Feral Town

For the past two years, I've taken up drawing on post-its notes.



The original idea was to do something creative with little passing thoughts I had, in an immediate context, with the time I had available. I would scribble them out between teaching obligations, for the most part.



The whole thing hinged upon working on something that wouldn't turn into work. I've so far thought up and drawn over 400 of them.



So much for not turning it into work.







So I began making drypoint etchings of the series. I'd previously tried doing little gouache paintings of them, but they just took on an air of seriousness that worked against them. In paint they became meaner, and their cynicism turned into outright pessimism.

But the drypoints, for some reason, seem to work, and seem to retain a sense of directness without being too heavy. This is important in my little suburb of animalian dysfunction; I'd like it to be clear that I'm not wishing any of these little guys any ill will. I'm glad Maureen and Tom can work things out in their own hamster way.

A few have been making their way into the Monday edition of The Atticus Review, an online literary magazine edited by author and photographer David Olimpio.

You can also see most of the whole ongoing shebang on Instagram.

More to come... and maybe a shopping option.

The Summer in (mostly) Mass Transit Sketches

Maybe it's worth noting that I'm left handed.  I bring this up only as a bit of clarification; to avoid perching my drawing hand on a metal spiral, my sketchbooks are all backwards. I've been using the same brand and scale since Fall of 1997 with only a few exceptions. The covers all look sort of like this:

The insides often look like this. I do an awful lot of my sketching in places where people are happy to ignore their close neighbors.

 

pen on recycled paper, 5" x 7"

In the (not Greenwich) Mean Time.

I'm currently neck deep in book projects, really exciting ones, actually, for which I'm contractually forbidden from posting any images at this time. When industry legal teams say "we'd prefer you not leap at this moment in time," well, far be it from me to ask "how high?" No, no, I contentedly stand around.

So in lieu of any new paintings, here are some restaurant place mats I drew on.

Another train person.

2010, 6" x 8.5"

Pastel, charcoal, conte and gouache on Rives BFK paper.

Mass Transit Hipster.

7.25" x 8," 2010.
pastel, conte and charcoal over gouache
on gray Rives BFK paper.

End of the School Year...

So it's time for some quick thank you cards to my children's wonderful teachers.







And their equally wonderful retiring principal.

Planes, Trains, and Traffic Court

...and one of my father-in-law's feet...

Some train sketches.

pen on paper, 5"x7". 2008

You are certainly not my neighbor's cat.

pen and ink, 5in. x 7 in.

That is, the skittish gray tabby we set the trap for
whose green eyes glared out at me
from beneath my shamefully uncool minivan.
You are not that cat.
Yet you return again and again,
drawn by a fly specked can of sun-warmed tuna
and hunkering silently in the corner of the cage
chagrined by your greed and gullibility perhaps.
Your gray coat reminds me of the wily mane
donned by an old writing professor of mine,
while your tail at a glance
resembles some ancient, exotic root vegetable.
And finally my friend,
if it must be pointed out,
your smell—
your smell is not spectacular.

Flat File Fridays!

various sizes, gouache on paper

I think it was January of 2006. My brother was ice fishing with a mug of Irish whiskey, a little snowman at his feet, courtesy of his soon-to-be-wife, Erika. It was cold and gray out, and the ice on the lake, solid since Thanksgiving, was blanketed in crusty snow.

I had to keep taking my gloves on and off in the course of these two studies, and at some point concluded that getting the face to look like his would take more time than my bared digits could handle. The sky was getting dark fast. I'm pretty sure I had my own coffee mug of whiskey too, poured over two rocks that over the course of an hour never got any smaller.

January of 2006 sounds about right. Anyway, it was cold.

New Feature: Flat File Fridays!

watercolor and gouache on paper, 7.4" x 11.25"

From the dusty vaults...

This was painted in the Adirondacks, sometime around Summer '01, I think.

Frogs apparently make good models. People will pose, but they're always, like, "I have to go check the roast," or "I have to run out at quarter-of," or "Are you done with my nose? Can I move yet?" Frogs don't do none o' that.

After an hour, this handsome fellow still hadn't budged. No complaining about stiff joints or anything of the like. If he had an amphibian picnic to attend that afternoon, he gave indication of no such pressing engagement.

It could just be that he was a jerk, that the other frogs and newts never invited him anywhere. I'm not ruling that out, and as I've always gotten on pretty well with difficult social types I'm not sure I would have noticed. Still, he posed like a champ, and I'm posting this as a tribute to his princely virtues and resilience. I dearly hope he went on to live a long life and father thousands of patient, virtuous children.