The future . . .?

Well, recently my girlfriend in Iraq broke up with me. She said it was too hard being that far apart, especially with such a time difference. See the time difference made it hard to find a time for us to talk that wasn't cutting into the other's work or sleep or something. She started working more to occupy her mind and it just sort of pushed me out. Now I can at least kind of understand what she's talking about. And believe me, there's more to it than I just said, but I'm not going to go into her personal life with perfect strangers who don't even bother to post comments (yes, you!).

That all went down 'round the New Year. But lately, she wants to talk more. She's lonely and homesick and she's having a hard time finding a sympathetic ear. I can't stand to see someone reaching out and not finding anything. That just sucks. So I want to help her. I want to listen and be her friend and keep her spirits up, especially since she's serving our country in a desert combat zone. Regardless of feelings about the war, or war in general, our troops deserve to be supported.

But the tricky thing is, if I open back up like this, I'm likely to get hurt again. I tend to fall easily and she is easy to fall for. So I drew this in DS Colors!:

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And then the next day I drew this:

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You may notice that both guys are looking up into the sky. I kind of wanted to draw a UFO or something, but it would have been to close to them to reflect the idea that whatever it is that has their astounded attention is still a ways off. And I wanted to use the words "Not again", but I didn't want it to be that obvious. But the point of both of these drawings is along the lines of "I can see it coming, and I'm just standing here, watching it get closer. I'm not running. I'm not trying to get out of its way or get closer. It'll probably hit me, though, if I just keep standing here. . ." And that's about how I feel. Paralyzed with fear: Help her and hurt me and then hurt her? Hurt her and help me and hurt me? Hurt me, her and then help us both? Help her, me and then hurt all around? Some other combination of hurt and help? I just don't know. . . You may note that both are bald and have a "soul patch", even though they're "self-portraits". I still have some hair (and while my usual self-portraits are fairly bald, they still have some hair) and a full goat-tee. I have been focused on the chin area of the facial hair of late, but I doubt that has any real-world significance. It could explain the drawings a bit, though.

Now for a few words on media. The bottom drawing ("Shit") is a combination of ink pen and match sticks. The hard lines are all Bic pen, the shading is all matchsticks. I recently had a conversation with someone about the merits of charcoal and the merits of graphite. I generally prefer graphite, probably because I've all-my-life drawn with pencil. But charcoal is fun too. Partly because it's messy. You get done with a charcoal drawing and you know you've been drawing! Graphite is a bit messy, too, but not as bad. Graphite gives you a sheen that charcoal doesn't. Charcoal gives you a darkness that graphite doesn't. So it's whatever works for you that matters in the end. At any rate, I've been using stick-matches to light my cigarettes and I decided to draw with them. After a couple of silly little drawings all in burnt wood, I decided it would be cool to mix it with something that gave a more stark and definitive line: ink. I like the results, though I'm clearly out of practice with charcoal.

Billy n Me

Flipping through the sketchbook the other day I found this one:

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Before you strain yourself trying to read my terrible handwriting, here is what the text says:

Billy stabbed me on the bus when
I was 8. I bled from my leg & I
cried. I got embarassed that I cried
so I didn't tell my mom & it got infected.
My mom yelled at me.

When I was in Middle School I punched
Billy in the mouth and he bled. I laughed
about it because of the irony. I got
sent to the principal's office.
My mom yelled at me.

Four years later Billy and I shot
a BB gun at the old man across
the street. I hit him in the foot
and Billy hit him in the shoulder.
The old man screamed and fell over.
He bled from his hip.
My mom laughed at him.

This never happened. I never got stabbed. I never punched a kid. I never shot anyone (old or otherwise) with a BB gun. My mom would never laugh at an old man who had gotten shot, fell over, and started bleeding. In fact, she wouldn't have laughed if even only one of those things happened to an old man. Also, I never hung around with anyone named Billy. It's just one of those names.

But I decided to put this here because after going back and re-reading it and re-seeing it, I really like it. The original part of the drawing (the left side) was no doubt a drawing about tension, pressure, stress, depression, etc. all fucking with my brain, keeping me from thinking straight and feeling good. The words came next. I have no idea what it's about, truly. Again, it never happened. Not remotely. But that sort of thing could help to explain why a person was a bit muddled and confused. Trying to hide fear and pain from "Mom" which leads to worse pain and then getting in trouble for it could make one confused about what to do when something happens that you don't want "mom" to know about. Trying to fight back and winning, only to get in trouble with authority all around makes you wonder if it's worth it. Being reckless and mean causes "mom" to laugh could completely distort your sense of right and wrong. Which is probably already fairly distorted to begin with. Especially if your best friend stabbed you in the leg on the bus when you were 8. So anyway, the "poem" maybe "explains" the trauma our hero is going through on the left side of the page. The drawings above the words are illustrations of what happened at the different ages in our hero's life. I wanted the drawings to be simplified, like they were done by someone who hasn't much talent. (Fortunately that's about on par for me!) That goes well with the way I drew our hero in the first place.

