Hard work and no play

Talk about burning the candle at both ends! Is there no end to the hours and energy that has to go into earning the rent and enough to get by? To pay the tax bastards and the credit card swindlers and the health insurances extortionists?

Excuse the rant please, but seriously folks, all I want to do is sit still and draw some pigeons for my new comic strip. That's all. An hour free of slaving for the man! Plu-eese!

But alas! "It's a hard life." That's the title of my new comic booklet. And here is a sample drawing. Hope this is enough of a teaser.

Of course if you would like to ease the hard-ness of it all, you could buy some art from me...

The Mouse and His Child

The Mouse and his Child

This is one of a few books that I read when I was a child that I have looked up and ordred or bought now as an adult to re- read . Partially I wanted to do this for nostalgia, to re-live the delight I had in the first reading or in this case, it had been read to me. The other motive I have is to discover if the book holds as much magic as it did for me as a child, or if it 's not as good reading as an adult. The last reason is to find my way back into that enchanted land part of my brain where ceratin ingredients from each of these books lurk as peices of a magic puzzle. They spark the way down the secret passageway from the land of the half remembered to the world of the partly imagined. From this place, most of my inspiration for paintings and stories comes, I would like to pull from here my own story, that I can write down someday. I just finished reading this book again. Actually, it was the first time I read it, because the first time it was read to me by my mother when I was little. It holds up very well for an adult read. This story had stuck in my head, but not everything about the plot, I could only recall little prize peices, like "The last visible dog" and Bonzo dog food, and moods from the story, but didn't know what was going to happen next and how the end played out along this second reading, so it was fun. There were parts I hadn't remembered at all, like the Woodchuck who was into abstract mathematical thought, and the fact that nature is so brutal in this story, in the first part of their journey a rat gets eaten by a badger, a whole army of shrews get eaten by a couple of weasels, which promplty get eaten by owls, and further into the story nature continues in this brutal circle of life type plot twists, something I 'm pleased to see is not considered to rough or graphic for children's book material.

Otters

I've drawn some otters for a potential projects, here is a sketch. I think I like working with the colored pencils, more to come.

Today - a sketch

I thought I'd post this watercolor sketch I've done for a commission, it's a variation on the rollorcoaster theme I've previously done, this time with Giraffe's, and a friend of the Girraffe's.
Had a cold this week, but still plowing along at the day jobs and this here after work work. No rest for the wicked.

A gift from NYC!

My friend L.S. just got home from a breif New York Trip, and has brought me this wonderful little framed print of a New Yorker Cover.

She knows just what I like. I have it hanging over my standing lamp now, to remind me of my goal, New Yorker cover in the next 5 years!!!

Drawings to be posted later tonight.

Friday's Painting #8 - Art Show Tonight!

The opening is tonight, June 1st at 7pm at City Art Cooperative Gallery, all the art stars will be there! I have to change and get going, but wanted to post this little deer cleaning the bathroom, something I greatly look forward to doing tomorrow. Yea! Saturday and Sunday, day of garbage emptying, dish doing, grocery shopping and laundering! Yea becoming exhaused cleaning the house then taking a nap rather than working in the studio - but NO! I must, I must, I must prepare this weeks little paintings for my one blog reader, YOU! I can't let you down again, I just can't.

Pleas come out tonight and buy all of these, so I can continue to buy Guinea pig food and hay.

Thursday's post on Friday - painting #7

Thursday - a dull day. I got up late, went to work, worked till 4:30, came home, fed the pigs, downloaded four episodes of This American Life podcast/audio books from I Tunes, and the new Saltbreakers album by Laura Veirs and the Saltbreakers - formerly the Tourtured Souls (I liked that name better), but MAN!!! What an Awesome song Pink Light is, you can hear it on her myapsace website. Good album altoghther, definatly my favorite musical artist of the last two years.

But I digress, I wanted to say confessionally that I think I'm addicted to This American Life and possibly to the sound of Ira Glass's voice. The whole gang, Ira, Starlie, Josh, David Sedaris, I can't get enough of them, they are my new Seinfeld gang, but smarter and funnier. One episode per week won't satiate me anymore, I am now going into the archives and buying the ones I haven't heard from YEARS back. This can't bode well.

Anyway, having the podcasts made it bearable to walk back to work at my evening job, after eating a sloppy joe, while all my friends were out to Pakistani food and later Charlie Chaplin movies, I got to go do A/P at one of my bookkeeping gigs. More on trying to eek out a living later.