Eye Trouble is apparently a sketchblog of some sort.

I guess I could draw robots every single day and never get tired of drawing ‘em. Like, you know, I can always think of different ways to draw antennae and electric eyes and grabbers, plus it’s pretty fun to think of new sorts of shapes for essential robot accessories like rayguns and jetpacks and lunar rovers. But, sometimes, maybe once a decade or so, I worry it’s maybe not entirely healthy, mentally and whatever, to only ever just draw one thing all the time. And, well, today was one of those days when I was feeling this rare twinge of robotic worry, so I went up in the attic of my hard drive and pawed through a bunch of old sketchbooks, looking for things I’ve totally forgotten I used to draw. Which, so far, mostly what I found was more robots. Still, one thing I ran across was this fossilized bit of primitive animation, which I think I did for my old website, which was for a completely extinct ‘zine called Art Vandal (circulation: 4). I think I remember that I had a whole section of short Flash things, and this was the main image on the index page. Anyway, pointless as it is now, I still like the carpet and the way there’s snow behind the lettering. Plus I like how gifs sometimes get grainy when you export ‘em out of Flash. Meanwhile, I guess I’m not as fond of some of the other parts, but I’m gonna let ‘em go, ’cause fixing stuff usually makes things worse, ’cause I usually just end up smoothing out all the crooked bits, which are the bits I really always want more of. Like, more crooked lines is the same to me as “more cowbell.”

Although…I wonder if I can get the guy to look more robotical and less like a junkie Muppet…

Um, so I guess the title of this post is the title of the sketch, although the title could also be “Moonbot Mowing His Moon Yard.” Which I guess is mostly the same title, so, whatever. Anyway, if it wasn’t late I’d fix the fourteen things about the sketch that wandered away from the original image I had in my head, but it is late, so I won’t fix ‘em tonight, and really probably won’t ever fix ‘em, ’cause there are many other things I’ve gotta draw, and mistaken drawings are good for thinking about, at least, in a self-teaching sort of way.

More Etsy stuff. And now I’ve gotta get back to work.

So, I totally expected to find the crumbly stubs of spent fireworks strewn all over the yard this morning, ’cause I’m always expecting obnoxious stuff like that, just like I’m always expecting the Sun to one day turn inside out or some errant wormhole to time-warp me back to when I was a bowling alley pinsetter (which would so suck). But, you know, instead of going out to get the mail and stepping on big piles of pitted cherrybombs or the shredded nosecones of paper missiles, all I discovered was just one charred rocket-butt wrapped in dewy cobwebs. So, now I have absolutely nothing to ramble on about…or, well, I guess I could talk about my abiding affection for Mr. Pibb, or the song stylings of Leonard Nimoy, or the word “jodhpurs.” The thing is, though, I’m kinda saving all that type of stuff for my book A Midnight Dreary, which will be a handy desk reference containing all my opinions, wishes, phobias, and pet peeves. So, anyway, at least you have something to look forward to, assuming you don’t already have tons of other stuff. Which you probably do, come to think of it.

Meanwhile, I uploaded some new junk onto Etsy. Mostly it’s just various creatures of various kinds, which seem to work way better as cut-outs than they do as pictures in frames, ’cause frames are often rectangular and require filling up lots of negative space with lots of nonsense, while cut-outs take care of their own negative space by using whatever’s around ‘em in the regular old environment. Or, something like that, anyhow. In any event, a few of the pictures need to get replaced, on account of some of ‘em are too dark or whatever, but I’ll work on that tomorrow, which I know you need to know, Internet.

Spent the last couple of hours working on a new Etsy banner. The first version was just a sort of temporary deal I slapped together out of leftover parts from other projects. Which, you know, I got tired of looking at it super-fast, so replacing that old junky banner soon as possible’s been on my short list a while. So, dealing with this bit of housekeeping business today, I thought maybe I could remember how to letter by hand, ’cause I at least used to know how to do that, at least a little. But, the result was kind of way too bold and every letter was way too normal. I did, though, like the weird pyramid eye, which is not (to me) a secret symbol of the some ancient nerd conspiracy, but is instead a symbol for the hypnotic power of everyone else’s cool art on Etsy. I mean, looking at all of it keeps me away from work more than I like to admit. Anyway, then I thought, okay, maybe I should go a whole other direction…although I didn’t necessarily intend to end up in the direction of the color scheme from a Shins record cover. So I changed course again real quick (while keeping the new lettering from the blue version). And, well, I guess I ended up back at the gray version ’cause I like gray, and ’cause I suddenly thought, “oh yeah, the dollar bill eye is a Mesmer eye, so I’ve gotta show people getting hypnotized.” And that’s the end of that story, such as it is.

Meanwhile, the last picture’s of a pile of stuff I’m planning to paint on today, tomorrow, and Monday. Plus I have to draw some more…always have to do that, otherwise I completely forget how it’s done.

