Lost

I've been combing my apartment looking for a lost keychain, which I haven't seen in a week. It's one of my favorite gifts from my friend Rainer, because it was a keychain and pillbox in one. Ugh, I wonder where it is...

I Think I'm In Glove

I've been obsessed with these Raf Simons gloves. I think I just bought a pair.

Cloudy

My creative life is kinda off nowadays. Things are coming together but they still don't seem to fit, as if I'm waiting for something to happen. I was at a launch for a book I have some work in, but it felt weird to be amongst the crowd and the kind of artwork that was there. I'm feeling uncertain about directions. I know I'm losing interest in what I used to do but I'm not sure what I want to do next. Hunh.

Sounds kinda like a midlife crisis.

Movie Doodle

Took out a sheet that was laying on my desk and just doodled away while watching a movie. I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to be. Maybe a ninja? I dunno. It's not great, is what it is.

2 Minute Bunny, Too

I was too wrapped up in watching online movies so I just gave myself two minutes again to sketch tonight... er, this morning.

The Last Amazons

I'm hoping this is the last I think of this because I'm getting tired of trying to wrap my head around it.

Can't stop wondering...

...if I could come up with a seriously appropos design for this wonder woman thing. But damn, she's a hard one to design for. Can't stay with a variant of the original because it's cheesy beyond believe, yet I can't really stray tooo far because it doesn't seem apt. Started up again but stopped after a few strokes...

Food Coma

Celebrated Thanksgiving at a friend's house out of town and we ended up feasting, chatting, snacking, watching a movie and generally hanging out all night. So I barely had any energy to draw anything of consequence, save for a couple of fashion doodles. Will upload the sheet when I get a pic of it, but really, it's nothing worth waiting for.

Finally uploaded. See what I mean? Meh.

Wonder Woman Redesign

Well, guess this is it. It's too late to enter into the contest by a few hours, but at least I finished it. I'll submit it anyway since I went through the effort (Tom, this is fer you!). It's kinda, Casual Friday Wonder Woman, hee!

I Wonder

... if this will work? I thought of Wonder Woman in a white tank and jeans (kind of a design trope of mine), with parts of her original uniform superimposed over it. Looks promising in black and white, but in color...?

Zenaida!

Nothing is as easy for me to draw as my full, flowy Zenaida, the Venus of the Rice. Based in part on the Venus of Willendorf and (I didn't realize until now) Playboy's Femlin, she's a carefree character I created about 15 years ago, who must always be drawn in a smooth, sketchy way.

Makes Me Wonder

I really don't know where this should go. Normally, I have such a strong opinion about comicbook characters, but I feel wonder Woman's so iconic, how much can you mess with her look? This one is a bit more classic, but when you take away the garish elements (like the blue and stars) she looks more Amazon, but less Wonder Woman. Ugh. Still on the drawing board...!

Still Wondering

This is a crap Wonder Woman design. But I tried to incorporate all the stars and flag colors, and the result is just...ugh. Red, blue and gold make for a garish outfit no matter how you slice it.

3 Minute Face

Had a long day today so I was too tired to do anything time-consuming. Oj said he liked my 2 Minute Bunny, so I decided to do a 3 Minute Face.

Art School

Sat in on a drawing class taught by my friend PJ earlier tonight, and here's the only fully-rendered piece from the evening (I had to leave a bit early). It was interesting that I had this sit-in planned, since by chance I had lunch today with Oj, a former batchmate from my college days at UP Fine Arts, someone I hadn't seen in over 20 years, and we talked about our drawing abilities. Sitting in on PJ's class, I remembered how I was never taught classical drawing structure so it was interesting to me, yet I'm not exactly a newbie so it was hard for me to start from scratch. But Pj was a great teacher - very personal and always really positive. Makes me want to go back to school... although if I had Pj for a teacher back then, I'd probably totally crush on him and be completely distracted...! ;-)

Fiddling

I really like how this drawing turned out. I had no idea what I was doing, but I reacted to the lines I put down and went with them, coming up with this drawing that feels very much like older, more moody pieces I used to do 20 years ago. It's not polished, but it feels so different to me, especially from what I have been doing lately...

More Wondering

Testing out a tiara idea for this Wonder Woman redesign. I still feel odd about uploading my design ideas for fear they'd get copied, so I'm not uploading those til after the contest. Besides, I don't really care for this headdress.

Wonder Woman

My friend Tom wanted me to join an online contest to redesign Wonder Woman's costume. At first I had no desire to, but I always love a costume challenge. Although I'm wondering whether to post my designs here long before I'm finished. Ah well, I'll pop them up when I finalize my entry. So far I have 5 variants...

edit: here's a trio now that I've finished with my Casual Friday Wonder Woman... I love the cener idea, which is based on a Phoenix redesign I did years ago.

