God of War.

"Can I see your tat'?"

A little warm-up to get the flow going. I really can't wait for May, when the farmer's market opens up again. Oh, blueberries and pattypan squash!

Jane of all trades, master of none.

Sorry it's been so desolate around here lately. I've fallen prey to an old family curse wherein I am rapidly consumed by another project of the opposing arts spectrum (the bipolar doesn't help).

So I've been working on these.

And, to a lesser extent, these.

I will probably also have to start working on these.

Laundromat!

I haven't been working much this past month because I've been in the process of moving. It's not really about the packing, or the address changes, or being busy in any way. It's really rather psychological. Sitting down at my table resulted in a broken record of "this isn't going to be my home anymore". Creativity just doesn't really happen when I'm in a nesting kind of mood. At least, not the kind of creativity that anyone cares about ("look at this delightful arrangement of incense in a decorative vase! oh, I'm a GENIUS!").

Now that I am here in my new apartment, I do my washing at a laundromat. I thought I'd try doing some marker sketches - the sort I've been ogling at in books. I really do envy how freely and accurately some of these people can successfully reign in something as potent as a wild streamer of manganese blue. My manganese blue sketches still look like blueberry airsickness. Anyway, I want to study this laundromat more. It looks like it hasn't been furnished, painted, or otherwise altered since 1978... complete with the Ms. Pac-Man, "Suds 'n More" vending machine, and absurdly faded posters of wildlife. It's ripe for kitschy sketches.

Matriarch of a dead tribe.

So proud to live / So proud to die!

The fewer the lines, the more honest.

Even though I spent several hours doing a portrait of this dog, I might like this rendition better.

Creature design.

The concept is that birds evolved from mammals. Accordingly, I threw lemurs, squirrels, bats, etc., in a blender.

Mother and child.

A quick doodle for Marguerite.

Old man, take a look at my life.

I'm a lot like you!

Current reads.

Star Wars: Doomworld

Roy Tomas, Archie Goodwin, Don Glut, writers

I recently found some Star Wars postcards at a kitschy shop in Ann Arbor. I thought they were hilarious - and then, I found the actual comic books featured on said cards. Doomworld is a pretty darn amazing, and hefty, collection. This is old-school Marvel stuff produced right after A New Hope was put out. The first third of the book is a retelling of the film, with little bits of dialogue added or removed - which is interesting, but not why I'm reading it. The rest is a smattering of clichéd science fiction plotlines with Star Wars characters shoved in. I mean, living in the era of Xizor and role-playing games and entire encyclopediae dedicated to alien creatures, I take it for granted that these '70s writers and artists had only two hours of film and a demand for excessive merchandizing to go on. With that said, there is a Seven Samurai plotline - including a plate mail-wearing, lance-weilding, white-bearded, speech-making man claiming to be a Jedi knight, named Don-Wan Kihotay... yes, it's Quixote, we GET IT - and a slough of other hijinks. Chewbacca looks like a sasquatch from the burn ward. Han looks like the Hoff, Thor, Prince Valiant, but never Han. There is a myriad of weird slang, like "star-hopper", "planet-jumper", and so on. Did I mention the (oh no!) space pirates, complete with cutlasses and eyepatches? So, really, it's a relic of a much more innocent time. Even though I haven't fallen in love with some Marvel classics, like X-Men (and I really wanted to!), this strikes me as really fun, old-fashioned comicry. My inner - chortling, entirely too well-informed, I-knew-Vader-was-Luke's-father-before-I-was-even-cognizant-of-it - Star Wars nerd aside, it's an enrapturing read.