Big Tall Ken's Big Long Blog

Team Cul de Sac Submission

2011-06-15T23:25:00.006-04:00

I love Richard Thompson's artwork and his "Cul de Sac" comic strip and check up on his blog from time to time. Unfortunately he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. His friends have created Team Cul de Sac to raise money for Parkinson's research by asking cartoonists to submit tributes to Cul de Sac, which will be published in a book with proceeds going towards the cause. In addition the original artwork will be auctioned off for more funding.

I had been meaning to send a "thank-you" to Mr. Thompson for the little bit of joy he brings to my day prior to this. Somehow some of my favorite elements of the strip came together in my head and this was the result. I enjoy the strips where Alice inadvertently inspires Petey. In this case her famous mouth fog is lifting Petey's ego to new heights. He usually seems so anxious that I wanted him to experience some elation.

I debated whether or not to add a collar to Petey's neck and played it safe and added one. For some reason the bare neck seemed too gross to hang a manhole cover from. Yet I have no issue with a disembodied head acting like a hot air balloon. Best not to dwell on this.

My take on the dense subdivision. I whited out a few lines with process graphic white. I tried to fit in the Piranesi playground set, and the roof line of the Blisshaven Acadamy.

I loved Mr. Thompson's phantom moon of landfill dirt that appeared in the first Cul de Sac book. That is supposed to be a cow and a barn on a farm.

I thought of adding the parents or some other characters as satellites but felt it would be too distracting and cluttered. Instead I just added an actual satellite and a few little details like a radio tower, telephone pole and some trees.

One of the supporting characters I have a real affinity for is Andre, the massive Sendakian shaped kid who is a friend of Petey and loves sound effects loading into his comics. I briefly taught a cartooning class for kids and had my own Andre named Ben. Every comic Ben drew involved KISS and professional wrestling (apparently his uncle’s influences). They were crudely drawn and pumped out in minutes with lots of noises and facial expressions along the way. Each comic was shown to me as if it was the best piece he had ever done and was thoroughly explained through body language and spittle. I was frustrated as an inexperienced teacher that I couldn't get him to improve his drawings a little, but in hindsight I look back as a lesson to myself. Commit yourself to the drawing, and don't loose the joy in creating it.

Tall Tuesday: I'm Dreaming of a Tall Christmas!

2010-12-21T00:30:00.004-05:00

I don't normally show off my card before it arrives to everyone I sent it to, but since it's tall related, and it's the last Tuesday before Christmas.....Here it is in all its glory!

In this case I was inspired by two Christmas shows: 1) The Snow "Bumble" in the T.V. special, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" who places the star atop the Christmas tree in Santa Claus's home, and 2) the movie, "Elf" with Will Ferrell. "Elf" actually illustrates some of the challenges of being tall such ducking through doors and sleeping in beds that are too small. I love him sitting in Daddy's (Bob Newhart) lap.

I hope everyone tall or small has a festive Christmas season!

About the art:

This was drawn on Bristol board with pencil, ink and watercolor. I used masking fluid applied with a toothpick to mask out the lettering in the tree. Some fine tuning clean up was done in Photoshop. I left the texture of the paper in the scan, which gave an illusion of texture in the printed card.

I should have printed a test sample on glossy paper at home since the printed card came out much darker than I thought it would.

Prior to the final art I worked out some thumbnail sketches and a mockup, both traditional and digital (using ArtRage), to determine where to use ink and where to let the watercolor shapes stand alone.

I printed the card through Zazzle. I'll write more about this in another post.

Mail Theme for Illustration Friday

2010-12-21T00:22:00.006-05:00

I'm not above recycling my images for Illustration Friday. I posted this one last October under "Fast". Below are the other images referenced in that post. That post's website link to the wallpaper is broken now, but feel free to use these three as wallpaper.

The Contagious Yawn Phenomenon

2010-12-14T23:43:00.003-05:00

Yawning. It happens. It's contagious. Why? I don't know, but here are some links to various theories.

Yawning: It Isn't About Oxygen Anymore
Yawn Theory: The Effects of Contagious Yawns on Males and Females (I like the note about Mom helping with the paste ups.)

