Cartoon of the Day: At the Milwaukee Airport

I sketched this coming home from my auntie's in the Dairy State. 

What is everyone talking about on their phones?

 

Our plane was late departing Milwaukee (200+ miles to the east), and then storms in Minneapolis forced us to refuel in Sioux Falls, South Dakota (200+ miles to the west). 

The guy in the seat behind me said, "I'm actually going to Sioux Falls!" 

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my photo of a cheese cow here

Collaborative Cartooning

Collaboration is hard for the same reason it's good:
other people aren't me.

Only people who aren't me can push me in ways I can't push myself (obviously), and that's the point of collaboration, as well as the rub of it.

Sometimes I grudgingly like to collaborate, because it's "good for me", but this morning's collaboration was an easy pleasure: 
Hannah e-mailed a sketch of something she'd witnessed, with a blank thought-bubble.
It was very satisfying to fill in the dog's thought.

 

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Also somehow satisfying, I noticed on Blogger stats that I have published 1608 posts here. What a nice round number, 8 being half of 16 and all.

In the year 1608, Wikipedia informs me, King James I [whoa? what? strange guy....] granted to Sir Thomas Phillipps a permit to distill whiskey, and Bushmills Distillery claims this as the beginning of its production of Irish whiskey.

Octopus Imprints: "The Stowaways"

Collaborative mini-comic (8-panel foldy)

Hannah (Dr H), bink, and I created 3 mini-comics together. 
Each person did her part without consulting the others, then scanned and e-mailed it to the next person.

The Stowaways

1st, I drew the characters
2nd, Hannah drew the (spaceship!) backgrounds 
3rd, bink added title and text

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Once these comix are completed, their final form can seem preordained, but when I drew my figures I wasn't thinking of outer space at all. 

As I drew them, I was only thinking of figures parkouring off the different planes of the paper, but most unexpectedly the female US Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Ginsberg came to mind, I guess because I admire how they've managed a kind of social-orientation switcheroo! 

Octopus Imprints: "Sun, Sea and the Swamp Thing"

Sun, Sea and the Swamp Thing
Collaborative mini-comic (8-panel foldy)

Hannah (Dr H), bink, and I created 3 mini-comics together. Each person did her part without consulting the others, then scanned and e-mailed it to the next person.

1st, bink drew the characters
2nd, I added the backgrounds (pool toys, etc.)
3rd, Hannah wrote the title and text

Cute Animals in Serious Art, I

If I were a museum curator, I would mount a show

 Cute Animals in Serious Art

This would be in it. Look, her tail is a flame!

Calligraphic lion. Ahmed Hilmi. Otoman Turkey, 1913. Ink and watercolor on paper © Nour Foundation, from elogedelart 

Natty Rumpo

I sketched this doggie, Natalie, that I'm house sitting. 
It cracks me up how she sits on her bottom and sticks her legs straight out, like a little kid. She may look a bit fearsome, but she has the personality of a little kid too––a sweet one.

Cartoon of the Day: "Listening in at the Museum"

I met bink at the art museum coffee shop this afternoon to draw 8-fold mini-comics (links to pix of how to fold & cut a single sheet of paper into a little book).

The deal is, each person draws one image and a blank bubble, then swaps with the other person, who writes in the bubble, then draws the next image and blank bubble. 
And so on… Title the comic last of all.

So, here's one of our comics. Our signals got crossed (ears?), but that just adds to the surrealistic fun, I think.

 Listening in at the Museum

(Will anyone under forty get the rabbit ears?)

(Also, the iPhone in the head bandage?

 I got that from the way some Muslim women tuck their cell phones into their hijabs.)

Procrastination Is Keeping Me Waiting

My old friend.
I hear the word procrastination sung to the Carly Simon's "Anticipation" (it's making me late). 

I am cheered that so many artists refer to it.
Like Dave Walker (links to the cartoon on his blog; his "specialist subjects are cycling cartoons and church cartoons"):

And Tom Gauld (links to cartoon on TG's Tumblr, You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack, named for his book of cartoons)

 Side note: Gauld is a friend of Simone Lia, creator of Fluffy, about this bunny:

Now, wasn't I supposed to be doing something?

"Bailar en España"

My 88-year-old Auntie Vi started painting last year. 
She, Mz, and I have done a couple "let's all copy the same photograph" paintings.
Here're our takes on a photo of me and Marz dancing in Spain (bailar en España), along the camino to Santiago.

Posted full size, so to see all 3, scroll right  >    >    >

L to R: by me (watercolor), Vi (acrylics), Mz (marker and pencil)

Our differences fascinate me, and I love them all. 
I'm always a little surprised by how literal I am; I marvel at Mz's  transformation (her trees are the best); and while I only stop painting when the water-logged paper starts to shred, my auntie paints enviably quickly---her slapdash style catches the mood maybe most of all, like something by Buñuel.

Cartoons of the Day: Comic Con

 Comic Con was here this weekend, and I didn't even know until it was almost over. I biked down for the last few hours on Sunday afternoon and sat on the floor, admiring and sketching. People wore all kinds of costumes: I saw a young girl Doctor Who, for instance, posing with a fully equipped Ghostbuster. 

(There were lots of Doctor Whos because Matt Smith had appeared earlier.) 

I hadn't even known that Shatner appeared on Saturday. I probably wouldn't have paid to see him though--I saw him onstage in Shatner's World in 2012. 

What I do regret, though, is that I was ill prepared and ran out of paper.

Cartoon of the Day: Lonely Blonde

I like the idea of drawing and posting a cartoon every day (though I doubt I'd really do it every day), to help me get in the habit of putting down words + images. 

A little more than a sketch, a little more of a story, like what I did at dinner with Marz tonight:

I also like the etymology of the word "cartoon", which I only recently learned:

cartoon (n.) 

1670s, "a drawing on strong paper," from French carton, from Italian cartone "strong, heavy paper, pasteboard," 

thus "preliminary sketches made by artists on such paper" (see also carton). 

Extension to comical drawings in newspapers and magazines is 1843.

It has stopped raining...

...after days of rain, and I just now activated my "bike-sharing" key fob.        

It costs $65/ year to have access to the cute bug-green bikes parked all over town, about the price of tuning up my battered old bike, which I think I'll skip this year.

I can ride a Nice Ride bike to my Thrift Store volunteer job . . . and to my new job when it starts.  

I got a job! though only a very part-time one, so I have to keep looking:
in a couple weeks, I start training as a Guest Ambassador at the huge convention center downtown––I think this will entail directing visitors to the toilets, something I value highly, you know. 

A city with a good sewer system is a city without cholera.

[Grumble. Why is Blogger publishing this post all alone on the page?]