off the drawing board

Eustace's Gift was finally finished by late yesterday - at least this version was. As usual right after I finish something I look and see a few things I wish I'd done differently while other aspects are pretty close to just right. There's a story behind this painting but it's one I'm not ready to tell right now. If you'd like to see the progression I've posted some transition pictures below.

This was the very first sketch of the scene as I imagined it on a drawing pad last summer.

A few weeks ago I revised the original, added the other main character, and inked outlines and areas that would be in shadow. The next picture in the group I posted last week so won't do so now.

The first color washes continued to define the background while still allowing for either full or partial color of the toys and decorations.

Detailing added in the background and initial character colors done. Obviously, there's still lots of room to intensify the colors and shadows so that's what I did over the course of the next few days. I didn't do any more in between scans because the changes after this one are all pretty obvious even as the difference is notable.

Anyway, it's done and now I'm going to start working on another (and very different) story while this one and the others in the eventual series go back to the portfolio.

I hope it's not too cold and nasty wherever you are. Eustace wishes he could bring everyone the perfect gift.

♡

little distractions

Is is just me or have you also noticed how distracting it can be reading news articles on line compared to elder days when mostly what we read was in printed form on paper? It's not that there isn't a whole lot more information openly available these days but I often, usually, in fact, find I get distracted by silly stuff that either pops up or flashes in bright colors in my peripheral vision. Stuff like this:
Why did Beyoncé lip-sync the Star Spangled Banner at the Presidential inauguration?
She didn't know the words?
Bieber dethrones Gaga on Twitter.
Who are these people?
Can we reverse engineer the brain?
Ask Fox News?

I have to admit that sometimes I'll find something interesting enough or funny enough that I end up being glad I wandered off for a few minutes. Today it was the story about IBM's super computer Watson having been taught natural language by being given access to the Urban Dictionary. When the researchers questioned it later Watson answered their queries with 'Bullshit'. We may be on the brink of AI beings fit to run the world. How could they do worse than this guy?


MAN from Steve Cutts on Vimeo.

The picture above is of Eustace in company - he's a charming but somewhat tentative creature who's trying to learn the ways of a new world.  The painting/illustration is still underway.

♡

the squirrel whisperer

We call him the Squirrel Whisperer.

Most days (weather permitting, of course) we like to spend an hour or two walking around the forested paths of Point Pleasant Park. No matter the route it's inevitable we eventually make our way along the broad beach path where the ocean waves provide the kind of wild entertainment the North Atlantic is famous for. About half way we're given a choice to cut across the now icy snowfields around the remains of a decrepit wwII fort to the ploughed road or to follow the path as it narrows between the fort and the old gun emplacements. Yes, they did have concerns Halifax might be invaded by Nazi u-boats in 1942  but it seems they needn't have worried.

Anyway, as often as not when we walk along that confined space, we'll pause to watch the Squirrel Whisperer. Sometimes we see him in other areas of the park but most often we'll find him standing near a tree stump in that defile patiently holding out one unshelled peanut in his bare hand. Usually there's a dubious looking squirrel wondering if it should take a chance. It's kind of fascinating to watch the two of them as they measure each other's intentions. Hunger nearly always wins.

Once the weather gets cold I always carry my little bag of shelled peanuts and raw sunflower seeds but I tend to scatter them at the spot where we like to sit, the place where our crow friends expect us. The rest of the contents get deposited in an open feeder a few hundred yards further along. I like wild animals but I don't need to have them eat from my hand. When it comes down to it I'm probably as wary of them as they should be of us.

The Squirrel Whisperer has another point of view.. or maybe he likes being out there all day.
♡
ps: Right now the temperature is noted as 8˚ feels like -20˚ with 30mph winds. Yes, we went for a walk but not to the park. I wonder if he did.

back at ye olde drawing board

If I'm not doing one thing it seems I often find myself involved in doing half a dozen things at about the same time. It can get confusing but it's kind of fun too. This little guy who appeared this afternoon will likely be an element in a painting I have on the drawing board. It's good I have more than one drawing board because there's another illustration in progress that had to move to a shelf temporarily while I work on this one. My drawing table isn't all that big.