I remember a funny joke where supposedly a student wrote a science paper explaining how contagious yawning was a way to equalize the air pressure in a room. Unfortunately I can't find it.

About the art:
It was all made in an old version of Adobe Illustrator. I don't prefer to create art directly in Illustrator. It feels a little too mechanical and technical, but the copy and paste and alignment features were exactly what I needed for this concept.

Tall Tuesday: Helping Others With Your Height

2010-12-14T00:11:00.003-05:00

I saw this video from Values.com called "Top Shelf" a few months back where a tall man helps a shorter, senior woman grab an item off the shelf in a grocery store. I've done this many times over the years. Whether it's the holiday season or not try to lend a helping hand where you can, and welcome the good karma feeling you receive in return.

About the art:
I went traditional with ink, watercolor and colored pencil. I used a dental tool to scratch out the jeans to make them a little worn looking. I need to work on applying watercolor to faces. I apply the rosy blushes too late or with too much water making it too blotchy. The jacket came out a little too blue as well, but that's the point of doing these practice pieces.

Tall Tuesday: Vintage vs New Banana Republic

2010-12-08T00:47:00.006-05:00

There was a time when the Banana Republic clothing stores had a mystique about them. If I could only where their clothing, I would instantly be on safari in Africa, shopping the bazaars of Morocco, digging for relics in South America or climbing the mountains of the Far East. It was instant exotic adventure. Tom Cruise's bomber jacket from "Top Gun" and Harrison Ford's vintage clothes from "Indiana Jones" help reinforce this dream in my teenage mind.

Alas it was not to be. Their clothes did not fit a lad of 6'7". T-shirts were too short. Shorts rode up and pants looked like capris. When I was fortunate enough to visit their store in Cleveland, complete with palms and an old army jeep, I could only come away with a khaki roll up hat, which I still wear for yard work today.

Years later Banana Republic offers tall clothes via their website only. I only discovered the fact this year and had a major buying spree thanks to a 40% off on-line coupon. I like some of their current styles. The wool slacks and sweaters are great.

But let's face it the mystique is gone. Shopping on-line has definite advantages, but it pales compared to flipping through their vintage catalogs that looked and read like travel journals. Every item was represented through a man-made illustration with watercolor and colored pencil. Interspersed were lovely spot art illustrations usually dealing with a them from the featured artist. Just check out these covers by H. Craig Hannah (the Expatriate Hall of Fame) and An Ching Chang (On the Road to Mandalay). Fantastic!

I'll try to post more scans from these later once I finish my Christmas card for the year. I also wanted to do a proper illustration for this post.

Tall Tuesday: Savoring Whistler's Art

2010-11-30T22:51:00.009-05:00

ML and I visited the University of Michigan's Art Museum to view prints by James Abbott McNeill Whistler. It was a fantastic collection that was well organized by time period and themes. I was fascinated how he balanced lights and darks, details and emptiness to create wonderful atmosphere. I also enjoyed learning more about lithography. It explained how Whistler pushed the boundaries of lithography to create almost watercolor effects with subtle tonal gradations and tried to bring respect to medium considered low brow and used only for advertising and mass media.

The collection was also very large, which by the end left us a little wore out. Although I exaggerate a little in my sketch I had to perform the hip thrust and shallow bends in my knees and back to get a good look at the pieces. One minor disadvantage to being very tall. I suppose it wouldn't be much easier being very short or in a wheelchair craning to look up at the art either.

Hanging art at home creates a challenge as to how high to hang it to where I can look at it easily and others, too. When I lived in an apartment I didn't think about it and hung everything near my eye level. Sometimes someone would comment, "Why is all your artwork hung so high?" Cretins! (I use that term lovingly.)

About the art:
I used Koh-I-Noor woodless graphite pencils that I received as a gift recently. I really like them. They have a nice weight and allow me to use the full width of the tapered lead without feeling like the tip is going to break off. It felt nice to use a pencil to lay down some tones. It's been a while since I've used them. A white pencil was used for the few highlights.

Tall Tuesday: Big Bird

2010-11-23T23:46:00.003-05:00

With Thanksgiving this week I thought I would pay homage to another tall childhood television friend, Sesame Street's Big Bird. From what I can find on the trusty Internet Big Bird's height is 8'2" tall. I was also fond of his friend, Mr. Snffleupagus, who for the longest time was only seen by Big Bird.