Dots-N-Lines

The drawing bug bit me again recently. Finally. So I drew this:

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I really wanted to do a drawing with the dots n lines (like this one) that had the robot in the middle of all the lines and dots. So I did that part first. Then I drew the box around it to give it a "completed" look. Then I thought that there should be more boxes with more stuff. So I drew the rest of the boxes and then filled them in. First was the one on the bottom right. The original idea was to do some of my columns, but I screwed up in ink so I wound up with what I have there. It's not bad. Next was the self-portrait. Usually I fill in the area around the head, but decided that I was too lazy/impatient so I went with dots. That seems to stick with the theme of the first two boxes (in the order they were drawn). The area up top remained blank for a couple of days, unsure of what should be in there. I knew I wanted a "scene" of some sort. . . but what? Then out of nowhere I decided I wanted to draw a mushroom cloud. They're easy and they look like they mean something whenever you draw them into anything. After the ground and the cloud were done, I thought it would be fun to put a sun in there. It was originally going to be a happy smiling sun, but I messed up the eyes (in ink, of course) and it looked a bit sinister. I figured it must be happy that the earth was finally feeling what it feels ALL THE TIME! I added the flying stickman (always a fun image to me) and the dialogue.

I want to do more with the dots-n-lines with the robot. I like how it turned out. I need to get the pencil set back out and spend some real time on it, make it look really nice.

The 5 Turtles/HI-5

I've been meaning to draw more so I am. I drew this today in Colors!

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For some reason, I've been wanting to draw hands. So I drew a hand. And it was boring. I liked it okay, but it needed more. So I added the lighter lines but it was still lacking. Then, for no apparent reason, I thought there needed to be faces on the fingers. But the faces alone didn't finish the drawing so I added the (poorly drawn) arms and hands on the faces on the fingers of the hand. Cosmic, huh? Then, as is my wont, I needed to add background and text. "The 5" something kept popping into my head. But the five what? Well, turtles of course. I have no idea why the 5 "turtles". But it fit and it didn't make me angry so I kept it. Right after that I drew this picture:

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Yet another hand. I drew an automatic hand waver some time ago that I really liked. I'll have to find it and add it to the blog when I do. But I must have really liked it since I made an automatic high-fiver this time. I like the tag line "Who needs friends?" With an automatic high-fiver, you could get accolades whenever you wanted! You wouldn't need anyone around to make you feel like you accomplished something worth sharing. Kind of defeats the purpose of the high five, I suppose. I mean, the point is to share in your joy, right? Well, whatever. I'm drawing again!

Thing From July

I have no idea what this is all about:

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Pretty cool though, huh? I've been doodling more of those line things that appear above the robots hand in the "fresh fish sticks" panel. I like them. Maybe they're my new thing? I'll have to do some more elaborate ones and see what happens.

I gotta draw more. . .

C'est ne pas une cigarette

I've been slowly getting back to the swing of things. I'm doodling a bit more and I'm Colors!ing it a bit more. Witness this following example:


I had been thinking about my cigarette holder and thinking about how it had been a little while since I drew it. I also wanted to play around in Colors! some so this seemed like a nice union. I wound up liking the text a lot. The settings on Colors! let you control the width of the brush by the amount of pressure you use with the stylus so I fired that up and played with the lettering. I think it's a lot more interesting to look at than the more uniform text I usually do (see this?). I've done a couple other things using that lettering technique, but I didn't like the results as much. But I think that I'll try using this same technique to draw the outlines of characters or what-have-you. C'est la arte!

Am I Green?

Hola, Gang! I haven't been doodling much lately. Or drawing. Or sketching for that matter. But I have been playing with Colors! some more. Here's one from the other day:

It's a self portrait again. The eyes are upside down and everything is green for some reason. I can't explain either of those things. Well, alright, I just wanted to see what the eyes would look like upside down. But I couldn't tell you why. And I like the color green. But I couldn't tell you why. The eyes don't really seem upside down, though. They're just there, seeming normal. I suppose sometimes our perspectives shift to something completely unexpected, but nothing really changes. Whether we don't learn anything from it, or we learn that "the other viewpoint" isn't really that different than our own. . . Something to think about I suppose.

