Illustration Friday – Time

This is an old drawing from a series of things I tried to do once about life in a kind of weird imaginary city. The whole thing was inspired by Ben Katchor’s amazing Knipl stories, which all take place in a crazy dream-like version of New York. The series didn’t work out, for various reasons, but I held onto a few of the drawings, although I didn’t remember holding onto ‘em until I ran across ‘em the other day. Anyway, this particular sketch was also inspired by the peepshow scene in Paris, Texas, which is of course a sad and famous scene in which Travis Henderson tells his ex a story through a one-way window. Basically, beyond all that, I guess the main idea when I drew this thing was, there’s this guy in this weird town who goes to visit this strange little joint where you pay for time to talk to people as they do pretty mundane stuff. Like, there wasn’t supposed to be anything remotely dirty about it, instead it was just supposed to be odd and a little bleak. Which sort of sounds like a half-baked idea now, but maybe I could develop it later on. So, anyhow, there oughta be a clock in the picture, to show how there’s a meter running on the conversation, but maybe just imagine I put one there. Meanwhile, I really don’t have time to do new stuff until maybe, at the earliest, a hundred years from now. Oh, and yeah, all my perspective’s pretty much always totally Egyptian.

Hombre Secreto

So, that artist’s statement I wrote for class the other day, I went back and overhauled it as best I could yesterday. So that now it’s very slightly less annoying, although it still has way too many personal pronouns. Anyway, the first draft was even more full of ‘em than the second draft, so it’s progress to even drop two or three. But, again, if only it could be way, way shorter. Of course, since my wife’s a Real Life Writer, I’ve been getting excellent advice about my millions of extra commas and whatever, but when I complain about having to work with words and suggest to her that writing must be easier for actual writers than for us visual folk, she lets me know real quick it’s pretty hard for everybody. Speaking of which, although I’m freaking out about getting all my work done this semester, you oughta see the giant pile of work she’s gotta do…all of which I’m extremely proud of her for doing. But, man, if and when I get my next degree, I’m definitely gonna get it in something easy, like doodling or perhaps Mad Libs.

Okay, so, anyhow, here’s an ancient drawing from back when I was gonna do a weird little comic book which ended up never going past this cover. And, well, I guess I also have half a napkin of scribbled character notes, the only part of which that’s still decipherable says, “Robot fashion designer, model named Z something, not always masked (too El Borbah).” I can’t recall what the heck any of that was supposed to mean. But, you know, even though there’s a lot wrong with this particular picture, I wish I could remember to fill spaces with dots more often, ’cause it sure looks like fun. Meanwhile, maybe tomorrow I can do an actual brand new drawing. I hope.

Failed Experiments

I guess when you’re a completely amateur type of artist, you’ve possibly gotta draw about a million not-so-great pictures before you end up with one or two halfway decent ones. Like, with these two things, which are both from a few years ago, back before the art hiatus, I think what I was trying to do was to capture a little bit of a Twins Seven Seven sort of feeling, with marks and lines and patterns all over the picture space. But, you know, instead I just sort of confirmed why I ought to do this kind of imaginary animal subject as cut-out wooden figures instead of as drawings. I mean, sometimes I wish I was one of those horror vacui style of artists, but I think I’m instead pretty content for negative space to stay negative and totally blank. Well, anyway, I still think maybe I’ll eventually end up with a style of some sort. Someday.

Caribou

So, I was a grubbing about in a box of old art, looking for stuff to maybe sell (you know, instead of using my time the wiser way, which would mean actually working on new drawings and boxes and whatever), and, anyway, I happened upon a couple of pieces that I’d completely forgotten about, which I thought I’d post here to kind of remind myself how I used to draw lines, which is a way I wish I still drew ‘em, which is to say a little more messy and random and completely contrary to the idea of “rendering”, whatever that is. Although, of course, the caribou drawing is pretty imperfect, on account of how the negative space is completely negative, instead of having Smurfs or Nixon heads or Mercury astronauts floating about in it, like it oughta have. But, that’s the thing with being a slow learner, I’ll learn how to integrate spaces eventually. Like, possibly in twenty more years of doodling. And, well, the pseudo-funk-style retro head drawing, who knows what I was doing, since I barely remember doing it. Probably it was just a lot of fun to fill the background with weird tangles of aimless cross-hatching. Even though, yeah, I know “fun” is not supposed to be one of the top ten reasons why anything art-like exists. Anyhow, back to work. Or, at least, back to work after we take my Dad to a local fish place for Father’s Day (I lived away from my family for a long, long time, and I’ve lately been discovering that my folks are actually pretty cool.) Maybe next time I’ll finally have new stuff to staple to the phone pole on my corner of the internet.