Whales!

(Dusts off blog...) Whoops, haven't been updating this as often as I'd like... Eh, it's summer, between ridiculous heat waves and sporadic vacations I guess things get a little slip-shod. And I have a whole pile of stuff to scan and post, time to catch up.

Speaking of vacations, I've recently recovered from a frenetic mini-vacation in the general area of Boston and the New England coast. We covered Boston, Cape Cod, Plum Island, Rhode Island and Vermont in the space of a week, it was slightly insane. AAAAND... we saw whales! Humpbacks! Jumping! I've never seen humpbacks before, and I've never ever seen whales actually breaching before, and this guy was doing breaches and half-breaches and tail slaps and fin-waggling and everything! It was amazing. Of course it was on a lurching boat in a near-storm with spray all over the place, so I wasn't able to take any pictures on the spot, but I scraped together a bunch of sketches from memory to reconstruct the event. Here you go!

Also, we pressed our noses on the windows of the New England Aquarium to watch the seals, so here's some seals (fur seals and regular old harbor seals.) Also some seals that were frolicking off the shores of Cape Cod...

Cavorting in the Cosmic Cavern

Be warned, this post contains eye-searing colors and cell-phone photography! NOT something I would normally post, but last Saturday I ventured to Kenny Scharf's Cosmic Cavern for yet another Draw-a-thon... This one involved covering the models in fluorescent paint in black light. Didn't get many presentable drawings out of this, frankly (at any rate, not many that looked good in normal light. Ahem. And I forgot my pen, that didn't help.)

But the SPACE... DAMN, that's a cool space. It's in a basement, and has gobs of fluorescent glow-in-the-dark junk glued all over the walls and ceiling, it is TRIPPY, man. Apparently Kenny Scharf has been adding stuff to it for thirty years or so, there's just infinite layers of day-glo in there. Of course we weren't allowed to photograph the models or the event, so I didn't have a real camera, but afterwards I couldn't resist snapping some pix with my iPhone. Okay, so, iPhone snaps taken in black light, don't expect quality here. But I had to show this space, it really is too cool.

(Oh, that doodle over there is Kenny Scharf, he was flitting through periodically in bright pink wig and tights...)

(If this post appears twice - or several times - it's because I'm wrestling with Blogger and Picasa trying to get them to NOT MANGLE MY IMAGES arrrrggggh...) (Bear with us... I'll figure something out... hang on...) (Okay, we're good, I think... damn silly solution, but okay.)

The Glow-in-the-Dark Psychedelic Dollhouse...

Happy Chairs! Fluorescent Palm Trees! Seriously now, what's not to like!? I could totally live in this room...

The ceiling was pretty amazing...

The walls were amazing, too...

Some obligatory doodles from the event... Mostly a mess, but what the heck. May as well show some of 'em. (More better drawings in the next post, promise!)

Draw-a-Thon : Alice in Wonderland

Heads up, strange naked people incoming! Just thought I'd post some of the debris that results whenever I attend Michael Alan's Draw-a-Thon... There's loads more where these came from, some of which I'll post eventually (it's just sitting around in piles, otherwise.) How to describe a Draw-a-Thon... combination life-drawing, theater, performance art and general craziness? Generally there will be a huge crowd of models with or without outrageous costumes and props, some cavorting around, some holding still, some wandering into the audience, some ranting and raving and throwing paint, you never know... And live bands, too, sometimes. Live nude bands, even. Weird? Sure, but it's fun!

The infamous Theresa cavorting around...

Not a lot of polished stuff in this batch, it was more theatrical shenanigans than still poses this session... The theme for this show was (vaguely) Alice in Wonderland, with the new movie being projected in the background. I think the lady with the crown is one of the queens...

Around midnight Theresa finally stops cavorting and takes a nap...

(Floating in space, apparently... Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time...)

Siiiiingin' in the rain in the nude! Don't ask me, man, I just draw this stuff. (She was totally putting on a happy-fluffy-musical act by this time, it was rather entertaining. This model and one of the other ladies kept coming out with hilarious non-sequiturs...)

Lots of messing around with colored inks, sumi brushes and a crowquill pen... (And I do mean mess... I have multicolored hands for the rest of the night.)

The guy standing on one leg was pretty cool, when he saw we were trying to draw that pose, he tried to hold it as long as he could in spite of being on the verge of falling over...

And that other lady, well, I just liked her psychedelic socks.

And around midnight I started getting tired and took to doodling portraits with a crowquill, mostly... (The models were getting pretty tired too by then.)

Fun With Blizzards!

Wheee, snow! One blizzard after another! (Okay, NOW it's raining, but before that we had more snow than we've ever gotten in years, I swear.) So what with the snow and all I'm dabbling with a snow queen painting of sorts...

Here's where I'm at so far, just roughs and some supporting life drawings. (With extra hand studies... hey, I like hands.) Why don't the hands make sense, you ask... uh, that's because I usually do hand studies from my own hands. So I draw two left hands (or, because I'm usually using a mirror, two left hands in reverse,) and when I do the final art I mentally flip one to make a right hand.

Aaaaand of course in the last big blizzard I had to run all over the park with a camera. So beware, plethora of silly snow pictures incoming! Yeah yeah, lots and lots of pictures of trees-with-snow, I know, I know... (Click the thumbnails for bigger pix.)