2 April 06
Cold Canyon Watercoloring
We got a quick trip in before the rain arrived this afternoon. I find I’m a very impatient person and will never manage this fiendishly difficult medium, but it was a good time…
24 March 06
Illustration Friday: Monster
For today’s Illustration Friday topic of monster, here is a monoprint of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (may you be touched by His Noodly Appendage).
15 March 06
Illustration Friday: Insect
I’m a week late for this theme, but I wanted to include a sketch I did of a David Smith sculpture I saw last week at the Guggenheim. The title of the piece is False Peace Spectre (1945). It looks like a wasp crossed with a fighter plane.
1 March 06
Illustration Friday: Tea
Here’s my submission for this week’s Illustration Friday theme, Tea.
More can be found about the Zawadi tea project here.
18 February 06
Rumsfeld's Song
I woke up in a fury about Rumsfeld’s strategic communications speech this morning. Better to do art than to seethe, say I, especially if you’re deficient in zen skills. I am submitting this for Illustration Friday’s theme of the week, which is song when I scan this tomorrow on a large-format scanner. Click on the thumbnail for a legible version. This piece is dedicated to all those people who have suffered or died at the hands of this administration’s “communication.”
11 February 06
Dumpster Diving
A successful day: looking for (and finding) plenty of material for my “found objects” artist trading card swap, realizing that this might better be done as a map folded into a tiny rectangle attached to a card. Most of the stuff that’s really interesting is too big to fit or too bulky. We’re going out for a tandem ride tomorrow, so I may catalog things as we go.
I did the first longish walk with the new boots today: no blisters. It was only three miles, though. Not a perfect test…
9 February 06
Not Reading, Still
The Creative License by Danny Gregory arrived today. It made a cross-country trip to the Davis Post Office, was returned to New York, and finally arrived today at my office.
The bummer is, I can’t read it. Not till Tuesday. (The delight is I can already see I need to buy a few copies and distribute them around the planet…)
This Reading Deprivation Week is doing weird things to me. I’m realizing, for instance, how email and reading blogs are a narcotic for me. I must check both emails—work and home—at least 30 times a day.
Nobody needs an answer that fast.
Ever.
If they did, they’d call.
I am not reading the paper. I’m barely reading comments on blog posts of mine, something I normally pounce on like a cat onto a lurking mouse. I’m not reading for pleasure. I AM reading for work, but it’s editing, it’s almost like connecting the dots. I’m restricting my home email to once a day, which I’m sure is breaking the rules.
It’s amazing how simultaneously liberating and freakish this is.
31 January 06
Were I a Sculptor
At the intersection of 3rd and F downtown here in Davisthere is a sculpture of two joggers, clad in shorts and t-shirts, running in opposite directions, with index fingers pointing up and forward. In times past this sculpture was the subject of serious debate in the City Council: people were worried that somebody would be impaled on one of the fingers.
Since it is 2006, it is time for the sculpture to be updated. Instead of two joggers, picture two students walking past hauling overloaded teardrop-shaped backpacks, holding cell phones glued to their faces, oblivious to each other and to the world.
17 January 06
16 January 06
New Pencils
Before we spent a couple of hours yesterday standing in line at the Oakland Museum, we stopped off at the art store at the foot of University Street in Berkeley, where I picked up a set of the new Derwent Graphitint pencils. These are water-soluble graphite pencils that have some colored pigments thrown into the mix. They’re intriguing pencils, with a subtle color range, good for landscapes, with the colors becoming more vivid when wetted with a brush. Above is a sketch of Charlie and Diego snoozing on their kitchen countertop mat.