Eye Trouble is apparently a sketchblog of some sort.

As usual, I have zero time for this sketchblog thing, although I guess I should be making time for it, ’cause that was the original idea, to draw something new every single day. But, you know, time is always running away down different furrows in the earth. Plus, there’s forty tons of other work to do, all of which I’m glad to do, but still. Anyhow, the big distraction recently was, this weird orange car that kept showing up in front of our house was out there once again on Saturday, so we had to deal with that, meaning we waited for the driver to show up, so we could ask him who the heck he was and where the heck did he actually belong? Turned out, he was just this poor confused kid who was all tangled up in a messy romance with a girl from up the street. Apparently, the girlfriend’s mother didn’t like him parking in front of their house, so he parked in front of ours instead, even though we live hundreds of feet away. All of which, I guess, is a pretty exciting story, which is over now anyway, ’cause it seems the mother must’ve had a change of heart, ’cause now the confused kid’s parking up by his girlfriend’s house. We kind of figured he wasn’t too bad of a person, ’cause his weird orange car had a Stevie Wonder sticker on the back window, and who nowadays has the nerve to drive around with one of those?

Otherwise, I haven’t been sketching much worth posting, except this one thing, which was me just working out patterns for some objects I’m making. When I was doodling it, I was thinking about aerial views of farms and cities, and about various kinds of maps, and about ritual patterns, and also game boards. Plus, I reckon there are a lot of germ forms in this kind of drawing, too, cells and organelles and the shapes of various imaginary viruses. And also, I was thinking about Sixties SF book covers, especially the ones from Ballantine. All of which, of course, is totally un-original, but whatever. I think it’s possible I even had Pucci patterns in the back of my head, although who knows how or why I ever have patterns like that anywhere near any part of my brain.

The objects, meanwhile, are kind of hard to explain at the moment…they’re vaguely for a future project that’s vaguely called “Martian Destination,” which is a term for misdirected internet traffic (sort of). Maybe I’ll post pix of ‘em later, if they ever shape up to be anything more than a glimmer of an idea.

Oh, and I guess I did do this one other thing, which is a very simple little drawing based on a fairly ancient memory. According to a story I heard a long time ago, one of my extremely distant cousins once had a motel way, way out on a State Highway (I don’t know which state). Anyhow, supposedly, once a year or so, this guy would come through town with a traveling Snake Show. And, so, besides showing off different kinds of snakes to motel visitors for whatever loose dimes they had laying around, he also would get in this kind of aquarium-style contraption and let rattlesnakes roam about all over him. I suppose that was the capper to his whole little roadside attraction, the snake-tank bit. I actually have no idea if the story’s even true, but it sounds at least half-true, knowing the odd types of folk I’ve encountered down the years. I do know I kind of like the idea of some old character roaming mid-century America making a living off his talent for charming snakes. If I could write, I’d write about him, imagine a whole back-story and everything, but drawing’s slightly more my thing.

P.S. Here’s what I’m reading now: an interesting article about the Egyptian novelist Alaa al Aswany in last Sunday’s New York Times; Swimming Lessons by Rohinton Mistry; and Production for Graphic Designers by Alan Pipes, to refresh my memory about some stuff I haven’t dealt with for a while, but expect to deal with again soon.

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.

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.