Artwork, drawings, and various sketches by a once-and-future freelance illustrator.
Just a quick sketchbook thing of a girl trying to collar a cat. The deeper meaning of which is nonexistent, ’cause all I really needed was an image for testing my printer. Which seems to work, so that’s good to know. Now I have to go and draw for real.
I think there’s half a picture of this thing already, somewhere down below, but since I’ve pulled it off Etsy there aren’t any whole pictures anywhere else, so that’s the big idea of why it’s pictured here. Anyway, I’ve gotta make more of these things super-incredibly soon, ’cause of various reasons I don’t wanna jinx, but I guess I won’t work on ‘em tomorrow, ’cause tomorrow I’m gonna draw, ’cause my brand new fancy printer came today and I’ve gotta test it out to see if it really will make prints good enough to hang on the wall. I mean, it better do that, ’cause it’s kind of my last and only idea for making copies of drawings, considering it’s hard to fit a litho press in my office, considering how most of the space is dedicated already to storing Land of the Giants collectibles.
Dang, though, I need more summer time.
Oh, and like I told people on Etsy, I think this piece is either an imaginary alley cat or an imaginary riverboat cat. I mean, it could be some other kind of cat, I guess, or not even a cat at all. All I know is, I just cut ‘em out and paint ‘em according to instructions I get out of Granny Joe’s Rainy Day Fun Book, which is a book I dream about from time to time.
Um, so, this is my submission, I guess. And, well, I guess Major Tom isn’t currently “in” his tin can, but is instead sort of “beside” it, so he’s not at the moment canned. But, whatever, I draw way too many space folk floating around inside of can-shaped objects, so I was more in a mood this evening for a spacewalk picture. Anyway, I hope “crooked” is the next theme, ’cause I’ve got that one completely and totally covered.
This is officially too many posts about just one thing, ’cause one would’ve been plenty, so next time I’ll post a brand-new picture of something completely different (the defects, by the way, in this particular picture are ’cause I had 1 minute to take it, and also ’cause I’m the world’s worst photographer). But, anyway, I had to part with this piece right after I finished it, which is fine, I’m glad it’ll have a different place to hang for a while. I just kind of need to remind myself to make more of the same very, very soon. If I don’t sort of actively remind myself, I’ll end up spending unusual amounts of time drawing weird little spacemen and other sorts of doofus junk, and the world does not need that. I mean, this world, at least. Maybe on some other planet they wouldn’t mind obscure and utterly esoteric doodles, but who knows, maybe they also would rather not see ‘em. Oh, and yeah, thanks for asking: the sink’s back on the wall and tomorrow we’ll run water in it for the first time in a week. Wish us luck! We’re pretty excited to see what happens.
Oh, but, I oughta explain the picture, at least a little. It’s of my uncle and my great-grandmother…he used to take her to the old Farmer’s Market back in the town where I used to be from; I think they went like every Wednesday. She was always super-convinced she was gonna get cheated, so she always made the farmers show her the apples or squash or whatever at the bottom of the bushel basket. I think she actually got cheated exactly zero times (sorry, long-ago farmers, for all the trouble). Also, she always carried around this black shiny purse, and wore Post Office shoes, and was the best great-grandmother in the whole entire Universe, except for the other ones I also knew growing up. Anyway, to be accurate, the picture would have to have squished tomatoes all over the ground, and nine billion pigeons, and a mysterious odor that’s neither animal or vegetable in nature…the old Market was that kind of place. But, again, there was barely time this week to even do a picture, and I was on kind of a tight deadline.
P.S. That “Soap Bubble Girl” painting down below’s on Etsy now.
This is, of course, a shaky and nearly pointless picture, but I just wanted to document that I did get some work done this week, despite the neverending distractions, like the sink that was broken worse after the plumber fiddled with it than the amount it was broken before, and also the distraction of figuring out afterwards how we’re just gonna have to fix it ourselves. Which is fine, really…although, if I had my art education to do over again, I would totally include getting a plumbing certificate instead of the way less necessary detour through learning how to do sugar lifts and mezzotints (I mean, unfortunately, I have like zero affinity for intaglio). Anyway, whatever, all this rigamarole dealing with pipes and whatnot is actually no big deal, ’cause even though I embrace grouchiness the way some folks embrace bottles and needles, I actually have approximately one zillion reasons to feel exactly the opposite way. And, yeah, I said it circumspectly ’cause I very much believe in jinxes. Like, I’m pretty sure that just now, admitting I had a halfway decent art week even in the midst of snowballing sink trouble, that was enough to shift an asteroid in its orbit. Not, maybe, a big one, mind you. But one just big enough to fall down and possibly wipe out my Pez collection, or maybe poke a hole in my favorite shirt.