The painting on the shelf I'm afraid to show you. It's not that it isn't a good one in my opinion but that it's the first  picture in what will be a story that was only told once or twice a long time ago. It never had pictures. It may not even need pictures as most people, especially small people (known as children) have very active visual imaginations. Anyway, it's getting pictures, probably a dozen, but I'll keep them to myself for a while as I work the whole thing out in the real. Scans are being done so once I'm closer to finishing I'll show you the process as it happened. It may take a while.

Next, I have a couple of stories in mind for the long neglected Adventures Ink. The whole idea with them was they could be drawn fairly fast once I knew which one I wanted to relate. I've remembered a couple.

So that's what I'm up to. If you're not bored yet or don't have anything else to do for a couple of minutes you might like this little animation I found. It's a bit strange but I like strange and I like van Gogh and it's nice to see something a little bittersweet. So far as I can tell it was made by an Iranian team.

Painted Pie from Mehdi Farrokhtala on Vimeo.

♡

the sculpture class

Okay I've been scribbling again but while I was doing so I remembered one of the sillier things that happened during my art modeling career long ago. You may recall I was in the process of saving money for a long trip to Europe - one my parents reluctantly agreed to but wouldn't fund.

At one point I was invited to model for an introductory sculpture class that would take place as three hour sessions twice weekly for six weeks. The fee sounded pretty good so I signed on. I didn't usually accept poses determined by instructors but in this case it was necessary that it be a standing pose with my arms held close in to my body. The students worked with modeling clay over wire armatures and during the course of those weeks gradually built sculptures that looked vaguely human and female but didn't bear more than a cursory resemblance to me. By then a major reason for continuing as an artist's model was my certainty nobody would ever recognize me as having been the model.

Eventually some of the students entered the final phase of the process that would allow them to cast their work into more permanent material. The first part was to divide their figures in half lengthwise by attaching a thin two inch wide collar of clay around the outer edge. After coating the figures with vaseline to allow for easy removal later they'd flick wet plaster in tiny droplets at the clay statue to make a mold. Meanwhile, I was still posing for the benefit of slower workers. I should tell you that by this point I'd be in pain even if I accidentally slipped into the pose when I wasn't in the class. Added to the agony of the long pose I was now subjected to being pelted by stray bits of plaster - not always by accident, I suspected.

There was a rule back then that no cameras were allowed in the studio while the model was posing. One evening a student arrived with a camera. Now this wasn't one of the smaller varieties of cameras people could buy in those non-tech times, but a giant studio rig. Grinning widely, he hauled in his tripod and lights and was in the process of setting up the whole lot directly facing me. What did I do? I grabbed my robe and left the stage while everybody else told him off.

I'm happy there were no cell phones in those days, or facebook. 
♡

nothing like a good breakfast

Here we are not far into another year that looks, for all intents and purposes, much like the one just gone. If there was an Apocalypse these past few weeks I must have missed it - either that or they did a nice job tidying up while I was sleeping. Except for more snow the place looks pretty much as it did in November.

Earlier today I found myself looking at the list of posts I did last year. Out of 66 in total I drew or painted pictures for 40 of them. I wasn't that impressed with most of the results so I've resolved not to do that again this year. There are enough strange (and free) images on the internets and even more strange things to write about if one doesn't feel obliged to sit down and draw a picture first.

While I've been actively ignoring my drawing table for the past two days I have been re-reading a couple of novels written by Kurt Vonnegut. By the time he wrote 'Breakfast of Champions' he was inspired to draw his own illustrations for the book with a felt-tipped pen. I'm going to assume everyone has read 'Slaughterhouse 5' (just in case you haven't and don't have the time the movie is pretty good) but not everyone has read 'Breakfast'. This page I scanned is one from near the beginning and just so you don't have to squint at what's written here's the gist:

1492 - "The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them."

"The chief weapon of the sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was much too late, how heartless and greedy they were.”

"Here was another piece of nonsense which children were taught: that the sea pirates eventually created a government which became a beacon of freedom of human beings everywhere else. There were pictures and statues of this supposed imaginary beacon for children to see. It was sort of ice-cream cone on fire. It looked like this:"

and another, somewhat less cynical, quote that epitomizes his message to us:
“What is the purpose of life?...To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool!”

Kurt Vonnegut on the shapes of stories from Maria Popova on Vimeo.


I'll be back soon. Maybe I'll tell you the story about how the biggest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai, was constructed without being hooked up to a sewer system. That's because there wasn't one. Another thing Kurt Vonnegut got right was:

"Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance."