From the Archives

I've been distracted of late. I haven't been drawing -or even doodling- much so there's not really anything new to post. So here is an old one; I did this in October of last year:



I wanted to play around with weird perspectives and some distortions, as I recall. I really like the tall guy in this, I think that the weirdness works quite well. I don't know how well the "thought-bubble-as-cloud" works, however. (Could you tell that was supposed to be an empty thought bubble that was actually a cloud in the scene?) The little "me" in lower right seems fairly confused. And who wouldn't be, to walk over a hill and see this weird segmented pillar thing as well as an even weirder giant mutant smoking and imagining clouds into existence? I really like this drawing.

The thing about going back to the archives is that I realize my drawing has been suffering for some time. I've lost sight of my goal to make something new every day. Going through the old sketch book I see a lot of stuff that I remember just scribbling out very quickly, but it looks way better than the stuff I'm scribbling out now. . . when I bother. Plus it has been nearly a month since I posted here. That makes me feel guilty because I noticed that I'm getting more hits, presumably, due to my interview in Infolepsy #2, given that I don't really promote this page otherwise. So to those of you who have been checking back, hoping for some new stuff from me, I apologize and I will do better, I promise! I'm re-instating my goal of a new creation daily and starting a new goal of at least 2 posts a month. I'll do more posts as my drawings get better and more frequent, so for now there'll probably be quite a bit of older stuff.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!!

Fuck Off

No, not you. Please don't go. This is a recent doodle from my sketch book.


I haven't the foggiest what this is all about. I just like it. I don't think it's a self-portrait since it has none of the usual trappings (bald head, cigarette, goat-tee). I think that I like this one because of the weird perspective. I've been toying with that a bit lately, trying to find a way to draw stuff with perspectives that make the viewer (read: me) a bit uncomfortable. Here the guy is looking down on the viewer, literally. Perhaps figuratively as well. Here's a guy looking down on [me] with a shirt that says "fuck off". I get to feeling like this sometimes, like everyone is looking down on me, telling me to fuck off. And his bubbles are relatively ordered, compared to what I normally do, especially in self-portraits.

I also like the unfinished look, especially around the feet. I tried putting this into Photoshop to add color to the background, but it just doesn't work too well with the way the lines don't really close. I tried a couple things to make it work, but it always looked so much better without the backgrounds I was attempting to manufacture.

I Have Returned.

Sorry for the long lapse 'twixt posts. I was preparing to go to Alaska, then I went to Alaska, then I got back and was kept occupied until last night, when I needed some time to rest. But now I have more time to myself again. I haven't drawn much lately, though. I had a very difficult time drawing while I was in Alaska. It was just so beautiful and incredible that anything I could even think of to draw made me realize just how limited my abilities are. But here's a couple of doodles from my all-too-short trip anyway.


So that first one says "My smile is too big for my face, it's so cool here!" The 2nd says "If I could make love to and marry something that isn't a woman, it would be Alaska." And the third says "It's so beautiful here. . . I have to cry. . . I can feel myself disappearing into Alaska!" I highly recommend Alaska to anyone who, for example, breathes. I took over 1100 pictures. I'll be tweaking some of those in the ol' Photoshop so expect to see some here soon. I got some motivation while there to get busy and do some bigger, better works, so hopefully there'll be more of those soon, too. Stay tuned!

Untitled Pen Drawing

I love to work with Bic pens. My favorite are the clicky kind. I don't race them or anything, I just like to use them. The Bic is a very good pen for drawing for two big reasons: The ink flows every time, and you have a tremendous amount of control over the amount of ink flowing. So armed with a clicky Bic I drew this guy.

It was loosely inspired by something I saw on The Meth Minute 39, a very weird, but incredibly funny cartoon show on the interwebs. I wanted to draw a much more distorted face than I usually draw. It sort of worked. I was actually going for a view as though the viewer was looking up at the guy, so in that respect it failed. But the face is still weird looking. Initially I left off the goat-tee, but then wondered what it would look like with one so I added it. I think that was a mistake, but that's the danger of working with pen, rather than pencil. You may notice that there are more shapes surrounding the head. I still don't really know what they mean. A friend once told me about how he used to meditate: he would imagine himself swimming towards the bottom of a very deep (but clear) body of water. On his way he would see fish swim by and he realized that each fish represented some thought. He didn't know what the thoughts were, but he did recognize that as long as he was still seeing fish, his mind was not clear. Perhaps that's what happening here. They don't mean anything specific, just "there is crap in your brain."