Have a happy Thanksgiving! If you don't celebrate it, give thanks for what you have and who you have in your life anyway.

Peace.

Tall Tuesday: Tall Teeth

2010-11-16T00:05:00.008-05:00

I had the pleasure to visit yet another endodontist recently and thought it appropriate to talk about teeth.

My teeth are very large. I learned this back when I was around twelve, sitting in the chair at my orthodontist's with about six of his peers staring into my mouth. It was a very uncomfortable experience. Apparantly my case was challenging in that my teeth were too large for my mouth. He needed to make room for my wisdom teeth to come in, or else I would have a toothy traffic jam down the road. This did wonders for my young ego.

My oral ego did get a little boost a couple of years ago when during a root canal, the endodontist discovered I had five roots in my wisdom tooth rather than a more typical three or four. I thought she should frame the X-ray for bragging rights with her peers.

Before Mr. T showed up in Rocky III and the A-Team there was another colorful Mr. T, who was also a member of an alphabetic team, "The Letter People", a show I watched in grade school. For some reason Mr. T with his tall teeth and Texan accent stuck with me all these years. Looking back on this show via YouTube it seems a bit Tedious and Tiresome but it does have some Terrifically Trippy puppets and letter songs. Mr. H, N and S are particularly fun.

My PSA to you - Take care of your own tall teeth. Brush and floss regularly, and stay away from sugar filled drinks!

Check out this experiment soaking teeth in various sweet drinks for 14 days. Yuck!

"Parents and kids need to understand the mechanics of how cavities occur, and how what they do can make them worse," said Messina, who has a dental office in Cleveland. "And one of the worst things we can do is take a very sugary, acidic drink and sip it all day."

Tall Tuesday: Cap and Trade

2010-11-09T00:54:00.004-05:00

I was listening to this episode of Living On Earth the other day, regarding the recent Republican sweep in the elections and the impact on climate change legislation and heard this sound bite from the Federal Senator-elect from Wisconsin, Ron Johnson:

“No, I absolutely do not believe the science of man-caused climate change is proven, not by any stretch of the imagination. I think it's far more likely that it's just sunspot activity or something in geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate.”

I would like to stretch Mr. Johnson's imagination with the following letter.

Dear Senator-elect Johnson from Wisconsin,

I have an alternative "cap and trade" proposal to help reduce global warming that will be a much less costly alternative to the one currently being proposed in Congress. It is a known fact that 20-30% of heat loss is through the human head. I can confirm this through personal experience. I am 6’7”, and when I am in a crowded room it is hot! Scientists say that the global warming trend started accelerating after the 1960’s. Suspiciously this also happens to be when hats went into serious decline in popularity.

Therefore I say, “A cap on every head! The broader the better!” Just look at the facts:

1) Global warming directly due to humans will decrease by 20-30%
2) The sagging U.S. milliner industry will increase exponentially, creating more jobs.
3) The extra shade provided by the broad brims will help decrease temperatures.
4) Hats with lighter colors or reflective materials will reflect back the sun’s rays.
5) America will look more dapper, feel better about themselves and bring back pride in the U.S.A.!

Now for the second part of my proposal it’s a known fact that people 6’3” and above are tall! I can confirm this with a tape measure. Because we are taller with more surface area and are closer to the sky we inadvertently contribute to global warming more than our shorter brothers and sisters. And talls living in the northern climates are unfortunately incrementally increasing the rate of melting of the glaciers and Arctic sea ice.

Thus I propose providing government incentives for talls in the northern states trading places with those of shorter stature in the southern states. The migration of talls to the south will reduce the heat stress on the more sensitive northern climate. Our extra size coupled with broad brimmed hats will provide even more shade to the southern climates and will actually reduce temperatures there. It’s a win-win for the environment!

“Trade your smalls for talls!” Well, that might not be the best slogan, but I’m sure your campaign managers will come up with something.

Until then lets hope the Earth’s core gets back to normal and those darn sunspots go away!

Peace on Earth. Goodwill towards man.

