Illustration Friday – Packed

So, I had no idea what to do for this thing this week, and actually still have no idea, except I bought a button off Etsy, which led me to look at the blog of the person who made the button, and she had a picture on her blog of this extra-amazing Playmobil Airport Security Playset, and so I drew that as my subject, even though what it has to do with “packed” is of course totally tangential. And, yeah, as usual, even if it’s not ever really on purpose, the whole thing came out slightly creepy, although it is creepy to have machines taking see-through pictures of your stuff, although I guess it’ll always be necessary, plus most of our stuff is probably super-uninteresting to the people who have to look at it all day.

Otherwise, I don’t know anything else to write about. Literally, nothing else. Except, my favorite line so far in The Grapes of Wrath: Jim Casy says to Tom, “Now I cuss all I want, any time I want, an’ it does a fella good to cuss if he wants to.” Although I’ve massively reduced my own cussing to only once a week, usually a thirty-second blue streak every Monday around 11:17 a.m. Of course, I’ll have to start cussing again full-time if we end up, after November 4th, having to endure four more years of the same exact kind of shenanigans we’ve had to endure for the last eight.

Mysterious Zine

Here are another couple of pages from one of the several current book projects. Which, you know, I guess this one’s actually more of a fancy ‘zine, although I hope not too fancy, even if the staples I’m using are special handcrafted zinc ones imported from a thousand-year-old workshop in the Veneto. I mean, these are very subtle and excellent staples, but they meanwhile look cheap in a way better way than actual cheap staples. The only thing is, when you use ‘em, you do have to use one of those funky Ursa Minor “Novantanove” staplers, the kind that looks like the result of a drunken one-night-stand between a Michael Graves pepper mill and a Zaha Hadid Gyre chair. But, you know, it’s totally worth the rigamarole you have to go through to get one (I mean, don’t even ask, ’cause it was seriously an epic amount of rigamarole).

Pictographs

Yet more junk for the alleged book project, which may or may not ever get finished before the sun burns all the way out. At any rate, having at long last actually drawn a bunch of stuff, I’m now trying various different non-designy layouts, since my 1D inner eye can’t simply imagine how pages look when they end up facing each other. And, so, yeah, exciting stuff, I know. Oh, except, there’s this dumb thing: it’s hard to believe, but I’m supposed to demo making rubber stamps kinda soon…so, let’s hope I demo it right, ’cause we all know how technical and esoteric the process of carving an eraser is. Plus, you know, I am fairly certain my Whole Entire Future Career depends on how well I do getting some basic-as-hell information across to people. So that’s a fun amount of extra pressure. Assuming, of course, I’ll even have one of those career things after the centuries of schooling I’ve for some reason been pursuing since around about the late Middle Ages.

Special Radiation Glasses

I kind of know what this is, ’cause it’s sort of for one of the little books I’m sort of making this semester, but I’m kinda not ready to talk about it yet. Not, you know, that I’ll have much useful junk to say if and when I ever am ready to talk about it, ’cause I only ever half know what I’m doing. Which is shame, but so it always goes.

I am, though, pretty worried that years of going around everywhere with headphones on has somehow disarrayed my brain stem, ’cause now, for some reason, I’m totally having auditory hallucinations of Brian Eno’s “An Ending (Ascent).” Like, I mean, I hear it all the time, even when I’m not wearing headphones, and also even if all I’ve been listening to all month is Loch Lomond or Diblo Dibala or perhaps the soundtrack to some obscure Soviet film. Which, okay, I guess I can live with the backside of my head sounding like a PBS fundraising spot…but I do wonder why it’s pretty specifically that tune, and not, as I might possibly prefer, the first thirty-seven drumbeats of X’s “The Hungry Wolf.” Anyway, back to the salt mines, as I bet nearly everyone’s dad used to say.

Whatefterklang

My favorite ever video, at least for a few months, was the video for Efterklang’s “Mirador.” Like, I could easily watch it all day and all night long, and not eat instead of watching it, and also not do other very important stuff I really oughta do, such as build a giant fence and unbuild a pile of old paperwork. But, anyway, now that video’s been replaced by this one, which is easily 100% as great (if my work could be 1% as cool, that’d be okay with me): Whatefterklang.

Quadrupeds

It’s probably backwards to do things this way, but I made a book box a couple of weeks ago before I started working on the actual book, and, well, here’s the cover or lid or whatever it’s called. The book itself is sort of in a primitive state, on account of I’m still trying to figure it out, like how it should look and what it’s saying and all that stuff. For now, it’s just called “the Bewick book,” ’cause the sideways inspiration for it was Thomas Bewick’s A General History of Quadrupeds. But…we’ll see if I can avoid this whole project ending up lame the way too much of my junk ends up.

