A Rusty Outlook For Love

Couple of quick Illustrator images for a Post Card showat the high school where I teach.

Birthday Bats for my Brother

A quick birthday card for my brother. I don't generally draw a lot super heroes but, boy are they fun. Drawing this, I was 12 again, laying on my bedroom floor, listening to INXS' "Listen Like Thieves" on my Walkman reading Batman comic's "Seven Nights of the Beast".

Aah, nostalgia...

Happy Birthday Olivia!

Every year we have a big ol' birthday blast for our kids. It started when we threw the first for daughter Olivia. It helped that it was in the summer, usually super hot, and that we really like to have big ol' throwdowns where we feed and liquidate people. We get really geeky and theme it and theme all the food and send 'em home stuffed and happy and with a a soundtrack of the day: also themed. The first two were surf/hawaiian/jungle themed as we were throwin down Luau style, but it you read the title to this mix, you can see where her current interests lie. Which, you know, Daddy likes the whole my-daughter-loves-herself-some-rock-n-roll thing!

I get to be another of my selves for this and be DJ/mixmaster as I love me some Mixtapes since I been being about 12! I admit to a bit of sheepish gloating: I consider myself somewhat of a hipster, but since I live in a decidedly non-hipster town, I get all my stuff from second hand sources (which is why I love me some interenetting), but I've been putting the Beatles' "Octopus's Garden" on various mixes for friends' kids for a couple of years now and recently I read an article about hipsters having kids and trying to pass on what they think is cool to their cool kids in the hopes that being surrounded by inspiring cool stuff will help their kid be thoughtful and smart and inspired, as well as cool, and that song is considered a staple of hipster mixes. So that means I'm either ahead of the curve or not all that original as I thought. I'm leaning towards the latter.

Happy Birthday!

A painted card for my sister's birthday. It's today, this beautiful first day of summer. It's sunny, not too hot and I'm on vacation, so in all the ways it's good.

My sister...

She's growing up and we're different but she's lovely and smart and a determined sort of person of whom I am immensely proud.

She and her gorgeous daughter take life as an adventure and a carving a nice place for themselves in it.

Happy Birthday!

a present for a friend: an ode to a band

This is actually a drawing from last summer. It was drawn for a friend's wedding, so I don't actually have this drawing anymore, but I scanned it before I sent it out.

It was all about mood and angst and fore lorn wet October love in the young. It was me revisiting a time, too, that was special as a young me and a young my wife were falling hard with this as a soundtrack.

a figthin' pothead

My friend and fellow comic geek, all around imagination lover and good dude Tim Baron called the other night and challenged me to come up with a an entry or a "fighter" to tag team with one of his for Sam Hiti's Fist-a-Cuffs blog. This is what I came up with. It's kind of last minute but I still like it. I've always had a thing for the whole Evil-Genius-Head-in-a-Mechanized-Bubble thing. The tentacles, too. They're creepy in a cool way. Probably both obsessions are fanned by Mr. Mignola.

I drew this while "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids!" played on Encore. It struck me as to what I really miss in movies coming out nowadays: texture. In "Honey" there is so much great stuff to look at, some gooey, hairy, grimy, muddy, ridged, slimy, slippery, three dumensioanl, real texture to look at I feel it sucks you in to the movie. Modern movies with all it' s CGI tricks give some pretty tasty visual treats, but there's so much less life. Life comes when you give us something to chew on, give us something visceral. Too much CGI becomes flat, and and, at worst, grainy and unfocused and just too much of nothing in which for us to become truly invested.

Now, I love me some big movie special effects and the comic geek in me loves to see Spidey all flipping and swingy and I watch the special editions of Lord of the Rings almost regularly and adoringly, but I'm c'mon, man, gimme something to chew on! A student asked me if I was psyched to see TMNT and I gotta say and said: NO. Not really. I saw the first one on the big screen and I'd rather see those little Asian dudes in rubber costumes jumping around if it means seeing actual light on actual bodies and surfaces creating all that gorgeuos textured eye candy. If it means that there are better camera compositions and better lighting that I sacrifice a few feet in how high hero jumps, so be it. I'm hoping the trend in digital goes away from all digitial and a towards a better blend of the real and digital. I just want some texture back.

cute and innocent

My daughter and my Boston, ostensibly. If you have 3 1/2 year olds, you've witnessed the manic sugar high. And if you have a Boston you've seen this, too.

films and favors

Do yourself a favor and watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGLv3IEL0VI . It goes down smooth with Pabst Blue Ribbon in a dirt ass bar.

Do yourself a favor and read this blog: www.rockinsider.com. She posts some cool stuff to listen to and gots good choice in music, yo.

Another favor to me would be to read and look at this kid's stuff: www.myspace.com/stretchsquire. A former student, a friend, and working on some kinda heap 'a talent.

I'll post more of my stuff, cuz I know all one of you is chomping at the bit.

soundtrack:
silence. (running air conditioner, burning cd, dog walking back and forth, baby breathing deep over monitor, own breath) silence.

just to watch them pop

Where the last drawing was more of an indie-rock, fall song: moody, delicate and noisy at the same time - - like Death Cab, this is a Norah Jones tune. Something from "Feels Like Home". A lazy summer day, hot, airy, hazy. A picnic table and the sound of steel guitar and cicadas.

a lie in the fall

Inside cover and front page of a new sketchbook. Images, ideas that need to be drawings, but don't fit into my longer work and that are sketches more than big works. Kinda like demos for two and half minute singles.

soundtrack:
"morning in the moonlgiht" - saves the day