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They say you never know when inspiration will strike, and boy is that true. This week’s Illustration Friday topic was “music,” and I racked my brain for a good long while today to come up with a good idea. It seemed boring to just draw a band or a musician or something like that. This was a topic that cried out for a hook. Early this evening, we were watching an old episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” – the season 3 episode “Band Chocolate,” where mysterious chocolate bars make Sunnydale’s adult population revert to adolescent behavior. Under the influence, Giles is dressed in something that I supposed was meant to evoke a bit of ’70s British punk style, which made me think of the Clash, and the cover to “London Calling” with its iconic image of Paul Simonon caught in the midst of pulling a Pete Townshend and from there to this famous image of Pete Townshend himself about to do his thing with yet another guitar. That rolled around in my head for a few minutes to combine with all the classical music I’ve been listening to recently, and the idea took shape pretty quickly. The cello – the same shape and roughly the same size as a guitar – seemed like the obvious choice. At first I thought I’d do a take-off on the “London Calling” image, but upon really looking at it instead of just recalling my mental picture of it, I realized that using that pose and composition wouldn’t have the effect I wanted, so I went with the Townshend image. Works better anyway – when you think of guitar-smashing, Pete Townshend’s gotta be the undisputed king.
This week’s Illustration Friday prompt is “Unbalanced.” So, here’s a challenge: how do you create a balanced composition that conveys something about being unbalanced? Perhaps with a pair of staggering drunks, unbalanced alone, but leaning on one another to create a stable, triangular shape? Perhaps. You tell me. All I know is that this was a fun one to draw.
I’ve always been kind of fascinated by Guy Fawkes Day. The English like to say that Guy Fawkes was the only person ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions and joke about whether Bonfire Night is a celebration of the failure of the Gunpowder Plot or of the excellent idea behind it. Here in America, Guy Fawkes is known – if at all – as the inspiration behind “V” of V for Vendetta, a figure who is an anarchist, a murderer and not really what I think of when I think “hero,” but was transformed into a Dashing Freedom Fighter in the movie adaptation. So here I draw him brought low, not the Dashing Hero, but in his last moments*, having been beaten, tortured, forced into selling out his comrades, and moments away from death. I’m trying to convey a real man, perhaps pondering the decisions that brought him to the gallows, rather than a stuffed effigy hanged and tossed into a bonfire between drinks. I’m always fascinated by the way historical people are transformed into legendary figures, and this is an area in which Guy Fawkes looms large.
* Yes, I know that supposedly Fawkes leapt from the gallows to his death rather than be hanged, but drawing him in the noose was more interesting.
Anyway, Sagan’s certainly on my mind, and I’ve always liked that line, also used in the video. This coming Monday, November 9th, would have been his 75th birthday. We could certainly use more ambassadors for science of Sagan’s caliber these days as various Fundie wack-jobs continue trying to get public schools to stop teaching science in science classes. I’m a big fan of Neil DeGrasse-Tyson, Phil Plait, Bill Nye and plenty of others, but nobody has ever quite matched the poetry and philosophical spirit that Sagan conveyed so easily. A few other choice Sagan quotations to ponder: “The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” “Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.” “I am a collection of organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You’re a collection of almost identical molecules with a different collective label. But is that all? Is there nothing in here but molecules? Some people find that idea somehow demeaning to human dignity. But for myself, I find it elevating and exhilarating to discover that we live in a universe which permits the evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we.” Yesterday, Roger Ebert posted a story in his blog which was accompanied by some selections from his own travel sketchbook. People gushed over his drawings – and they’re quite wonderful, in fact – and he said something that inspired me to comment, something that I rarely do on “celebrity” blogs. He wrote:
And:
And, of course, it made me think of my own travel sketchbooks. I was inspired to take up travel sketching by Craig Thompson’s terrific book Carnet de Voyage. I have one book that’s been with me to China and Italy, and another that I’ve recently taken up carrying on domestic trips. Seeing Ebert’s drawings and his commentary on them made me think about showing people my sketchbooks, both while traveling and upon returning home. People often see my sketchbooks and say, “I could never do anything like that; I can’t draw.” Which always makes me kind of sad. I’ve long held the belief that there aren’t actually very many people in the world who can’t draw, there are just an awful lot of people in the world who don’t draw. I’m as good an artist as I am (and far from the best at it, but I do believe I’m pretty good) because I draw a lot. Funny how that works. I told this to a guy we met at the hostel we stayed at in Xi’an and as a result he decided he was going to get a sketchbook and give it a try in his travels. I hope he did – looking back through my travel sketches evokes my memories of the trips in a much stronger way than photos ever could. They’re the best souvenirs from my travels that I could possibly imagine. Anyway, all this long rambling is just prelude to posting a few selections from my travels – with more to come somewhere down the line. Enjoy!  Yes, you're reading that correctly - 18 meters tall (not feet, but meters, making it 59 feet tall!) and carved from the trunk of a single sandalwood tree.  This one's kinda famous - you may have seen pictures of it before. I think it's called "Dave" and it was sculpted by Michael...something. Here are two examples of when sketching can be very useful. Both of these sculptures were guarded by security personnel instructing visitors not to take photos. Yes, you can just buy postcards, of course, if the image is all you want (and we did buy a postcard of the Buddha in order to remember the very striking colors of it), but part of the point of travel photography is to remember not just the image but the moment you were there. When photos aren’t an option, a travel sketchbook can be very useful – in both of these cases, I found an out-of-the-way corner, pulled out my sketchbook and my pens, spent twenty minutes or so drawing, and nobody hassled me. And in looking back at the drawings, the sights, sounds and smells of the locations during the time I was drawing come back to me much more strongly than if I were just looking at a photo.
 11x14"; Ink, watercolor and colored pencil on illustration board When one of us is feeling blue, the other says, “Don’t be saddish, have a radish!” It’s a quote from A Special Trade by Sally Wittman and Karen Gundersheimer, a picture book Emily liked as a kid. The other day, Em was feeling a bit down, and posted “A bit saddish; needs a radish” as her Facebook status. This gave me the inspiration and the desire to pull out the traditional art supplies – I love, love, love drawing with my crow quill nib and Higgins Black Magic ink and I need more practice with watercolors, so this was an ideal excuse. Google Image Search gave me an idea of what a radish actually looks like (it’s not a vegetable we eat a lot at home), and I set to work. An hour later (half an hour for the ink and the paint, then half an hour drying time and a minute or two for some finishing touches with colored pencil), I had a serviceable radish to present to Em when she got home. It made her smile – which was my goal all along.
You’ll be seeing more of this guy, methinks. He’s related to an idea that’s refusing to leave my brain in peace.
This weeks’ Illustration Friday topic is “Pattern.” The word instantly made me think of the spiral patterns you make with the Spirograph, which in turn led me to thinking of the poi spinners from the Colorado Fire Tribe who practice down at Confluence Park on summer evenings. Since they’re mostly Burning Man-types, I put my spinner in a twilight desert setting. See the full-size version here.
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It seems Carl Sagan is on lots of people’s minds these days, thanks in part to the YouTube sensation “A Glorious Dawn,” in which clips of Sagan from Cosmos and a bit of Stephen Hawking from A Brief History of Time are AutoTuned and set to music. Here it is, in case you haven’t seen it:
Loki is a Cat of Action, or at least he’s a Cat of Action when he’s not sleeping. So it’s rare that he’ll be awake and just sit still for a few minutes at a time. Today he obliged for the five minutes it took me to sketch him. Whatever was outside that window must have been thoroughly fascinating.
