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The Bambi Moment

The Henson Legacy

My son recently saw on this blog the collection of puppets I posted a while back and I will never hear the end of it if I don't post the recent additions to the paper bag family. So, while the first post was for out of town family, this one is for you little man.

Various Sesame Street characters including: our original Cookie Monster (once believed MIA and which my son demanded be in the picture), the Amazing Mumford, Rodeo Rosie, Zoe and Little Murray Sparkles.

The remaining three Yo Gabba Gabba characters.
Regis Faller's Polo and Pa Gorg (Fraggle Rock).

More Muppet Show alumni: Gonzo, Animal, Wanda and Janice. I'll be tempted to break down and do Floyd Pepper for myself if I get no requests soon just to have all the Electric Mayhem gang.


Muppet Show monsters: Sweetums, Timmy, Mean Mama, Behemoth and Thog.

There you have it.

Happy Valentine's...

For kicks last year I made Valentine's cards for my son's Pre-K class. He was still big on Sesame Street monsters so I made monsters of my own for everyone (you can see them in a previous post if you click the silliness tag). This year, due in great part becasue of his underwear, he has gotten stuck on superheroes. I knew his teacher took a lot of photos of the kids and so I asked to borrow some to make little hero portrait cards for his class this year. Here's the results:

Breaking in the New Year

After bouncing around some ideas and working on sketches I have a new mini underway. I may post early sketches soon or may keep it entirely under wraps until it's all done. Haven't decided.

I did want to share the great idea going on over at Joel Priddy's blog. He's got a little one on the way and is taking black and white (since that is what is supposed to visually stimulate newborns) contributions for flash cards wall hangings, etc.. Below are my two contributions in a little bit better form than what they appear over there. I sent these to him after the first set didn't go through. They must have showed up later because they're the original images. I didn't have the heart to bug hima again as he is busy with baby concerns and other things more important than updating my images so I'll post them here.

The first image is based on our daughter...

and the second embodies our son in many ways.


Both were kind of a fun departure for me. I recommend contributing if you need a small project for a change of pace.

Testing the old adage

Since I missed posting the entirety of November I'm trying to figure out if absence truly does make the heart grow fonder. While I'm sorting, I'll mention a couple of things.

My boy is as tough as nails. He has been poked, prodded and analyzed at the age of four more than I ever had by the age of 11. New challenges keep coming up and he keeps bouncing back with a deeply good nature intact. Not only do I love him but he has my utmost respect. To celebrate this, here's a piece I did for my wife a few years ago that also never made it to the website.

Since the last post, I've been trying to sort out new working methods for upcoming sequential work. I've been doing what I'm going to bill sequential "fractures". Hopefully, I'll have some worth posting soon.

I love doing portraits. When you know (or feel you know an individual) in some way it can inform a portrait more than any close likeness ever could. That said, portraitists from days when you could be beheaded also have a large place in my respect category. There are so many concerns about representation and how the person you are doing it for will perceive the piece. I did this image as a commission for a friend. I have only met his wife very briefly on one occasion. He gave me a basic framework of what he wanted. I hope they're both happy with the image.

The thrill of the struggle, the agony of naps

I am unsure how many folks reading this have kids. Unless of course the only people that are reading this are the folks that I personally know, in which case I know exactly how many have kids.

Anyway, my daughter just got back from a getaway with her mother and usually when infants and napping toddlers travel they do a little thing we as parents like to call "getting off schedule". Which is the formal way of saying "my kid doesn't think think that they need to go to sleep when they're in dire need of it". A parent's impulse is to shield their little ones from anything that causes them pain but, if taken too far, it rapidly becomes coddling and hinders the child's ability to grow up. My daughter caught on quick to settling herself down to sleep but since getting off schedule over her vacation she has had real issues with it. This is where you have to have a "hard heart" as a parent. Running in and picking your child up out of their crib when they're old enough to comfort themselves is a real no-no. It only delays getting back "on schedule" that much more and spoils your kid in the long run to boot. Consequently, you have to be prepared to listen to many wails of anguish and much gnashing of teeth until your little one settles down. Good times.

The irony of course is that your child will probably reach a point when they really can't often make time for naps but would love to sneak one in... but I digress.

Still hashing out that comic to the best of my ability so images for today include a couple more quickie brush pen sketches-

my daughter from last Halloween...



and my wife.



The third Moreau/hyena image I did.
The next installment of Herry Poops.

And so it begins...

I have a friend that had a period of time while I worked along side of him who would find himself seeing the same number repeatedly when he looked at the time during a particular hour. The number bore some significance to him (I'll not disclose details- that's his story, not mine) and it would get under his skin. I used to think it was pretty funny. However, for some time now I have been doing the exact same thing. Now, self fulfilling or not, seeing 9:11 on the clock several days out of the week can hook you if you allow it especially when given all of the things it brings to mind. I kept wondering if I was receiving some subconscious warning. Knowing that I'll never know, I'm going to use it as a start date for this thing and see if I can't make it a positive deal. Although with my sloth like typing skills combined with a late start and a lot of tinkering, I may miss 9/11 but it's the thought that counts.

Having always considered myself a "friendly acquaintance" with computers I have always been slow to jump on the web for promotional purposes. I really find computers too distracting from making art for me personally. I love them to use for email and viewing other folks' work but that's about the extent of it. As a result, I know little of the latest (or even the greatly dated) "it" things as far as technology goes. I read a 700+ page book (I had forgotten how truly long it was) to scrape the code together for my site and now it stands as an eyesore that hasn't seen an update since November ... of 2005.

Soooooo does this mean nothing has happened since? Absolutely not. For one, my beautiful wife gave birth to our lovely daughter last year adding a second child to the equation. What a little firecracker! Whats that? Did I produce any art in that time? Oh yes my friend. Much. A lot. Have you seen it? Probably not. That's why we're here.As of right now it makes more sense for me to do than to revamp my site. Let's get started.

A rough little sketchbook piece I did a few months back of our daughter. I was using a lot of these colors for pieces that sprung from Wells' Dr. Moreau and I wanted to turn things around and use them for a pretty subject.

One of the Moreau inspired sketchbook pieces. I kept depicting the hyena in the pieces. The most menacing of Moreau's creations. I get told that my pieces are often pretty somber in mood and that may be a reflection of me using art as a way of coping with things that trouble me. That leads us to my most serious piece to date and what could, in fact, be my crowning achievement. The none too subtly titled "Herry Poops".

Any parent knows how serious the whole potty training thing is. There comes a point in which you're practically begging for it to happen if you have a stubborn kid. Our little man is such a child so I wrote and drew this little book in two days starring his favorite character from Sesame Street, Herry (I have no idea why they spell it that way) Monster. The continuing ten page epic in all its hastily rendered Crayola, poorly punctuated glory will make a nice end cap to my next few posts. Stay tuned with baited breath.