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.