I'm going to run this one through Photoshop and try to clean it up a bit and make it shiny. I like the image, it's pretty funny looking. But it is a sketch so there are a lot of rough lines. I don't want to completely take the rough lines out, that's part of what I like about this image, but I would like to make it look a little more completed.

Big Head (in ink)

I started trying to keep a daily sketch book last year. It hasn't worked. I just can't put something in there every day. But it's starting to form a habit. I find that when I draw daily I draw better. I have better ideas and better technique and some cool ideas. I realize, too, that a great deal of the things that I've been drawing are, in some form or another, self-portraits. I realize, too, that a self-portrait doesn't have to look anything like Self. The following is an example of a mental self-portrait, a sort of drawing of my mental state at the time.


At the time, I was on medication for depression. And the medication was waaaay too strong. My brain wasn't firing on all cylinders, nor were they firing in time. I felt completely spaced, on top of the crippling depression. The huge head, looking a bit like a depressed balloon with vacant eyes, floating up and away towards the uknown, atop a pretty drab background. Sickly skin wrapped in dark colors. That was my mind in mid-May, 2007 (and for a little while after, too). It doesn't really look like me. (see?) The drawing is certainly missing all the characteristics that I generally incorporate into self-portraits: beard, bald-cap, cigarette (though that's not a constant anyway, but a cigarette in a holder is a dead give-a-way for a self portrait). But that is clearly me. If I completely forget about this piece and see it again in 15 years, I'll still see me in it. I have no idea what the big hands are about. I was probably looking at some work by Sam Flores at that time.

This went just past a sketch into a "finished image" because I wanted to try out some new pen nibs and brushes that I got for working with ink and this was the excuse to do it. I'm really pleased with this image. I think it's a pretty solid image, one I'll still be proud of in the future. I can see this being a sort of inspiration, a "Look what I'm capable of" kind of thing. Even though it's all about that horrible depression and the hell of a time I had getting through it, this image makes me feel good.

Mind of a Man, Heart of a Robot (In Color!)

Well, here it is all in color. I rather like it in color, don't you?

And there you have it. My first hybrid in a long long time. I like to draw something with pencil or pen and then color it on the compooter. Partially because I suck with color. I can't work with paints or pastels or anything like that and get the results that I'm looking for. But with Photoshop, I can tweak the colors until they are just right, plus do some other cool stuff that helps to "complete" an image. Take, for example, the cherry on the cigarette. What I did originally looked just awful. It was a bright red. Had I painted that, there would wind up being huge gobs of paint in that area and I would have ended up destroying the thing. But this way I could tweak it down to orange and mess with some other stuff that I barely understand, but still appreciate, and make it look good. I was also able to make the background (which is super easy and I love the way it looks!) and the frame.

Now that I have the scanner, I suspect that I'll be doing more pieces in this fashion. I'll spend more time shading the original pencil or pen drawing and then just color it after the fact. I know that can work really well because I've done it before with favorable results.

The Scanner Has Arrived.

Yay! My scanner arrived on my doorstep this morning. So I sat down to spend the evening scanning and lo and behold, the second thing I scan wants me to color it in. Here is the uncolored version:



As you can see it is a man's head on a robot's body. And the man is smoking a cigarette through a cigarette holder like Franklin Roosevelt would if here a half-man/half-robot creature, with the head of a man, and the heart of a robot. That bit about the head of a man and the heart of a 'bot is pretty much what this one is about for me. If one were to design a creature utilizing the best parts of two other creatures, one would not be likely to create this: a slow, confused brain with a mechanical heart void of anima. This guy would be the thing made from left-overs.

Like there's this janitor who lives in the basement of the lab or machine shop where they build these man-bots with the brain of a bot and the heart of a man. And late at night he tinkers with some of the ort and creates his own critters. And this critter is his pride and joy, his greatest accomplishment in the world of splicing-together-two-things-that-don't-belong-together. It's his best friend. And this critter is a smoker, because it's sort of a depressing existence to realize that he's been created out of the dregs. And he's aware of the fact that "this just isn't right", he knows, with that human mind, that he shouldn't be. He's simply a science project for a weird janitor. So he needs a smoke to calm him down. All the reason of a human, all the compassion of a robot.

Well, whatever his story is, there will be a colored in version up here soon. So watch this space!

