My Sunday

On art-

I like to draw.  More than that, I like the idea of being an artist.  Part of me likes to look at pictures of naked ladies, drawing them..sketching them, legitimizes the pubescent fascination.
So...I have been drawing best I can.  Reading instructional books for techniques and inspiration.  I did work on sheets of paper until I came across some folks on the net who shared their sketchbooks. Check it out.  Your Tube 'sketchbook' and look at all the amazing drawings people do in their big and little books.  Some are not so good and those are more inspiring to me as a beginner.  I am free to do whatever I want. Moleskin books seem to be the most popular.  Well, I also like to write.  I always feel guilty writing in my art sketchbooks, the kind with the thick paper.  Dunno why? They are my trucking books.  But I found that they make composition books with half the page blank.  Perfect.  I have half a dozen and I'm on my quest to fill them up as quickly as possible.

Anytime I taught my boys something new, like tennis, I would tell them to 'hit a thousand balls' then we'll start training.  Same applies to drawing.  I need to build up a certain background before I can appreciate any instruction.  The sketchbooks are my way of exploring different kinds of subjects and art supplies.

 Sketch books are also idea books for when you want to do real works.  Artist get an idea and work with it until they make something of it and then they find something else.  Take my idol Van Gogh. He did things like sunflowers, or fields of grain, or chairs until he got it right or got tired of it.

 So anything goes into the book.  And mine is a hybrid because I journal and write stories I make up in them too.  Dean Koontz also said an idea book was a tool all serious writers use.  Create and come back to.  I have filled up a dozen spiral notebooks just on story writing.  On top of all that, I use mine as a scrapbook as well. I'll do you a blog on base ballgames someday.  This pencil drawing is my attempt at making a zombie.

 And this one is my attempt at drawing an Indian.  A Buffalo-Indian, not an elephant-Indian.  I do most of my drawings from pictures.  Mostly on the computer. No...always from the computer.  The best models in the world, they stay really still and I can zoom in and out.

 My absolute favorite thing to draw are faces... portraiture or characititures (sic).  Whatever the correct term is.

I use magazines to draw from.  Here are a few from an issue of National Geographic.

Back to faces

Pardon the tape. The one drawback to these cheap composition books is the paper is really too thin to do too much with.  There is a reason artist use thick paper.

Torrents are a place to get collections of pictures.  These came from a collection of Japanese art.  Don't know what a torrent is? I'll do you a blog on it someday.

And there is no shortage of pictures of ladies with bikinis, or less, on the web.  I see them as my personal models...and they work very, very cheap.

Sometimes I make up characters to go with my fiction.  This is one such character.

Sometimes I start with a picture and let my imagination go wild.  'Skull Crusher', get it?

I discovered sketch books and blogs at the same time.  There are lots of people who are professional, or wanna be professional, who have blogs of their sketches.  I got hooked looking at this one chick's blog.

http://sarahbethgay.blogspot.com/

And Sara's boyfriend
http://thumbsoneill.blogspot.com/

I really like Sara's video scrapbooks.

They use highlighters for some of their work so I decided to try it myself.

I love boobs.  I blame my mother.  She didn't nurse me, said she only liked me as a friend.

A couple of self-portraits.

I just wanted to see if I could put a video into the blog. I need to learn how to edit them before I do any more. These are some of my New Orleans friends. They had two bull terriers. Hyper and aggressive, not like  Mitch at all.

Head and Pinto.  The cheap paper also bleeds through.  I have to watch it.

My favorite band at the moment.  The Avett Brothers.  Look for them on YouTube.  I like Murder in the City, but it's a little sad.  I really like When I Drink.  Listen to it, it has a very positive message, and tells the truth about drinking at the same time.

This is from one of my favorite TV shows, 'Sanctuary'.

This one came from a magazine about girls with tattoos.

This is my tribute to the greatest tattoo artist of all time, Sailor Jerry.  He also makes a very nice spiced rum, it has cherry undertones.  Love, love love Sailor Jerry. I hope to come back and do more of his designs.

Another medium that has caught my attention is using ball point pens.  There are people who do amazing stuff with just a Bic Brio. Not me and not this picture (Charlie Sheen?). But look at some of the stuff on YouTube and be prepared to have your mind blown.