a mildly surreal wedding reception

jer gives eric good advice
alia ponders paper folded
and annelise knocks three times

nadir malfunction

Well, I got the extension.
This is what I came up with.
I hope they like it. These last two drawings were pretty complex.

lovejoy looking west

I was commissioned to draw two images over the weekend, but I spent so much time on this one that I haven't started the other, yet. Now it's too late to start. I hope they don't mind if I ask for a day's extension to do the other one. I mean, look! It's gorgeous!
The problem was, I used too small of a pen, so it took too much time to fill in the detail. I had too much room to work with, I guess.

big head little girl

This is a portrait of my wife and daughter,
and, believe it or not,
the source photograph looked even weirder.

cephalopod

This is Simon B'diddley.
Borne in the winds,
he's my new protagonist
a one-legged elephant.

wagonride

This is just a proof. I still have to fix the type so that it prints darker.
I haven't been drawing lately because I have been working on this, so I thought I would post it. The image is a linoleum cut, and the type is 10pt. Caslon. The whole thing is printed with rubber-based ink on vegetable parchment.

by Wednesday

Technically, there is no drawing in this piece, but I just made it, and I wanted to include it here, too.
The real piece is blue ink on white paper, but for some reason, when I uploaded it, it came up as brown on Blogger... I don't mind so much. Originally, I'd wanted to print it in brown, but changed to blue when someone in the studio had some extra blue ink and someone else had some extra black. I don't know why it's brown here other than some synchronistic happening to allow me to see what I missed.

sometimes a great notion

I just finished reading Sometimes a Great Notion, by Ken Kesey, who is now my favorite author (sorry J.D. Salinger), and which is now my favorite book (sorry Franny and Zooey). I have recently been trying to meet friends out and about so that we can sketch each other and talk drawing talk, but, somehow, things never work out, and we never meet up. I don't think it's because I am overly flaky. It's just hard to coordinate between people when life is so fluid.

birds of a feather

Alia's Birthday Card

I barely got this one done in time!This is probably the weirdest thing I have ever drawn..

frank and bertha

Someday, long after I'm dead, I'll be a famous artist, and people will have portraits of my obscure relatives on their walls...

film documentary

three-and-a-half

I was freeze-framing a video of a film-strip of the countdown number sequence so I could screen-grab a number to draw when this guy popped up.

number nine, number nine, number nine

The lure of the open road

Well, the wedding took all my creative energy, but the wedding is over now. It was beautiful and wonderful and perfect and all that, but now my drawing is all rusty.

This is a commission for a friend.
He will be riding his bike from Seattle to Portland, and he wanted a "goat dressed as a cowboy riding a bike."
This should make him happy.
Now, part two, I need to learn to screenprint so I can slap this on some shirts for him....

alia and little turtle

I wish all of our chickens were as personable as Little Turtle is. We just got some more baby chicks -- a buff orpington and a gold laced wyandotte -- and i've been trying to handle them more than i did our first batch of chicks. i've never really been a bird person, and i didn't realize that chickens, especially, were so social.
I really like this analogy:
chickens:us::parrots:pirates

the goat party platform

I don't really mean anything by this. I got a commission to do a funky goat, and I wanted to practice before I do anymore detail on it. I think the "JOIN" is my favorite part... that and the idea of a four day work week with six hour work day (I'm thinking a two-hour lunch). Where is the Labor Movement now?

the view *outside*

I did another drawing of my view at work today. This time I sat outside and stared at the REI building. I wish we had more public art and less public advertisements. From what I gather -- and I must gather this information, not only as a public record, but because the building was finished before I moved to Portland -- the REI building sits on the site of the original Dignity Village that the city moved out by the airport so people in their condos wouldn't have to look at a city of tents beneath the overpass.

another idea

It's just an elaborate doodle, really.

nice view

the text at the bottom reads, "i worked in the art gallery all day, and this was my view."
I'm not complaining. I'm just saying.

keepin' it real

I may use this for my banner for a while... until I think of something better.

quantum spirituality

I think the Beatles were more successful at explaining this than I. The image made more sense when I saw it in my head than when I saw it on the paper.

totalmente

My daughter's grandma gave her a 3CD set of early Sesame Street episodes from the late sixties and early seventies. Annelise has been crazy about them, which might have more to do with this being her first real exposure to TV. This is a line from one of the many songs that have been stuck in my head lately.

duck duck goose

This is just a play on words: "decadent" for "decagon."
That's it.

us vs. them

Continuing my Sociological study of the Hipster Subculture.

my first commission

The request was for a wall of clocks, similar to my Chaos Cafe sketch. I hope she likes it. The requester said to "go crazy" with it, so I had some fun.

community vacuum

I decided to make a sign for the vacuum at work.
The sign I have on there now says: "This is the community('s) vacuum. Please don't just take it,"
but I feel that that must be too complex of a sentence, because no one else ever uses it besides me. This sign should be more to the point.

