Eye Trouble is apparently a sketchblog of some sort.

I know, I know, I’m supposed to talk about the drawings instead of droning on about completely other stuff. The thing is, right now, I’m sort of busy trying to see if I even remember how to operate a pencil or a pen, since it’s been about 100 years since I last attempted any kind of remotely art-like endeavor. The reasons I ever stopped doing it are all boring reasons, and the reasons I’m restarting the engine now are also not super interesting. Just a little curious, mostly, to see if there’s anything left in my head besides how to do other people’s jobs. Now, instead, I’m just trying to do the one job I should’ve been doing all along…but, anyway, I always knew I had a million miles to go before I was anywhere close to where I wanted to be with all this junk, so even if it’s a little dispiriting to look at old sketchbooks, it’s also giving me a little bit of a kick in the ass, which is always nice. Even if the way to actually talk about stuff, like why I drew a thing this way instead of that way or whatever, that skill, if I ever had it much, is still pretty much dormant. Guess I’ll work on it, though, in-between the 9000 other things I equally need to work on.

Worked in the workshop all morning, now covered with sawdust and getting sawdust on my lunch. Thought about Seymour Chwast, or at least thought about his name, which is one of the best names ever for an illustrator. My own name, I write it out in different handmade fonts and it still looks uncool, so I’ve gotta work on that, think of something better (plus, obviously, need to draw a million times more drawings to develop some actual facility). One thing I know, I want a Z in my name someplace, ’cause, as everyone knows, the letter Z imparts instant coolness wherever it’s used, especially in science fiction. Anyway, thought also about the Push Pin Graphic and how it must have been enormous fun to dream it up and put it out. Work, too, of course, but the kind of work that’s not work, even if it’s also usually hard and keeps you busy as hell. The kind of work actually worth doing, in other words. And, well, whatever else I thought, I don’t remember what it was, since I was mostly preoccupied with measuring and cutting and trying to figure out what exactly to make. Guess the “what” should have come before the “how”, but that’s not how I roll, man.

Oh, and speaking of molas, the scuba diver mola I had over my desk got demoted by an octopus mola I found online a couple of months ago, so now when I look up from work, which happens on rare occasions, I see this weird blue critter waving at me from its perch among a bunch of swirly seaweed. It’s got kind of a quirky face, like the face on a character in a Max Fleischer cartoon (the Betty Boop kind, not the Superman kind). Anyhow, as far as I know, cartoony is not actually how octopus faces actually look, but that’s one of the reasons I like it, the wrongness of it. I mean, perfect realism’s okay, I guess, but hardly ever all that engaging, at least to me and how my lopsided brains work.

Today I’m doing miscellaneous organizational things, so I don’t have time for random thoughts, which is lucky as hell for you and me both. I mean, I did think of twenty things I wanted to ramble on about, but they’ll all have to get written later. Maybe. In the meantime, I found some more completely ancient sketches in a couple of old sketchbooks I used to take to the Day Job. I can’t remember that there was any plan for these things, just sorta tried to scribble out some junk between phones ringing and people shouting and copiers breaking totally down.

Meanwhile, there are tons of birds in the fresh-cut yard, all of ‘em enjoying easy access to worms and, I guess, bugs of various kinds. Finches and sparrows will now and then touch down and steal prey from the much more numerous starlings and robins, which I suppose is sorta like how my so-called art career needs to work. Like, completely forget about joining the flock of big birds, and instead be content kinda darting in and out of the market to grab only weird little random jobs. Or something. Anyway, I very much need to get to work.

So, I agonized for approximately ninety-seven weeks over getting the New Yorker Magazine DVD archive thing, but then a remaindered copy showed up on the Amazon for a pretty cheap price, so I stopped agonizing, or at least agonized slightly less than usual, and went ahead and got it, and it’s a good thing I did, ’cause this thing’s been endless fun ever since. Like, I remember back in college having a subscription for a while, and reading whatever I could read before and in-between classes, and for a long time since then I’ve been slowly disremembering all the interesting stuff, like the story about Elmore Leonard’s researcher and all the various Roz Chast cartoons and everything John McPhee ever wrote about geology or the merchant marines or whatever. So, since about all I’ve got in my memory anymore is just sort of this index card file of notes, instead of full-blown detailed images, films, and texts, it’s kind of nice to know the stuff I can just barely recall, but would like to recall better, isn’t totally lost but is instead just a couple of clicks and search terms away (not that a DVD is much more permanent than paper, in the long run). Anyhow, now I guess instead of worrying about what all I’m forgetting, my headspace can get freed up for more important pursuits…which, what those might be, I’m not sure. Can’t cure malaria or feed the hungry with doodles, I know that. Maybe, though, there’s a way to harness the energy of doodling to power zero-emissions airships or to help run the soy cake factories that’ll be feeding us in the not-too-distant future.

Still, though, I need more junk like I need another hole in the head, so I hope Mad Magazine or Art in America never ever come out with DVD archives, ’cause then I’ll have to get those, too, and where does it ever stop, once you give in to that kind of temptation? Plus, the time to look at stuff isn’t exactly super-abundant.

Dang, obviously, it’s late and I’m making less sense than usual. Gotta work tomorrow on getting stuff together for some sort of portfolio, plus there’s a ton of other work to do, lists of tasks scattered all about, so that’s gonna keep me from sketching for a day or two, but maybe this blog-like thing’ll be like giving myself assignments, ’cause art is work, after all.

Oh, and yeah, my wife and I watched Mr. Soderbergh’s “The Limey” the other night, and when Wilson tells someone that he’s come to L.A. to “do a job of work,” that phrase kinda stuck in my head a little, for no better reason than I like weird phrases.

So, I just went to get a sketchblog license (only $73!) from the International Sketchblog Association, which, lucky for me, is located in the very town where I currently live (it’s over on Cargo Systems Access Road, between Saigon Plaza and the Star Mart), and they told me that my blog is license number 99 million, so I guess I’m pretty proud of that, plus it’s an easy number to remember, so that’s good, on account of how the sharpie fumes have at long last utterly wrecked my memory (thank god). Anyhow, ’cause right now I don’t actually have loads and loads of bonus time, I’m mostly just gonna dump out some old shoeboxes and see if there’s anything bloggable in the resulting piles of post-it notes and miniature golf receipts. Then, who knows, in a week or two this whole thing’ll either be yet another chunk of netsam floating about in the giant trash gyre in the middle of cyberspace, or it’ll be where I stick up more ballpoint doodles of completely random and nonsensical junk.