Vodie's

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

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.