.000-08:00

I'm not being very productive on the drawing front. Two weeks of travel, plus I've picked up an instructive drawing book. So I guess I am drawing, but they're drawing exercises, not my own stuff.

Visited Chicago and New York, took over 1000 photos. This one is a particular favorite, taken with my 55-200mm lens, it's a ginkgo tree at the home and studio of Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park, Il. I did a lot of experimenting with depth-of-field while on the trip and this one came out particularly nice, wouldn't you agree.

Oh hell, I just rememberd I do have a finished drawing I should post. And maybe I'll track my progress through the instructional book here as well.

Over done

2007-10-24T16:25:00.000-07:00

I loved this at first, I'm less in love with it now that I'm revisiting it.

Pleased with the Untitled legs piece earlier, I've been considering doing a series of similar mixed-media pieces, exploring digital image manipulation combined with hand drawing. That first one started as a photo, became an abstract digital canvas, and was finished with a digitally altered scan of hand drawn sketches. Each piece had its own reason and purpose and came together to a nice whole.

The process here was entirely backwards and I think the results speak to that. This time I started with the hand drawn sketch, with which I am very pleased. I should have just left it at that, and when I get a chance I'll likely revisit it as a standalone image.

I like the digital additions in theory, but I realze now that I was too conscious of the overall end result, so rather than creating a piece of background that had its own artistic reason, I was trying to fit it into a false constraint of "a piece" and ended up with something...canned. I look at it and see graphic filters, not a complete image. Meh.

Fun Guy

2007-10-04T09:18:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it's simply the increased amount of drawing I've been doing, the confidence that posting it publicly has given me, or the results of the artist's program I alluded to in a previous post, but it's getting harder to stay true the the name of this blog. I keep ending up with drawings I actually like, which is a whole new experience for me. So if you're here for the self-deprecation, I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint as it's being replaced by self-confidence at an alarming rate.

But enough of that, on to the latest entry. I'll be bold and say that this one's a triumph. Six years. That's how long I've been trying to get this one down on paper. After six years it is, of course, radically different than I first pictured it. But after countless doodles and aborted attempts at making something of it, it's exactly what it needs to be.

And for the first time it's something that carries some personal meaning beyond being aesthetically pleasing to me. I probably shouldn't be too specific about what that meaning is, thought the post title does give a clue as to what spurred the original vision. Yeah, "vision", I'll stick with that word. Definitely something I saw in my mind's eye that's stuck with me. The final product is more interpretive of that vision than representational, but it gets the point across.

Color was vitally important. I spent a lot of time pinning down exactly which to use and how. And I couldn't be happier with the results. Finally having this down on paper, concrete is a big relief to me.

Vodie's

2007-09-25T22:18:00.000-07:00

Today I invoke my right as blogger to deviate off-message at will. I've acquired a new toy in a fit of indulgence. I'm quickly learning how little I know about photography. Oh, I understand the principles involved, but knowing what knobs there are to turn isn't the same as knowing how to turn them. But I'm slowly getting the idea, and I will be forever in debt to the inventors of digital photography for the freedom to take many thousands of bad pictures without worry.

Today's entry is a test shot for an idea I'm cultivating. I don't particularly like this shot, as I drove away I saw a much more interesting angle I could have gotten it from. I'll have to return and take some more.

I see this sign every day on my drive home. I bemoan the loss of commercial sign individuality. Miles of fluorescent block letters and neon cursive against brown/beige/terracotta colored stucco is all I ever see. So I'm on a mission to find and document as many interesting signs around Orange County as I can. My initial focus is on old ones like this guy, but I'm open to including contemporary examples, though I may be too biased and jaded to consider any new ones interesting enough to include.

Next update will likely be back to drawing. I've got something to post, I just need a title.

p.s. Ugh, scaling this thing and saving it in a web-friendly size completely ruined the image. I clearly need to find a less lossy method of prepping a photo to post.

Unproducts

2007-09-21T23:02:00.001-07:00

Nope, still not doing this regularly, am I. Which is ridiculous because I damn well am still drawing. I mean, I've got to do something during meetings.

