January 2005 Archives
This is what I feel like every day lately (the one stuck in the tree).
Another sketch. Yes, the strange twins at the bottom with the Burmese neck thing going on are balancing the queen on their heads.
When I was in college, the local florist had a poster of a series of bouquets, each one progressively larger. Above the bouquets it said, "just how mad is she?" I don't know why, but it's always stuck in my head. I thought it was funny, and I had that in mind when I drew this. I was going to add color and make it pretty, but I just got home from work (it's 11:20pm on a Saturday) and I'm too exhausted. I think the weekends will have to be sketch days...
For those of you not part of the lovely group of 5 who check my site regularly, I've embarked on a mission to post an illustration a day for the whole year. Only 358 more days to go...
Just a simple sketch today...Recently I've been reading 1421 by Gavin Menzies. Though the Publisher's Weekly review poo-poos his claims that the Chinese may have discovered North America nearly 70 years before Columbus, I find the idea pretty compelling. I'm partial to fiction and this is purportedly a history book, but it feels more like history-lite. It's a fairly breezy read about the Chinese empire, powerful Eunuchs, ocean navigation and the piecing together of artifacts and research in the spirit of a detective novel. What I really like about the book is the series of Chinese line drawings at the beginning of each chapter. They're simple, yet have a lot of character and humor in them. Good stuff.
I've been working 10 hour days plus weekends so by the time I get home every day, I'm pretty much a delirious mess. There are stacks of unwashed dishes and a towering pile of laundry. The dust bunnies keep spawning. Instead of burrowing into my bed -- which would be the sane thing to do -- I power up my laptop. Once I start to get into my drawing groove, I always feel a little better. Dreaming of gingerbread cookies and curling up on a big cushy pillow.
For Christmas, I got a black tee with a cute cartoon of a little girl flipping the bird. "angry little asian girl", it says, and I love it. I did a slightly different take on that.
I live with a performer. He's not really an actor or one of those people who can eat/walk on/juggle fire. He's an enormously talented storyteller and is the kind of person who lights up when on stage. While I feel vomitous at the thought of standing in front of a crowd, he relishes the feel of expectant eyes upon him...and man, can he deliver.
Mostly, he tells funny stories. Personal stories about his youth, about Indiana where he grew up, about the people who have made an imprint in his 32 years of existence. Four years ago, he rode his bicycle from Seattle to South Dakota over a span of three months. Just because. He's that kind of guy. During that grueling solo trip, he wrote his stories down and started to read them out loud at small coffee shops in college towns. He was a hit. And so the stories became a book.
Sometimes he writes poems. I've been known to bawl when he'd compose a rhyming scheme especially for me. I mean, how can you keep the tears at bay when someone whispers, "If I were a rapper/I would call you fly"? Lately he's had a thing for bunnies. They often make their way into the ditties that he conjures up and my favorite is "Bone-breaking, body-shaking Bunny Rabbit/Running in your natural Habitabits" -- here, I drew a tribute to the habitabit that we share and his storytellin'.
Some experimentation with color...
They look like dancing plant girls with pigtails to me. I thought they would make nice stationary and am going to play around with that.
A few weeks ago, I was inspired by Michael Wertz's Dog Blog. He set out to add a drawing of a dog a day for 100 days and I just love his vibrant colors. So I want to do something similar for my journal section and add an illustration or sketch every day. I don't have a particular theme in mind -- whatever pops into my head for the day. Nothing fancy.
If I can actually pull it off for 365 days in a row, I will treat my self to a shopping spree at my favorite paper store in Seattle: de Medici Ming.
It took me two months, several manuals and zillions of online tutorials to get Movable Type to work. Everything I read made it seem like it's the easiest thing in the world, so I've felt like a doofus for the last 8 weeks.
At any rate, I've finally gotten it up and running, and I am thrilled! I wanted a streamlined way to post daily (if I'm diligent enough) illustrations and the occasional brain dump.
Now I'm pooped.