Sincerely,
Ken Eaton

About the art:
I spent more time writing than illustrating this one. Drawn with Hunt quill pen, ink and watercolor on cheap watercolor paper.

Tall Tuesday: Rick Fox and Cheryl Burke Are Eliminated

2010-11-02T22:52:00.003-04:00

Tonight Rick Fox and Cheryl Burke were voted off of Dancing With The Stars. Although Cheryl is a fantastic dancer and choreographer and wore special 4" heels, I think the height difference between hurt them. If she had the legs to match his stride, especially with their foxtrot last night, I think he might of gone farther. Despite being called the Jolly Green Giant for the flashy green of the zoot suit, I liked the long jacket.

What Rick did prove is that a 6'7" man can look graceful on the dance floor. This makes up for a lack luster performance from Clyde Drexler from the 2007 season. See my earlier post about that.

Here are a few stories about Rick and Cheryl.
http://www.tvguide.com/News/Dancings-Cheryl-Burke-1023146.aspx
http://www.accesshollywood.com/rick-fox-and-cheryl-burke-talk-dancing-the-pressures-definitely-on_article_38766

About the art:
I'm working on a larger format watercolor of the pair, but for now you'll have to settle for the preliminary sketches. Although Rick is a handsome man he has got over the top expression with his HUGE smiles and dancing eyebrows. Hopefully I can capture their likenesses and pizazz.

Illustration Friday: Spent

2010-11-01T23:18:00.005-04:00

In January 2009 I promised to post the dark half of my 2005 Christmas card within a week. Phooey on you for not holding me up to the promise! Take a trip in time to read about the card here.

Dark and light. Thgil dna krad. A little "Twin Peaks" humor for you. I remember being completely captivated in the first season and mostly lost and confused in the second. I just watched "Fire Walk With Me", a sort of prequel to the series and wish I hadn't. Other than Chris Isaak and the music it didn't have any of the mystery of series.

Tall Tuesday: Nutrition and Height

2010-10-26T23:26:00.003-04:00

NPR gave me a freebie topic for this week. They had a Morning Edition story on Monday, Measuring A Country's Health By Its Height by Nancy Shute. It was essentially a rehash of what was written in "The Tall Book" about the U.S. losing it's status as having the tallest people in the world. The Dutch are now the leaders over the U.S. by about 2 inches on average. I posted about this earlier here.

The story leading into it dealt with trying to get kids to eat healthier, which in turn should improve their chances of reaching the maximum height potential rather than waistline potential.

About the art:
The Illustration Friday topic this week is racing. Below is the sketch done in pencil and colored in Photoshop. Above is the final done with a steel nib pen, ink and watercolor. My thought was that "real" food, fruits, vegetables, nuts, etc. are in it for the long haul giving you benefits over a long period of time. Fast food, candy, cookies, pizza, pop, chips, and such give you short term energy with a big health price tag, but like a NASCAR they get all the marketing dollars from corporations. In the above drawing the car didn't quite make it.

Tall Tuesday: Spooky Tricks for the Tall

2010-10-19T23:24:00.005-04:00

Years ago I helped a good friend of mine with a haunted house held in the dressing rooms and halls of the old amphitheater in the Toledo Zoo. I was in the last room before the exit that had lots of old pipes and man-made fog. With my height, and dim lighting many people thought I was a prop. Adults and older kids were the most fun to scare. I took it easy with little ones. What are parents thinking taking 5 and 6 year olds to a haunted house?! I was hoarse with leg cramps by the end of the night but had a great time!

I suppose you don't have to be super tall for something like this and try to use a crate to stand on, but don't blame me if you fall!

For other tall costume ideas check out this post at The Tall Blog.

About the art:
Created in ArtRage. Here is a lunchtime sketch leading up to it.

Tall Tuesday: The Tallest Man on Earth

2010-10-12T20:43:00.005-04:00

No, I'm not talking about Leonid Stadnyk, Ajas Ahmed or Sultan Kösen. I'm talking about 5'6" Kristian Matsson, a folk singer from Sweden, who named himself, "The Tallest Man on Earth." I found him while looking up a story on NPR. You can listen to him on NPR here.