This post's got a little bit of everything. Cartoon animals that have stuck in my head from "how to draw" books of my childhood, odd characters, geometric doodles, and even a study for what eventually went into the image from my last post. These are all in a spiral notebook (thus the odd dark black things next to my alien friend there...and yes, that is a fro pick. Don't ask) from work, done as I said in meetings as I try not to nod off. The angular doodle top middle had me giggling when I scanned it as it wasn't until after I scanned it and saw it blown up on the monitor that I registered the odd sideways gnome dude at the top. Heh.

Anyway, by way of preview of a future post, here is a bit of brain dropping. Despite its simplicity, t's got a lot of personal meaning that I'll get into eventually, and after a long...long time in the works I actually spewed out a completed piece based around it last night. That's two completed pieces in a rather short period, a subject also for a future post. See, two things hanging over me, maybe that'll prompt a return to regular updates.

Maybe.

Triumphant Return

2007-08-30T09:40:00.000-07:00

So, returning to blogging and posting this may be a mistake, setting myself up for a fall. I'd like to make myself use this blog regularly as a place to work on my process for exploring my still-novel-to-me need for creative outlet. Rather, use it to FIND a process as I currently have none. And posting what is a finished piece, and in my eyes a high watermark, certainly stands a chance of setting my own expectations too high. I can't let myself only post "good" stuff, "finished" stuff, "pointful" stuff if this is going to do anything for me.

That said, this is a project that I started many months ago and let sit unfinished with no idea what "finished" might look like for a long time. Meanwhile I've recently started working with some friends to focus on this creative urge, with the help of a sort of self-help book for artists. The book and the author are as nutty as my skeptical side imagined they might be going in, but I'm doing my best to look past the surface issues I have with the author's views on the world and the mind and trust that there is value to the exercises she lays out, relying more on sounding off the group of friends for analysis and status checks rather than what the author writes.

Making it much easier to do so is the fact that it's paid almost instant dividends. Case in point, the untitled image I've posted. A combination of photography, hand sketch, and digital manipulation, it started with a need for art on our walls. Wandering the likes of Z Gallery or Urban Outfitters, I found myself drawn to canvas prints of colorful, graphic images. In a surprising bit of inspiration, I actually felt like I could create something myself that I would dig. I did some research and found that it's pretty darn affordable to get a giclee print on canvas of anything you like. So I went for it.

I'll spare anyone reading this the details of how I made it, how it sat for months and how the finishing touches suddenly became very easy. The most interesting process note is that 8 months ago when I walked away from it, I considered it nearly done, just in need of finding the right tweaks to "really" complete it, but nothing I tried really satisfied me. When I went back to it, I went straight for a major shift, and the end result fell into place almost immediately. Both frustrating and encouraging. Frustrating to realize the inevitability of getting stuck in those "forest for the trees" situations, encouraging that the reason I could never get the small tweaks to satisfy me was because I was likely aware on some level that it wouldn't be complete without a much larger change.

The piece itself has little meaning. It's a graphic piece, done purely for my aesthetic enjoyment. I think it's going to look good on canvas on our wall. Now all I have to do is make a decision about the many giclee printing options...

Copyright infringement here we come!

2007-05-11T18:12:00.000-07:00

Excuse excuse excuse, blah blah, terrible blogger, blah, excuse, blah blah.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, let's see if I can't spit this post and get back on track with regular updates.

With this post, I'm introducing a second sub genre of my drawing "abilities", copying. If you own the Little Mermaid VHS (the one with the penis spire on the castle), you might be familiar with this still. I believe it's on the back cover. I loved the movie, memorized the soundtrack, so sure, why not copy the art.

And the amazing part, to me at least, is that I did this freehand. No tracing, no measuring. Just the original art on the case as reference. A close inspection of the image reveals an erased attempt at the head, but other than that I did this in pretty much one shot.

