My Little CrockPot of News and Thoughts

Here it is. After several missed Illustration Friday topics, I finally got my act together and did one for this week. The topic this week is "crowded"... and this is my very loose interpretation of it. I hope everyone had a great Easter. I know we did. It has been a busy, busy last couple of weeks, but things are settling down now. Regular updates to this blog are here again. Yaaay.

This is my Illustration Friday submission this week. It's a bit hard to read, but it says: "Sitting here in this dirty stall, recent events in my head, through my tears I come to realize, Jr. High is mean." This actually came out of a conversation I had with Ward Jenkins this week. Ward, like Jr. High, is ruthless. OH! BURN! ;)

Here are a few things I did in the old sketchbook this weekend. The first two are acrylic while the last is just ink. That's a squid of some sort in the guy's hand. Updates to this blog have been pretty scarce lately. I apologize for that and promise that more regular posts are just around the bend. In the meantime, visit DRAWN! for a slew a fun links.

This was originally supposed to have been my "Jazz" illustration for Illustration Friday. Like many of things that I do, I didn't like the direction it was going so I scrapped it. This weekend I went back and decided to finished it, but rather than complete it in the way that I had originally intended, I decided to play with texture. The final result is a really aged and abandoned look. It comes across to me as an old passport photo that was forgotten in some ancient house that became condemned long ago... ***UPDATE***

AND THE NEWS IS...

DRAWN! is live! A few weeks back John Martz (Robot Johnny) sent an email out to a few folks asking if they would like to participate in a collaborative blog. I was very honored and excited to myself included in that group. The blog's main purpose would be to post links on the internet that inspire in some way and cover a broad spectrum of topics. Bookmark the site; it's gonna be a dandy.

So the Illustration Topic this week is "Jazz" and all I could come up with were these crude and boring portraits. They are supposed to be of (from left to right) Django Reinhardt, Count Basie, and Glenn Miller. Three kings of Swing... to be honest I didn't realize that Django fell into that category, but All Music says so and who am I to argue. This week, while working and doing research for this illustration I discovered two things about myself; one thing that I kind of knew and one that shocked me. First off, I have an thing for portraits. I can't draw enough of them. As simple as it sounds, I just like drawing faces. The other is that I have an obsession for the "look" of Django Reinhardt. He's got one of the most interesting faces I have ever seen. As a matter of fact, I drew several preliminary sketches of him this week that I may post at a later date.