About the art:

Being behind at work and still working on an illustration job left even less time this week for a proper illustration. He is supposed to be standing on a musical notation. Not sure what the double one is with the bridge. I wiped out the extraneous junk around him in GIMP. Sometime I'll get back to making something decent to post!

Tall Tuesday: Giant Prehistoric Penguins

2010-10-05T23:43:00.005-04:00

This article jumped out at me in the Yahoo! news headlines about giant prehistoric penguins. They were 5 feet tall, standing taller than the emperor penguins of today. It also goes into scientific detail about how they determined they had reddish-brown coloring rather than the classic black and white penguins of today. Here is my less scientific reason.

About the art:
It was created in ArtRage Studio Pro. I'm in the middle of another job and didn't put much time into it as I would have liked.

Back when I was trying to syndicate my "Arctic Circle" comic strip in 1999 and again in 2001 I had a penguin, who had strayed from the south pole, in it. Not to be confused with the Arctic Circle comic strip by Alex Hallatt, which was syndicated in 2005 and also has stray penguins in the Arctic. I tried submitting again in 2003, dropping the penguin to no avail. I enjoyed drawing the strips but struggled to come up with something remotely humorous to fill them.

Interesting side note, Hallatt's strip was originally named "Polar Circle" until someone at King Features thought of calling it "Arctic Circle". Coincidence?

Here is a strip from the 2001 submission.

For Illustration Friday posting of "beneath" - this gives a good sampling of sea life beneath the (rapidly melting) arctic ice.

Tall Tuesday: Copilot

2010-09-28T00:01:00.006-04:00

During our recent well deserved and relaxing vacation, ML and I had to travel in a Cessna 402 a few times. Passing up the opportunity to sit in the copilot seat the first time I decided to try it the second time when there were fewer passengers. You can see here where my typical seat was, having the most leg and (just barely)head room. My hair was actually rubbing the roof liner.

ML said I entertained the other passengers as I packed myself into the copilot seat. I can't figure out why!

Once I was seated I questioned the pilot several time if I was a hindrance to him as there was one knob behind my left knee he had to work. He swore I was fine, that bigger people than me had sat there. I find it hard to believe.

It was fun to sit up there with the controls in front of me and have a pilot view of the 20 minute trip. That being said I made sure my knees were pressed into the side of the plane on my right and the side of the control panel on my left. The copilot controller follows the pilot's actions, meaning my controller would move in and out and rotate in front of me. I in no way felt experienced enough to control the plane with my knees!

About the art:
These are spontaneous brush and ink drawings colored in Photoshop. There were a couple warm up images seen here.

Tall Tuesday: Break Time

2010-09-08T00:00:00.003-04:00

It's time to take a break for a week or two. In the meantime check out the other tall blogs in my links column. Also, here is a temporarily permanent new logo. I've had a sketch for a while and finally decided to try it out.

Tall Tuesday: Donate your tall clothes

2010-08-31T23:50:00.002-04:00

It is difficult enough finding clothes to buy when you are above average height. Imagine being down on your luck and not being able to afford them and being forced to where pants that don't reach your ankles or coats that don't reach your waist or wrists.

ML helped purge my closet the other day, which left me with a pile of clothes for donation. Rather than drop them off a Salvation Army to be sold I called around and found another charity that has a big and tall section in there thrift shops. It's Grace Centers of Hope.

About the art:
This was a relatively quick sketch done with the marker tool in ArtRage.

The composition and character looked "immovable" and thought it would fit in with Illustration Friday this week.

Tall Tuesday: Ambush

2010-08-24T23:49:00.005-04:00

It didn't go down quite as shown, but I was caught a little off guard. While waiting in the checkout line at the produce store a petite woman behind me bluntly asked me how tall I was, which woke me from my checkout stupor. "When did you stop growing? My son is blah, blah, blah, and I need to know what to expect." I did not expect this as a follow up question. Although she asked it in a tone of slight dread, I could sense inside her head she's thinking, "Yes! My son is TALL!!!" After I answered her I received an intense education on the tall members of her family, her grandfather's WWII thigh splice in France and her son's courting by coaches of various sports. How often does this type of thing happen to you?