But even this one talent was fickle. Thrilled with how well Sebastian came out, I moved on to a couple of the supporting cast pictured on the case. This guy and his buddy were another pair of successes, but that second one is already showing signs of me losing focus. And my next effort (or, rather, the best effort on the next character after I erased a few initial tries) resulted in this not so flattering rendition of Flounder. Without the original to compare to it may not be obvious, but I just couldn't manage to get it right without adding a few ounces to his waistline. It's bad enough that he's the roundest flatfish ever, but I just kept making him pudgier than he already is. And it got worse. What I didn't scan were a later, fatter, attempt of Flounder, a fat version of that first trumpeter, and a Bart Simpson that was just...well, it wouldn't have even passed muster at the sh*tty Korean animation sweatshop that butchered the Simpson's pilot episode.

At some point I'll get those scanned as well. I also have a handful of other copied drawings from different points. There's one that I haven't seen in probably a decade. If I'm lucky it's preserved in a book or folder buried in a closet somewhere. If not, oh well.

Bah, I'm still not satisfied with this entry, but it's been nearly a month, so I'm just going to pull the trigger. Next up, if I'm feeling brave, I'm going to start posting some more recent content, perhaps even, gasp, create something new.

Crisis averted.

2007-04-30T09:09:00.000-07:00

I found it! I found it!

A week of mild anxiety is now behind me. A second, more thorough, search of the closet-of-boxes has unearthed my beloved sketch book. I knew it had to be somewhere within the confines of our home, but that didn't make me any less unhappy about not being able to find it. Perhaps, now that half the contents of the boxes are strewn around the guest room, this will motivate me to finish unpacking all my crap, 7 months after the move.

Now that I am once again in possession of the seminal collection of my pieces, I can really get to the meat of this blogging project. And I'm going to start with what I think is my favorite one, and the first entry into one of the sub genres of my attempts at drawing - doodles gone mad.

Every so often, I'll start a doodle that becomes self perpetuating. It'll start with some shape, usually. A circle, a square, an amorphous blob. Then I'll repeat it, maybe next to it maybe larger and enclosing the first one. And then I'll continue to repeat it, adding variations. It's no longer a circle, instead it's an oval, or a squished oval, or the old standby amorphous blob. Before I know it, I've imposed some loose set of "rules" on it. "It's gotta be an enclosed shape, not crossing any of the others on the page. There should be a minimum and a maximum space allowed between each one. One shape may enclose another." Etc.

99% of the time, I end up with some stupid doodle that hangs around for a while and eventually gets tossed. But on occasion I'll step back from it and it strikes me as interesting enough to keep. This one was exemplary. Mind you, I was paying little to no attention to the overall shape of this thing. I was actually probably thinking I would eventually fill the whole page. But I got to this point and it just felt done. I really wish I could take more credit for it, but, as you may have gathered, I can't really draw. So the best I can hope for is the lucky happenstance of a doodle with an interesting structure ending up in an equally interesting overall form.

Sorry for the large full size image on this one, but I think it deserves the detail.

Painting in Motion

2007-04-26T23:17:00.000-07:00

http://rinpaeshidan.jp/works/index.html

If I may sidetrack for a moment to a topic other than, well, me, and update the mission statement for this experiment. I can't draw, but other people can. Draw, paint, sculpt, and generally art (I'm declaring art a verb). This is the first of what are sure to be many links to artistic projects that pique my interest. The kinds of things I wish I could doing if dude could draw.

I particularly enjoy "PUZZLE", though I haven't watched them all yet.

On the verge of tragedy

2007-04-24T10:51:00.000-07:00

I can't find my sketch pad, the one with some of my favorite drawings. I haven't seen it since the move. Last night I tore through the closet and opened every single box. I excavated the box with all the stuff that was on the same shelf as the sketch book in the old place and it's not there. I'm going to be pretty damned upset if it doesn't turn up.

In the mean time, here's a disturbing little creature for you. Lord knows what prompted this. Note my trademark terrible shading and deformed hands. Poor thing's got a thumb on his left hand where his pinkie should be. Never mind the wrist-mounted digit on the right. Yikes.