Okay, so, officially tired of rambling now. Gotta run errands tomorrow and maybe, maybe draw something for Illustration Friday, if there’s time. Not gonna sweat it, though, ’cause there’s plenty else to do.
I guess this is what I’m working on this week, although the plan was to work on other stuff, and also to study, and also to take at least one breath of fresh air at some point. Instead, though, we had to deal with a minor plumbing disaster, which resulted in a lot of crawling around in the nether regions of the house, which is a house we love, except not so much Down There, where cave crickets lurk on the walls exactly like vampire bats in a horror movie. Or, remember that scene in Aliens when Ripley runs into the egg-laying Mother alien? Running into the crickets was 100% just like that. Although, all right, I guess cave crickets aren’t quite as horrible, except when they sort of size you up with their pinhead eyes and you know they’re thinking buggy thoughts about how best to penetrate your Speed Suit. But, good luck with that, misbegotten denizens of the Crawlspace! For I had zipped up my Speed Suit extra super tight. Plus there was duct tape, like around every cuff and everything. Anyway, rusty pipes, yuck (I was gonna post a picture of the pipe issue, which included plenty of crickets as a bonus feature, but the picture’s blurrier than my pictures usually are, on account of how my camera was wracked with fear, what with the close quarters and the darkness and the cobwebs full of actual cobs – I mean, you never see cobs unless you see them in some weird other-dimensional cranny of an old house on a New Moon night or something).
Meanwhile, I’ve gotta actually paint on this thing today, ’cause I’m now way behind on the more official junk I’m supposed to be working on. So I better go do that instead of wasting all the time I’m wasting here.
So, this is about all I accomplished today, meaning that, as usual, I accomplished very little compared to what needed to get done. Anyway, I suppose this thing was inspired by how, when we were at a Family Event a couple of weeks ago, my nieces and also my mom and also everyone else got pretty energized over blowing bubbles (although, my nephew was more into discovering the space-age coolness of Nerf, which is a completely understandable preference).
Meanwhile, I have a meeting tomorrow and plus there’s other stuff to do, but my number 1 dream is to sketch, even if it’s just an inch-square sketch of nothing in particular.
O.K., I think I’ve finally perfected the spice rack design. As you can see, the rack now includes an iPod dock, which is, of course, a necessary addition to every other thing. Also, the rack contains a separate compartment for the handy storage of a cellphone. I don’t think it’s a wide enough space to hold a smartphone, but my phone’s one of the un-smart disposable kind. I’ve also included a sort of tray or well in front for the accumulation of spare change and bus tokens and perhaps fortune cookie fortunes (I had a hard time rendering the little slips of paper, though). Meanwhile, I made sure to leave ample room for a wide variety of spice bottles (my choices: popcorn salt and hagelslag – that’s a pretty wide variety, I think). And, so, the next step is to either wish for the official invention of a countertop Drexler replicator, or wait for an affordable craft printer, or go see if there’s enough scrap wood in the workshop to just go ahead and make this thing the old fashioned way. Although I bet I won’t choose option three, since I’m actually supposed to be doing paperwork and other sorts of Real Life Stuff.
So, I drew the original of this thing in Flash, although it doesn’t move. Force of habit, I guess. Anyway, when we went to London, there wasn’t a single scrap or tendril of fog anywhere, and instead it was always brilliantly warm and bright and shiny. I mean, I know London still has air trouble, just like every big place, but our neighborhood, which was a neighborhood Dickens lived and worked in, was never once afflicted with even the hint of a pall of Dickensian chimney-smoke. All of which I’m glad about, of course, ’cause I much prefer busy, rushing, futuristic London to some embalmed touristy version. Or, I prefer it if I don’t have to negotiate London traffic except once a week every few years or so.
Um, anyhow, before I end up freewriting about fog for an hour, which would be a waste of all our time, here’s the picture. I think maybe this couple have had a breakdown out in the country or something. Or maybe they’re hunting truffles at night. Or who knows.
It’s thundering and lightning outside, right at this very exact moment. Which means I oughta quit working on spice rack designs and shut this dang machine down. I hate it though, ’cause every moment of delay means our spices will have to keep on being all disorganized and whatever. I mean, we hardly ever use cumin, on account of it’s always hidden behind the bay leaves and the cajun-flavored sea salt. And the last time I saw the turmeric, Howard Dean was still a viable candidate for President. So, as soon as the weather clears up, or at least as soon as the lightning bolts quit tickling the tops of the trees in our neighborhood, I’m gonna re-embark on my mission to computer-design a new rack ASAP. Man, I can hardly wait…
