As usual, I have zero time for this sketchblog thing, although I guess I should be making time for it, ’cause that was the original idea, to draw something new every single day. But, you know, time is always running away down different furrows in the earth. Plus, there’s forty tons of other work to do, all of which I’m glad to do, but still. Anyhow, the big distraction recently was, this weird orange car that kept showing up in front of our house was out there once again on Saturday, so we had to deal with that, meaning we waited for the driver to show up, so we could ask him who the heck he was and where the heck did he actually belong? Turned out, he was just this poor confused kid who was all tangled up in a messy romance with a girl from up the street. Apparently, the girlfriend’s mother didn’t like him parking in front of their house, so he parked in front of ours instead, even though we live hundreds of feet away. All of which, I guess, is a pretty exciting story, which is over now anyway, ’cause it seems the mother must’ve had a change of heart, ’cause now the confused kid’s parking up by his girlfriend’s house. We kind of figured he wasn’t too bad of a person, ’cause his weird orange car had a Stevie Wonder sticker on the back window, and who nowadays has the nerve to drive around with one of those?
Otherwise, I haven’t been sketching much worth posting, except this one thing, which was me just working out patterns for some objects I’m making. When I was doodling it, I was thinking about aerial views of farms and cities, and about various kinds of maps, and about ritual patterns, and also game boards. Plus, I reckon there are a lot of germ forms in this kind of drawing, too, cells and organelles and the shapes of various imaginary viruses. And also, I was thinking about Sixties SF book covers, especially the ones from Ballantine. All of which, of course, is totally un-original, but whatever. I think it’s possible I even had Pucci patterns in the back of my head, although who knows how or why I ever have patterns like that anywhere near any part of my brain.
The objects, meanwhile, are kind of hard to explain at the moment…they’re vaguely for a future project that’s vaguely called “Martian Destination,” which is a term for misdirected internet traffic (sort of). Maybe I’ll post pix of ‘em later, if they ever shape up to be anything more than a glimmer of an idea.
Oh, and I guess I did do this one other thing, which is a very simple little drawing based on a fairly ancient memory. According to a story I heard a long time ago, one of my extremely distant cousins once had a motel way, way out on a State Highway (I don’t know which state). Anyhow, supposedly, once a year or so, this guy would come through town with a traveling Snake Show. And, so, besides showing off different kinds of snakes to motel visitors for whatever loose dimes they had laying around, he also would get in this kind of aquarium-style contraption and let rattlesnakes roam about all over him. I suppose that was the capper to his whole little roadside attraction, the snake-tank bit. I actually have no idea if the story’s even true, but it sounds at least half-true, knowing the odd types of folk I’ve encountered down the years. I do know I kind of like the idea of some old character roaming mid-century America making a living off his talent for charming snakes. If I could write, I’d write about him, imagine a whole back-story and everything, but drawing’s slightly more my thing.
P.S. Here’s what I’m reading now: an interesting article about the Egyptian novelist Alaa al Aswany in last Sunday’s New York Times; Swimming Lessons by Rohinton Mistry; and Production for Graphic Designers by Alan Pipes, to refresh my memory about some stuff I haven’t dealt with for a while, but expect to deal with again soon.