Ape Against Glass

My best friend from college, Joanne, has been scanning and sending me copies of old drawings and doodles we made back in the mid 80s. This was part of a series of t-shirt designs we imagined making, for no other reason than we thought they were silly. After 20+ years, it's finally fully-realized. So much nostalgia...and so... stupid.
Hee!

Downton's Linda

I bought an issue of the new fashion illustration magazine, Pourquois Pas?, created by modern fashion illustration master, David Downton. I love how classic his style is. He has a drawing of Linda Evangelista printed in the magazine, and without looking at it, tried to channel what it was I thought struck me best about his work. Mostly it's how spontaneous everything looks, yet the linework is so cofident, and so considered. He omits lines so well, it truly makes the drawings. He's very much in the vein of Rene Gruau, but still unique. This is an homage to him, in hopes that whatever makes him so interesting to me might stick just by the act of doing...

Chit Chat

Was chatting away with some guy in Alberta and sketched my impression of him while I waited for him to send me...uh... files. Didn't scan this pic until two days later, when my pad was stained with oils from cooking (I had written a recipe on the next page)

Something Fishy

I decided to just do the fish on my gal's head. That, and what I'm hoping looks like a stick of pepperoni. I thought to myself, why would I put a fish on a headdress? Then I realize I had done this before, back about 21 years ago... I even still have the drawing. And the style is almost exactly like this one, albeit in colored pencil. The more things change...

Coque Feathers

I spent some time doing and redoing the feathers inside the hatbox yesterday. Didn't get too far... I realized I should do the hatbox first before the feathers, since they'd be overlaid on it in finer detail. So I stopped and walked away! :)

Phoenix 2

My friend (and frequent commenter) Joanne emailed me some scans of drawings we did back in 1987 and earlier. I always wondered whether artists believed they got better with age, as some of my favorite artists became too stylized for my liking as the years drew on. Looking back at those sketches, I know I definitely improved in some ways, but lost some chops in others. I tried to draw old comicbook characters and try to do them like I used to, but it just didn't come as easily. Guess I'm not as practiced drawing them as I used to.

Joey

November 4th was my baby brother Joey's 10th death anniversary. He would have been 40. It's odd, because while I completely forgot about the date, I had vivid dreams about him this morning, and then for no reason I can think of, I decided to recount a story about the sense of humor that he and I shared, as a completely random aside to my friend Rainer at lunch. I miss Joey. Growing up, we didn't have the closest of brotherhoods, mostly because I was very selfish of my space and resented him being in it. But as we got older he grew into a fine young man, and just when I was getting closer to him, he was taken away. We had our differences, but we laughed about the same things. This is my memory of a cartoon we both considered one of our favorites.

Not quite what you expected with that poignant intro now, was it? It was from Playboy. Or Penthouse. I can't remember.

Detailing

I'm liking the idea of doing just a bit here and there on this drawing - it's the perfect thing for the kind of crazy, overwrought details I used to admire in Antonio Lopez's drawings and paintings. The fact that I do them digitally means I can easily paint over anything I don't like. Which, when things get really experimental, is definitely a plus, and perfecting the features can come later... in the meantime I can just play and experiment as little or as much as I want. I worked around her head last night. Is it of any interest to people to see this process as it unfolds? I always imagine people want to see finished, polished product.

Headmess, part 2

Doing this all digitally is quite freeing: I'm just laying out colors and doing 'washes' to map out the drawing with an idea, but no real sense of responsibility to doing this perfectly. I know how I'll detail it afterwards, but for now I'm just playing. And I think that's okay.

Headmess

I had my friend PJ come up to the apartment to look at my old watercolors, since he works almost exclusively in them. I miss doing the kinds of pieces I used to do. Looking back on the selection I pulled out for PJ to peruse, I got filled with nostalgia for the days when I used to make so much time to really work on a piece. I seem to have less time, or at the very least, less patience to do that. Or do I really? I mean, I've put down a drawing for every single day of this year so far, so that has to count for something.

Anyhow, this is a digital sketch of an old drawing I roughed out but never finished. I knew what I was afraid of - having so much stuff on the page that I would have to do with the utmost care, as perfecting some would mean I had to perfect all, or toss the entire drawing altogether. But doing it digitally gives me the option of going back and redoing some parts and not all. Anyhow, here's the new digital rough of that old drawing.

Fluffy Christmas

I spent all of last night working on my presentation for this morning for the client that wants me to design their company greeting card. I already knew when I was drawing this rough mockup for the die-cut Holiday card I would propose for them, that this was going to be too feminine a look. The whole 70s roundness was the idea, although it doesn't come across in the way I rendered this piece. Ah well, they didn't choose it anyway, so into the Lost Concepts bin it goes.

Hallows

Halloween night and I have to entertain guests. Not the best night to go out, because NYC is just crammed with tourists. Ugh. Halloween's a horror show, and not in the way one would think.