Metalwork Sketches

So, I have less than zero actual business trying to make jewelry, and yet, having been around a lot of jewelry-making-type activity on occasion, it’s always looked real interesting, like maybe something I’d maybe wanna try to do, someday. I mean, I always figured, even if I suck at it, knowing how to actually work metal would be a good thing to know, considering how I keep daydreaming about reliquaries and weird sorts of ritual objects to go along with the weird little books I’m supposed to be working on. So, anyway, nowadays that’s sort of what I’m doing, along with the other important stuff, such as learning how to attend class on a regular basis, and also learning where the good snack machines are located down on campus (the ones, for example, with Nekot Cookies and tiny silver bags of super-salty popcorn). Of course, having no eye for jewelry, I still know almost nothing about the wearability of stuff, or how one shape of ring’s different from another, but maybe its okay just to know what shapes I like, even if there’s apparently no clear reason why I like ‘em (dang, I’m totally gonna have a problem in grad school if I don’t have reasons for my alleged aesthetic preferences…oh well, work on that later).

So, anyhow, here are some pretty embarrassing drawings we were supposed to draw of the stuff we wanted to make for our first project. For sure I need to work on originality…I’m not really thinking in three plastic dimensions yet. But, yesterday, working in the metal shop, I had an enormous amount of fun messing around with copper, which gave me half a glimmer of hope I’ll possibly come up with better ideas down the road. I mean, once you know what various materials and tools can do, then your imagination can maybe roam a little farther afield. We’ll see.

Unfortunately, the thing I actually made, it looks way too much like a Klingon wedding band, which is a look I’d very much like to never achieve, so even though the process part was fun, the end result part needs some work. Lots and lots of work.

Unreadable Book

Yet more pictures from the mysterious book-like thing I’m sort of working on in mock-up form before I commit to actually ruining some nice blank lino blocks. And, yeah, I know, on the real thing, the title won’t be on the cover. Also, I’m already aware I apparently have an inordinate fondness for triangles (if I may paraphrase J.B.S. Haldane, which is always fun to do). Anyway, mostly while doing this stuff, I was thinking about the Assyrian reliefs we saw in London, and all the beautiful old writing that encodes more stories than we’ll never know. Although, of course, this stuff came out different from what I was thinking. As usual.

Treefrogs & Cicadas

So, the other night sat on the back porch and listened to the treefrogs and cicadas, which sounded as if they were on tape loops un-arranged by Brian Eno. Then there was this far-off amplified voice, like the car lot PA I used to live near when I lived somewhere else, except I can’t figure out the source of this one, and it kept repeating garbled chunks of an announcement of some kind, which sounded a little like a Steve Reich piece mixed in with the buzzing and chirping Eno stuff (which, I think I’m thinking On Land more than Airports).  Anyway, I’m breaking my own dumb rule about not posting unless there’s a drawing to post, ’cause last night’s class was actual real-life fun, everybody hammering and sawing and banging on metal, all the while talking about their designs and how to use this or that tool, and just generally getting into the whole idea of making stuff.  I mean, I guess that happens everywhere, but I’ve been out of the loop awhile, so I’m just now realizing I must’ve missed the classroom bad. Or, well, workshop, I should say…the other classes I have to take, the ones I avoided taking until the last minute, it turns out they’re not nearly as scary as what I’d imagined, but still it’s tons more my speed to get back to the art building where being in class is a way more active thing.

Meanwhile, I’m just reminding myself: have to do other stuff today, but tomorrow have to write down a whole thing about what I’m doing for my Big Project and why I’m doing it. Then I have to actually work on the project…if I survive factoring polynomials, which looks, right now, like an iffy proposition.

Speaking of which, listen, kids: first of all, stay in school (seriously), and second of all, even if, like me, you suck at math, go ahead and knock it out soon as possible, ’cause for sure somebody’ll make you take it eventually, even if you try your almighty best to escape their notice. And, anyway, it turns out, it’s not even that hard. Except for how, of course, it’s taking up headspace I’d rather use for other stuff, like for learning how to write and draw, if it’s even possible to eventually do that in a non-embarrassing way.

Oh, and about writing: I hope my wife’s students know how fortunate they are she’s their teacher. I never had a class like the one they’re taking, and I envy ‘em the chance to study writing with someone who knows and cares about it as much as she does.

Illustration Friday – Memories

I guess I have a porous sort of memory…like, I have no idea what the plot was for The Dark Knight, and we just saw it two weeks ago. Plus, random people pop up off the internet and tell me we’ve met someplace, but I have to just take their word for it. And if you tell me I had soup for dinner last Thursday, then that’s news to me (although, exactly why you would tell me that, I have no idea – where and when I enjoy the occasional bowl of soup is really kind of a private matter, you know?). I do, at least, sort of remember how to print lino, and since that’s what I’m supposed to be doing right now instead of doing this, I oughta go.