About the art:
I should have made my shirt yellow or gold to break up all the green.

Tall Tuesday: Dancin' with myself

2010-08-16T22:21:00.003-04:00

Growing up as the tallest in my school made me very self conscience about certain activities. School dances was one of them. I would think, "Do not bring unwanted attention to yourself and screw up any potential chances with the few girls who might be interested in you or give an opportunity for ridicule." It wasn't until I went on a school trip to Washington D.C. that I threw caution to the wind and shook a leg at the dance with two other schools that were in the program. There was no stopping me after that! Or as Adam Ant sang in "Prince Charming" - "Ridicule is nothing to be scared of!"

One problem with dancing with someone that you are nineteen inches taller than is that you appear to be dancing alone in a group. It's also awkward when the other person can't reach your shoulders during a slow dance.

ML and I had an opportunity to cut a rug at a wedding this weekend and could show off the results of dance class lessons. We learned enough to go from the basic step-around-in-a-small-circle dance to a crude box step. Dancing with the Stars watch out!

P.S. And there is just something about helping a woman unzip a black dress!

Tall Tuesday: More Work

2010-08-10T23:10:00.003-04:00

Being tall means more work than the average person. No, I'm not referring to job work, house work or yard work. I'm referring to the definition from physics.

Work = Force x Distance

For example, a man of average height 5'9.5" lifts a 10 pound weight to his shoulder, let's assume about 5' from the ground, and I lift a 10 pound weight to my shoulder, let's assume about 5'10" from the ground. I have to move that same weight 10" more to get it to the same relative position to my body. Therefore I generate more work.

Take from this what you will. I just know I did too much landscaping work this weekend and am sore!

Here is a fun little Java applet to give you an understanding of the physics of work.

Tall Tuesday: ATM's

2010-08-03T23:45:00.003-04:00

This is me at the mall yesterday using the walk up ATM set up for wheelchair accessibility. If I stand at a "normal" distance I can only see the bottom quarter of the screen, so it takes a little effort to get in a position to be able to read the screen and try to maintain some privacy at the keypad and with any hope, some dignity.

About the art:
I used ArtRage3 Studio Pro for this one from start to finish. I used the paint brush set to about 6% loading for an approximate dry brush effect. The color is on a separate layer. I also tried to add a little bit of a scene in this one.

Tall Tuesday: There was a crooked man

2010-07-27T00:01:00.001-04:00

What is this man doing?
a) the latest pilates moves
b) contemporary dance
c) having a Quaker epiphany
d) using an airplane toilet

Yes, the correct answer is (d). Being a 6'7" male makes using most airplane bathrooms a feat of contorsionism and balance, especially if turbulence is involved, so as to not create a mess of things. To add yet another element of difficulty is to prop a seat that will not stay up.

Sitting on one can be no joy either. For those with long legs that touch the door you have to decide whether to splay or hold the knees together and twisting to the side.

Darcy Villere (6'7") has a photo on his Facebook page that he took hunched over looking into an airplane bathroom mirror. I originally found it on his blog, The Tall Blog. He is dressed and it is safe for viewing.

About the art:
Below is the watercolor quick sketch thinking it would be more abstract and arty.

Next came this one made in ArtRage3 Studio Pro with its watercolor tool. A bit more exaggerated but too much shading to give it mass and still not very funny.

Finally I digitally inked over the watercolor in ArtRage3 to create a pure silhouette, which I think is a bit more comic.

Tall Tuesday: Airplane Seats

2010-07-20T23:57:00.001-04:00

I was just able to fit this in before Tuesday is over! I had to finish an illustration job first.

Airplane seats are the bane of the extra tall everywhere. I had to fly for work recently and was able to enjoy one again. This sketch is from a couple years ago when I had to fly to Spain for an assembly line run off. It's pretty self explanatory.

About the art:

This is a scan from my one time experiment with a Moleskine sketchbook. They are attractive and solid, but I didn't care for the cream color paper and thought the texture was too smooth. It also took me time to use it feeling it was too precious to mess up a page. I don't sketch much from life due to time and lack of inspiration, but the facing page has some Montserrat.