Okay, this was supposed to be a drawing called “Megabase Lunatron,” but now it’s a drawing called “Moon Crystal.” What happened was, the crystal was going to be a crooked-style Fullerine dome, but then I couldn’t crowd in all the dumb little rovers and space workers and moon trucks I’d planned on drawing, so I drew it like it was a couple of folks out for a sort of outing. With, of course, their space dog and a future kind of digital camera, which will be bulkier than the modern kind. Again, I was going for a crummy chipboard look, like this thing was a linocut, cut with the dullest possible gouges and then printed with cheap sticky ink on the back of a newsprint pad. I guess, in fact, I could just do it that way instead of on the computer…but, whatever, maybe later, if and when there’s actual extra time laying about. Thing is, lino doesn’t feel as natural anymore as a Wacom tablet, so I’d have to relearn some muscle memory or something. Not that drawing’s ever natural. Anyhow, gotta go and take a break from the internets.

So, I guess, in addition to triangles, wrinkles, and hats, I like drawing airports. Plus, I think I remember I saw a woodcut a while back of some whole other subject that was printed in heavy black ink on dirty gray chipboard. So I guess I was thinking of how that looked, and thinking I could maybe steal the look for a Flash sketchbook thing. Plus, you know, the busy-ness of Richard Scarry books was always a fun and mind-expanding thing. Anyway, that’s all for now, gotta go back to work.

We saw a paletero on a street in the Coronado District when we were in Phoenix a few weeks ago. I should’ve sketched him there and then, even though, of course, I wouldn’t have been able to get down an actual likeness, ’cause of my amateur drawing status. But, anyway, I wish I’d at least made more than a mental note about him, ’cause the mental note’s saying he had on a leather hat, and I doubt that’s accurate, on account of it was finally hot again in Phoenix after a few cooler-than-normal days. Still, I think I do remember that his hat was a sort of porkpie shape.

And, well, I guess that’s all I know at the moment. Except, I’m including the rough just for the heck of it. The whole thing was drawn in Flash, which, for whatever reason, is easier for me to draw in than the software I suppose I’m supposed to use. Probably oughta draw on paper more, but I like being able to move the parts around until they’re just the right amount of messed-up.

I’m trying to stick really hard to a schedule where, on Mondays, I hit the ground running, which, actually, I wish I could hit the ground at least galloping on Sundays, just to get a head start. But, you know, one miracle at a time.

Anyway, so, here it is 4:29 PM, and I’m about 1/10th of the way down the apparently notional chore list I’m always daydreaming about someday getting completely done. Although, as Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem says (or, at least, how it says when I bend it sideways in a possibly felonious way), there’s almost certainly no such thing as a finishable list.

For example: I had to just go look up the text entity for an umlaut for a lower-case ‘o’. So, that got added to the list, even if it got scratched back off pretty quick. The point being (although it’s a minute little point): it never ends.

Which I suppose, in the long run, is not the worst ever thing.

Anyhow, more portable sketches, ’cause my new old-fashioned sketchbook is just too blank and intimidating, while my dumb old PDA, which does not keep track of my appointments, contacts, or notes, is at least a fun little gadget to mess around with in-between actual work-like activities. These particular things were done on The Pad from VisualIT, which is an extremely basic drawing program, which I like ’cause it never gets in your way when all you wanna do is just doodle. The creators of The Pad, by the way, are obviously not responsible for how I may, from time to time, utterly misuse their product.

Apparently, there are about as many people selling art on Etsy as there are people living inside the city limits of the city where my wife and I live in now. Which is not so much a huge number, but it’s not a small one, either. I mean, I guess if you imagine every person on our street and on the other streets in our neighborhood has a storefront, and then multiply that number by some other large and scary number, and then add in all the people at all the stores and gas stations and restaurants in town, plus all the bajillions of people who are always, always roaming about on the various roads, then you might be able to arrive at some sort of vague visual idea of just how many people we’re talking about. Of course, you’d probably have to also include everyone on every paddleboat and picnic table at the lake, and every person in every movie audience, and everyone at the art museum, and every golfer on every fairway of every golf course from one end of the city parks system to the other, and every single student and teacher in summer school or Hebrew school or Sunday school. Not to mention, you’d have to count all the people who are riding in buses or waiting for buses, and all the people going about their lives in every hospital, factory, and warehouse, and all the many people hidden away here and there who usually don’t get counted. And, well, you know, it’s a pretty big crowd’s what I’m saying.

Which is fine, of course. It’s even a kind of amazing and good thing, that the planet’s that full of artists, despite how civilization’s not always 100% in favor of keeping artists around.

Besides, it’s a good reminder to think about the relative bigness of the Etsy community, since it reminds a person (namely, me, I guess) how the sweet delicious solipsism that wafts off the Internet like brain-shrinking glue fumes is really an enormous illusion. It’s good to remember that humbleness is way more rational than not being humble.

Speaking of which, here are some square little PDA sketches from the last couple of days. They’re not worth much, except that occasionally I’ll see something I like a bit in this or that odd corner. Such as a certain crackly line or an accidental pattern or a weird shape of eye or ear.