Not sure if this fella is prince or not but a frog can dream can't he?

BIg thanks to Ward Jenkins of the mighty blog The Ward-O-Matic [http://wardomatic.blogspot.com/] for mentioning my website and blog and on the Drawn! website. Very nice surprise.

some sketches from a crazy busy weekend...

When I thought about reflection I thought about all the duality type movies and books I really like. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the The Picture of Dorian Gray which I chose to illustrate. In the story by Oscar wilde, Dorian stays young and unmarked while his portrait grows old but it also grows more hideous the more his soul becomes rotten. He gets to do whatever he wants and the portrait shows the results. I remember the first time I saw the old black and white
movie as a kid and the great moment when you see the hideous portrait. I always thought the painting was amazing. It was many years later that I found out the painting was done by Ivan Albright and only last year that I saw the original in the
Chicago Institute for the first time. That was more exciting for me than some of the Monets i tell ya [ tho I like Monet and all] . I read the book a while after I saw the movie and still enjoy it.
I like that everyone flings themselves onto sofas and lounges languidly.
In my piece Dorian, in a rare moment of guilt, smashes a mirror which holds his "false" reflection while the hideous portrait looks on.
I drew up some quotes from the book in my sketchbook as well.

Some quick sketches from the weekend.

this was based around a greek temple [without Louis] I saw in the travel section last week and got around
to sketching up this mourning.




I've only been to New Orleans once but I thought it was a fantastic place. One good memory of many was seeing soul legend
Andre Williams doing a killer show in a tiny club with local keyboardist Quintron, I liked visiting the cemetary where they shot some scenes for Easy Rider and learning about some of the cool local history. The architecture is beautiful and I love cajun cooking.
Well every year we have "ahem"a Mardi gras in my neighborhood and well it aint much but theres some zydeco music
and well...not much else. But its a few blocks away. So throwing Confusious' advice to the wind we munched down some
questionable, spicy jumbalya and I did some sketches. not much to write home about much less put on a blog but here they are anyway.
the jumbalya

the sketches..the folks around the not so cajun chip truck. I was hoping for an old fashioned creole duel but no such luck.


the always mystical fortune teller..

and lastly the majician and balloon twister..

My website is overdue for a redesign and a big update and in about 2 weeks the new one should be up.
Thought I would post the new home page.
As well heres a doodle that I developed a bit further. Still playing around with possible colour combinations tho
I think in this state the simpler the colour the better and probably b and w. i might do a more rendered colour version if I get the time.

Wisdom boy, i was sure I wasn't going to have the time to get anything in for an idea as expansive as this one. I thought about all the things it meant to be wise and the profound nature of that rare attribute, and i had some ideas about what I might do. I was also thinking about the James Coburn Flint films I enjoy and Get Smart. They were pretty wise fellows. And I thought about all the cool Frazetta and Robert McGuinness movie posters from the 60's I really dig.
Anyway I tossed out all my original thoughts about wisdom, threw back a dry martini, and dug up this dusty old copy of the story of a forgotten gumshoe dishing out his own brand of wisdom.

Saturday mournings when we can swing it, is time for coffee, omelettes and garage sales. Above my lovely wife and garage
sale buddy who graciously encourages my love of 60's italian horror movie decoration and Igor the cat.

A couple of recent purcahses. 2 peek-a- book books.Love the space suit page. An addition to Alisons cook book collection and book on giants and witches from 1943 illustrated by american illustrator Henry Pitz. Pitz isn't really a favourite but I do like his work and his instructional books on inking and his book on childrens book art. I thought this had some real cool work in it tho. The whole bunch for 2 bucks.





haven't spun this one yet..Rocking Chair Rock with yogi and boo boo sounds pretty wild tho.

Not long after I started to get back into painting about 5 years ago after a long break, I met retired art director Dennis Rose who invited me to join his group for weekly painting sessions. Dennis is a great guy and the space he used was great. About month ago Dennis got hit by a bus riding his bike and broke his leg. I went and visited him the other day and thought I would share a couple of his paintings. Get well buddy!


And big thanks to Paige Pooler for her post on eyes wide apart on how to change the blog banner!