momma's mama

Alia and I gave our daughter, Annelise, my Grandmother’s maiden name for a middle name. My Aunt Dianne then put together a beautiful photo album of some historical family photos to give Annelise a little insight into her namesake.
This photo is one of my favourites from that album. My Aunt Dianne is on the right, and my mom is seated in my Grandmother’s lap. Uncle Buck, the Air Force pilot, was still yet to be born at the time this picture was taken.
This was my gift to mom for Mother’s Day, even if it was a few days late.

micron convert

Some friends gave me a micron pen for my birthday. I'm impressed with their line quality and waterproof-ness. Now, if only micron pens were refillable.

loading up and moving out

big daddy warbucks

Here's a rough study of some relatives of mine. I *think* the girl is my great-grandmother on my mom's dad's side.
I wish I knew for sure. My granddad gathered all of these images. I wish I could ask him about the particulars, but technically I'm not even supposed to have these until either he dies or my mom does (I'm not too sure on the particulars of that bit, either.)

whole nother country

this is my right hand

this is my right hand
i call it michael
and it is the south wind

ay chihuahua!

This is my friend Kris. Not only did she wear this hat on a dare, but she was foolish enough to let someone take her picture while she was wearing it. This is a (continuing) response to the fb application, "You were sketched by an artist!" My drawings may be twenty bucks, but they're pretty damn good!
one hell of a deal.

keep pushing

As the world economy weakens and the energy crisis grows stronger, the national government will be less able to provide basic services to the population. Communities will become more reliant upon and more active in local governments.

kansas bride

This was in response to the facebook application that proclaims, "You were sketched by an artist!" I saw that my friend had "just been sketched by an artist!" so I said, "Hey Kris, you should let me sketch you." She said, "That would be cool, OK," and then I was pretty much obligated.

emma 'n el'se

This is from a picture I took at Annelise's second birthday party. We all went down to Mt. Scott park. Emma was there, and she and Annelise moved pine-needles around for a good fifteen minutes. I think it was a feng shui thing.

a mildly surreal crafternoon

I took the source image from either Alice's flickr or facebook page.
I don't remember exactly which.

there and them

This was taken at nw 14th and pettygrove
across from cash 'n carry.
I love drawing the centennial mills water tower.
These people are somehow related to me. I think they are my great-great grandparents on my mom's dad's dad's side. Their faces got a little wonky. His face slid off his head, and she's got the gout -- and a belly-ache, apparently.

forty finished

and here it is inked.
That took longer than expected because I've been making pinatas for Annelise's birthday party. I made her a blue monkey head and a giant daisy. It was kind of weird to see a bunch of toddlers whacking a blue monkey head with a bat, but I was like, "She's two. She likes monkeys, and she likes flowers. I'll make her a monkey and a flower."

forty

I'm so far behind I should call this blog
two drawings a day
until I catch up.I want to do another one of my Uncle Buck to send to him.
He's fun to draw because he *looks* like a fighter pilot.
It's his grandfather's chin that does it..
and his shiny hair.

This is what the pencil looks like before I ink it and erase the pencil forever. This was the first time I've used a mechanical pencil in probably ten years! The mechanical pencil used to be my tool of choice -- along with the hatchet and the adjustable pliers.

thirty-nine

thirty-eight, or thirty-one redux

Since I was sick last time,
I thought I'd redo this one of my great-granddad.
Alia says he looks a lot like my brother, Matt.
I think she's right, and I think I figured out where Matt got his nose.

thirty-seven

I didn't know what to draw, so Alia said to draw a toaster.

thirty-six

Part of our goal of self-reliance and totally sustainable living is, of course, to buy only locally-made goods. I'm always on a quest to find the perfect art materials anyway, so we went to Collage, an arts and crafts store up on 45th and Woodstock.

The ink I've been using was made in Beaverton and so is my paper, actually. The paper brand is made by the Bee Paper Company, and even though it claims to be designed with Manga artists using Copic markers in mind, it suits my needs. Pencil erases easily, the inks and gouache neither bleed nor feather, and the paper scans in as a bright, pure, white.

Now, if I could find some locally manufactured nibs that were worth a damn, I'd be set!

thirty-five

thirty-four

I finally broke out the brush for this one.Radio Cab is the only gas station -- that I know of --
in NW that's open 24/7,
it's the only indoor gas station around,
*and* their gas is usually pretty cheap, too!
Holla!

thirty-one, thirty-two, & thirty-three

Well, I was basically dead for a few days.
Some kind of virus annihilated the college.
Almost everyone was out at some point in the last two weeks.

I tried to draw with lackluster results. This is my great-grandfather, John Baker.
I tried drawing with a nib on sketchbook paper, but the nib kept getting clogged. After cleaning paper fibers out of the nib about a dozen times, and after carving huge gouges in the paper with the clogged pen, I gave up in frustration. I'd lost my knack for drawing when I was sick.
I opted to try something "easier" -- a pencil sketch of my Granddad, John Baker, Jr.

The result was positively degenerate.
Alia thinks I should keep working into the pencil sketch, and I may try, but I feel like I'll just have to erase everything except for the eyes. I pretty much gave up drawing for a few days after this one.
Then, the other night at work I cranked out one of my uncle, Jon Baker, and I feel like I'm back in the swing of it.