??????????

I have absolutely no idea what this thing is. But it moves. Or at least it does for me.

I wanted to make a new image tonight but the ol' brain box is pretty dry. Let this be a lesson "make something everyday". For a while I was keeping up with a sketch book. I would add something new every day. It worked great! I had all kinds of ideas and things were growing and moving all the time. But I haven't been keeping up. There's only a few doodles for this month. And I haven't done much in Colors! either.

So this is the type of image I get when my brain wants to punish me for being so lazy. "Look at this!" It says (loudly), "Is this the best you can do? Do you really want to look at that thing? I know I sure don't!" But we'll see tomorrow if I listened to me when I told me to get back to drawing every day. If not, I'll call this piece "This is your brain on not drawing. Any questions?" If I do start drawing again tomorrow, I'll call it "Inspiration".

[Note to self: Fear and inspiration are the same thing maybe? Dammit.]

Thoughtful Me

Ah, the Nintendo DS. If there is any finer portable gaming system I don't want to know about it.

Here is another image from DS Colors! It's an elaborate doodle, which is what I would have a degree in, if they offered it in school.




Please don't ask me to explain the words. Other than defining them, I have no information to provide regarding why they are there. I just thought that there should be words on it. In fact, here is the same image prior to adding the words. You decide which you like best.

Columny Thing

This is sort of an introduction, for you, to one of my other drawing staples:

These Columny Things

Several years ago a good friend gave me a copy of Juxtapoz magazine. It was the first time I ever saw "low brow" art that was done so incredibly well. I was hooked. That first one inspired me to work with color so I drew a segmented column with pastels. I really liked it so I wound up doing a bunch of stuff with that concept. Pretty soon it was the main thing in all my drawings. Now it's moved on from the main thing to one of the main things.

I drew this in Colors! I'm starting to get a better idea of how to use it and what I should be trying to do with my natural dispositions and what-not. I scribbled this one, but I'm getting better at making smoother color transitions, so keep your eyes peeled for a (slightly) better version of this one in the nearish future.

Sock Monkey. delirium.

Here is another image from Colors! I'm now playing with the idea of "sketching" with the stylus. The program is really pretty versatile and I'm learning a lot about using it and I'm enjoying using color (something I don't do a lot of in analog work because, well frankly, I suck at color).



"What," you may ask, "does 'Sock Monkey. delirium.' mean?" I don't know. I like to put words into my stuff. I generally go with things that sound good to me at the time. There may be some actual reason that my sub-conscious brain chose those words to sound good to me at that moment, but I'll be damned if I know what that reason is. Sometimes I choose words based on how long they are, or how they look on the page. Rarely do the meanings really have anything at all to do with why the word, words, phrase, what-not were chosen in the first place.

Self Portrait

Fairly recently I acquired a Nintendo DS. Then I got a little drawing program for it called Colors!, a simple little program that is a lot of fun to use and quite versatile, especially for its size. So I've been playing with that.

Here is a self portrait that I did on it.




The program is capable of considerably more elaborate images than this one, I just like to do simple work. Of course, that's partially why I like the program so much.

I tried to use some of the features to make some shading, but I have no idea what the hell I'm doing so it didn't turn out great. Oh well, live and perhaps learn.

Back in Balance?

It's been a little while, hasn't it. Well that's how it goes, I suppose. I would apologize but no one is reading this.

This image is not strictly a study of contrast. I have always like the yin yang. It's a symbol that looks like what it represents: balance of white and black. It's not a fight or a conflict, it's a balance. There is need of both black and white. And within the black is a little white, and within the white there is a little black. So there is both good and evil in all things. The idea, to me, represents both hope and fear. Hope because there is good in everything. Fear because there is bad in everything. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" sayeth the Bible. Amen. See? Even God can't get around that one! So check it out.



I like Opart, too. I like the moire effect a lot and it's super easy to get that when you jam a lot of high contrast lines real close together. There is something about this image that really appeals to me on that balance level. I guess because it's easy to get lost in the lines and not notice you're looking a fairly popular and well known symbol. If Everything in The Universe was (were?) perfectly balanced, you would not notice the difference between Good and Evil because they would each contain as much of the other as of itself. So this image takes on that form. If you notice the last complete circle around both "centers" is the same color as its center. So to me the one with the white dot is actually white with black stripes, whereas the one with the black dot is black with white stripes. But a regular yin yang couldn't have the same color dot and blob, or you lose the point of there being black in white and white in black.

I made this image into my desktop.