A couple of sketches from the same day....

At long last [for me anyway] the films of producer Val Lewton are coming out on dvd in great 5 pack collection including Cat People, The Curse of the Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Seventh Victim [ a favourite] , The Leopard Man, the Ghost Ship, The Body Snatcher, Isle of the Dead and Bedlam. I love these old atmospheric black and white movies from the 40's. Lewton wrote most of these films but never took credit and gave first time directors like Robert Wise and Jaques Torneur their directing breaks. The Ghost Ship, the only film I haven't seen yet is included. The film had legal troubles and was never shown after its initial release. There was laserdisc copy a few years back but i never saw it. Looking forward to making a batch of popcorn and settling down with that one.
Lewton was a pretty interesting character. He wrote one of the first books on the depression "No Bed of Her Own" and was big shot independant hollywood producer David O Selznicks story editor and tried to talk him out of buying Gone with the Wind.

Another time, Selznick was going to do Charles Dickens' David Copperfield and he asked if Lewton knew the book which he did and was told to show up at Selznicks house at 10 the next mourning. Lewton studied up on Dickens for the big meeting and the next morning drove the 20 miles to Selznicks hoous, arrived on time and was shown to the bathroom where Selznick was sitting on the toilet. "How old is Olver Twist when the story begins? he asked. Lewton told him. "Freddie Bartholomew is too old for that" Selznick said and told Lewton to go home.
That kind of story always reminds of the film producer in Barton Fink who always makes me laugh my head off.
Lewton left Selznick to head up the small b horror movie division at RKO and make these great and influential films.

I was going to do this up north {caledon] over the weekend so I thought I would do something that I could just ink with no computer colour. Also I walked through some woods so I had woods on my mind. I had another idea that was more of a spot
but I went ahead with this.

I had meant to mention this when I first posted this illustration so I'm adding it now. One of the things I was thinking about
when I drew this was a story from the book Ib Melchior, Man of Imagination. Its a Biography on the film director of the b-movies "Angry Red Planet. Robinson Crusoe on Mars and he worked on the script of a Mario Bava movie I love "Planet of the Vampires". He was also a spy in the war and lead a very interesting life. He talks about a story he remembers as a kid about a boy who , with his horse pulling a sled with a big vat on it, is returning home in the snow at night. Suddenly a group of wolves start to chase him. He can't outrun them, he can't fight them, whatever he does he's dead, except, he stops the sled, turns the vat over and crawls under it, he let the horse go to run back to his house so his parents would no something was up and the boy was safe under the vat.


These are some quick sketches from the weekend. I got stung by a wasp which was like the 5th time this year. It made me laugh. I hadn't been
stung by a bee, wasp or hornet my entire life but this year when we were moving a couch off our porch to dump in the garbage I was swarmed and stung about 5 times. There was a nest under the cushions just starting. I hosed them down and got rid of the couch. They kept coming back for a couple of days.

i've been looking at bunch of old stewardess clothing designs and old cool 60's ,70's plane interiors. Back when a stewardess
had to look good in Hot Pants! ahh the good old days :-). anyway I did some doodles and I finished this one up a bit back. There was that awful plane crash in Toronto a couple of days back and thankfully no one died. Thought I would post this as a little tribute to the brave ladies of the air.

and in the same vein [somewhat] this mourning I threw on the turntable, the Nerves 10 inch with my coffee which has a great plane flying song on it, "One Way Ticket". They only ever put out an ep in 77 but its killer 70's punk[just a dollop] power pop all the way. I picked up the reissue a few years back in San Francisco. They did the original version of "Hanging on the Telephone" which Blondie covered on their Parrallel Lines album. This record makes me very happy.



Illustrator Guy Francis has a great blog , So, Cat Tacos, [http://kactiguy.blogspot.com/] and he posted a drawing of a falcon he and his daughter did. So I thought post something by my neice Sabrine who is 5 and half. When we get together, after we get through talking about monsters we get to drawing them. This isn't a monster but a witch. She asked me to draw Frantic Search last time I was over and after I did my quick sketch she improved on it....eh Voila..