You'll hear from my lawyes, Jhonen Vasquez

2007-04-20T19:22:00.000-07:00

Flash forward what I presume was several weeks. Armed with scores of fool-proof Mark Kistler techniques for instant 3-d effect at my disposal (foreshortening in action!), there was no stopping me. Every book cover I owned was scrawled with snaking stacks of lopsided 3-d tables, 3 dimensional shapes lit from all directions, oblique houses littered with extra doors and windows. I'm sure I went through reams of paper.

This is the most spectacular surviving artifact of that era. I can't remember for certain, but I'm presuming the house was my starting point since I doubt I've ever gone from drawing something curvy to drawing something so orthogonal on a large doodle. Always from straight lines to chaos.

Next step would definitely have been the roof appendages. A couple rings around the corners and we're off. This ones got everything! Concave, convex, rocket power!

I don't know. I think I like this one.

Sloppy birthday

2007-04-19T20:23:00.000-07:00

I was going to start this party off with a selection from a pad of random drawings that span some time between elementary school and Jr. High. Some of them I actually like, believe it or not. It does happen. But when I went to find it, I discovered that it apparently never got unpacked after we moved.

In searching, I uncovered a treasure trove. In 5th grade, a classmate's parent came in for several weeks to give some basic drawing lessons. Actually, in violation of several laws I'm sure, she photocopied lessons from a book (specifically, a book by Mark Kistler, whose PBS show I've since seen) and went through them with us. It was great fun.

But, as you might have guessed by now, I suck. Which I didn't really mind. The things we were drawing were simple enough that even bad results were still results. But even then I could tell I was bad. With step-by-step instructions in front of me, and all the drawing paper I could ever need...well, ladies and gentleman, what you see is my best most earnest attempt at a birthday cake (Click here or on the pic for full size suckitude).

Some might tell me to not be so hard on myself. I was, afterall, only 11. And hey, it's not even all that bad, it's got style and flare. As to the latter, that's not style and flare. That implies intent. I certainly did not intend for my cake to have been baked by a retarded monkey, nor could I hope to reproduce said style and flare if I tried. Which brings me back to the former point namely that I just drew this. Right now, in the middle of composing this post. And yes, I tried. I tried hard.

I even whipped out the actual Mark Kistler birthday cake lesson, and came up with this gem. Didn't even bother decorating that one! 18 years later and look at my progression! And sadly, these kinds of rudimentary 3-d things are my favorite thing to doodle. So it's not like I haven't had practice over those 18 years.

So there you have it. Thanks for visiting. This one sketch pad I found is good for a dozen more posts at least, that's before I even find my favorite one. And I promise, I'll post the stuff I like too, I don't intend this to be all about me beating myself up. I'm really over the fact that I can't draw worth crap, but it hasn't stopped me from trying!

Is it lame to call this "First Post"?

2007-04-19T19:13:00.000-07:00

Hello and welcome. I'll try to keep this brief, which you'll learn, if you stick around, is highly out of character for me.

This blog serves no particular purpose other than to amuse me. I certainly hope that by extension it amuses someone else too.

As you might have gleaned by now, I can't draw. Now, I'm not fishing for pity here. I really couldn't care less that I can't draw. I accepted that fact long ago. But if I'm going to be posting this stuff, I'm doing so with full disclosure. You've been warned.

A word on the format and content, I expect this to be a mixed bag. I'm sure I'll start off by dredging up the handful of drawings from my elementary school and jr. high days that I've kept around. Those are very dear to me, they're a good cross section of my drawing disabilities. But I also plan to post some new stuff, maybe even challenge myself to increase my drawing output. I'll probably end up posting a photo here and there, an art form I'm much more suited to, though I'll have to be careful not to get lazy and let this slip into being a photo blog. But mostly I'll be posting a photo or scan of something I've drawn and talking about it. That's it, nothing fancy.

All that said, it's not as if I hate everything I draw. Like a million monkeys a million typewriters, or perhaps like one monkey on a million typewriters, or even a million monkeys on one typewriter, something accidentally comes out pretty okay. And if I keep up the postings, you might actually see that at one time I was down right adequate at copying drawings (not tracing, but looking at and copying freehand). But by and large, I have very little conscious control over how one of my drawings comes out.

Thanks for visiting, and...you've been warned.

And see what I mean about brevity?