♡

Carl and Crow and somebody else

Still no borders that we can find. We wish all our friends on this pale blue dot a Happy New Year of peace and understanding. May all your best dreams come true.

With love from,
Crow and susan

♡ ♡

recurrent dreams

Sometimes things come back.
Some ideas won't go away.
Arab Spring was followed by Occupy Autumn.
Now Idle No More has taken wintry Canada by storm
And a lot of other places too.

I wonder if this will be the one? There are and have been other major movements for justice and reform around the world. Somehow the idea of a fair society just won't go away. Perhaps none of them will succeed, it must be admitted we human beings have a terrible record when it comes to treating each other decently, but what's good about people gathering for a cause larger than their own self interest (or just because they happened to be passing by and joined in at a whim) is to see that those of us who thought they had little in common find a common cause. Even if the experience only lasts a little while, protest against greed and injustice goes well with singing, drumming, dancing, and laughing in the company of strangers. Moments of shared joy and mutual understanding have the potential to tear up our individual prejudices and change the way we experience reality ever after.



“The Destiny of Man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees.”
― T. H. White
♡
ps: The picture is one of several dozen painted more than twenty years ago, all given away. This one came back by way of two dear friends - one of whom won't be back this way again. Life is precious.

winter

Something I found written by a friend reminded me of this old favorite poem. Since I already typed it out once this evening I thought I'd post it here just in case you might like it too. It seems appropriate.

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
      When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
      The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
      Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
      Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
      The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
      The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
      Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
      The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
      Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
      In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
      Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
      Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
      His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
      And I was unaware.

~ Thomas Hardy

the limping puppy

One fine May morning a hillside farmer had just finished putting up a sign that read 'Puppies For Sale', when who should he see pulling a wagon along the path but a small boy.  I'm sure you know signs like that do have a way of attracting children.

'How much are you going to sell the puppies for?', he asked.

The farmer replied, 'They're working dogs so I'll be asking $50.'

The little boy reached in his pocket and pulled out some change. "I have $2.37," he said. "Can I please look at them?"

The farmer smiled and said, 'Right this way', pointing to the old barn next to the house.

Sure enough there were puppies, very lively, curious puppies who came bounding toward the little boy from every direction. He hardly knew which one to pat next but after a few moments spent tickling bellies, being poked by little wet noses, and having his clothes nipped by excited puppy teeth, he noticed one pup who had lagged behind all the others. Immediately the little boy singled out the limping puppy and asked,

"What's wrong with that little dog?'

The farmer explained that the veterinarian had examined the puppy and had found it didn't have a hip socket. It would always limp. It would always be lame. This news didn't deter the little boy at all.

'That is the puppy I want to buy.'

The farmer said, 'No, you don't want to buy that little dog. If you really want him, I'll give him to you.'

The little boy got quite upset. He looked straight into the farmer's eyes and said, 'I don't want you to give him to me. That little dog is worth every bit as much as all the other dogs and I'll pay full price. In fact, I'll give you $2.37 now, and 50 cents a month until I have him paid for.'

The farmer protested, 'You really don't want to buy this little dog. He is never going to be able to run and jump and play with you like the other puppies.'

To this, the little boy reached down and rolled up his pant leg to reveal a badly twisted, crippled left leg supported by a big metal brace. He looked over at the farmer and softly replied:

'Well, I don't run so well myself, and this puppy will need someone who understands.'


*** *** *** ***

I've spent a fair amount of time this year doing background work for a story I wrote last spring. A narrative is one thing but the most difficult part has been trying to determine how many illustrations to do and just how to relate them to one another. When I happened across a version of this little story at a Buddhist website I thought it might be fun to illustrate since it was short and the message very sweet. There was no mention of who had written it though, so I went in search of the story by name and found two other adaptations - one on a Christian site and the other on a Hindu chat page. It appeared it has a somewhat universal appeal and by that point I figured it was available for me to play with in my own way. The only change I made to the original was setting it in the countryside rather than a pet store. Happily the last two paintings appeared much faster than the first and I learned a few things along the way.

I'm not sure if parents read to their children anymore or if it's all about rerunning favorite sections of Pixar movies and playing video games. Ah well, I draw and paint to keep myself entertained and, hopefully, to provide my friends with a little respite from the all you can handle and more you can't news programming.

I hope you enjoyed the story. If you wrote it please let me know.

♡