Tall Tuesday: Idi Amin

2010-07-13T00:01:00.003-04:00

On the opposite end of the political spectrum from Peter Garrett was Idi Amin, the military dictator and President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Based on this webpage he was between 6'3" and 6'4". The man was ruthless and brutal and responsible for untold thousands of deaths.

Forest Whitaker (6'2") did an amazing job portraying this man in "The Last King of Scotland."

I did a little research on him afterwards and noticed Amin's fixation with medals. I think I was trying to show how he cut the hand off of the puppeteer that thought he could control him in running Uganda. Tragically wrong.

Tall Tuesday: Peter Garrett

2010-07-02T12:42:00.009-04:00

The 6'6" Peter Garrett is former lead singer of Midnight Oil and now Minister for Environment Protection, Heritage and the Arts in Australia. He is probably best known in the States from the "Beds Are Burning" music video back in the mid 1980's. With his bald head, rugged features and spasmodic dancing, he makes for a memorable figure. I still have VCR recording of "Blackfella Whitefella" documentary that featured some great songs and showed how active the band was politically. They were big on environmental and Aboriginal issues. All these years later he's an elected member of Australia's Labor Party and appears to be having mixed results of trying to change the system from within rather than shouting from without. Not an easy thing to do, but I give him credit for trying and wish him well.

Although his voice, both singing and speaking, is probably what's got him to where he is today, if you think his height had nothing to do with his political influence, take a look at this!

Learn more about him at Wikipedia and his own website.

About the art:
For some reason I felt a compulsion to sketch Peter Garrett and try to capture the power of his voice and physical energy of his unique "dancing". I don't remember using a reference photo. I think it was my mental impression of him: bald head, large frame, flailing limbs and screaming mouth. I added the orange overlay in Photoshop to capture the heat of the Australian desert and the passion in his voice.

On a side note ...
While browsing the Illustration Friday postings I discovered the work of Ann Raff and this fun watercolor she made. Revel in the tall trees with the birds!

Tall Tuesday: Weather Revisited

2010-06-29T23:39:00.009-04:00

I posted before about "How's the weather up there?" question to tall people. Well here is another illustration related to it - tall people replacing weather satellites. This was really an excuse to post for Illustration Friday as well. In another post I included this sketch where you can see my weather satellite complete with groundhog and trick knee. I simplified it here to go with the style of this illustration. We should be careful with satellites. We don't want angry ones falling from the sky.

About the art:

This is actually the third version of this. I started a more elaborate one that was too busy. Then went straight to inking without the aid of a pencil line a second, smaller version of my original sketch. I flubbed some parts. So I laid in a couple light pencil lines based on it to create this final version. I also scan the inking before applying the watercolor in case I bomb it. Then I can color the backup on the computer. The original is about 4"x4".

Tall Tuesday: Yao Ming's Offspring

2010-06-22T23:46:00.006-04:00

Back in January 5, 2010 it was announced via a Yahoo! news headline that Yao Ming, the 7'6" center for the Houston Rockets basketball team, and his wife, Ye Li, a 6'2" basketball player in China, were expecting a baby. It's been six months now. In that time there have been earthquakes, volcano eruptions, tornadoes and a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. With the global economy still in a weakened state will the Earth be able to withstand the looming threat posed by the Mings' "creepy tall" offspring, which is a mere three months away? My heart trembles at the thought! Tall people must not be allowed to breed together as the consequences are much too dire! We can only hope their child's towering height will be used for the side of good!

About the art:

This one pretty much drew itself as soon as I read the article. "Creepy tall." How nice. The article shows the fascination/fear combination still projected onto the very tall. A giant baby terrorizing the city was the immediate concept. If I would have taken the time to do more research I would have tried to make the baby look more like something from an old Chinese ink drawing. I did like the basketball hoop and post being used as a weapon and the basketballs being lobbed at him, both of which popped into my head as I was pencilling in the rough. I used a brush, W&N black ink and what I think is Quinacridone burnt orange watercolor.

Tall Tuesday: America, Home of Basketball

2010-06-15T00:01:00.003-04:00

1 2 3 4

"Give us your tall, your strong, your quick and agile, your basketball stars."

America gave birth to basketball and like it or not is the global magnet for some of the best players in the world. Just look at the NBA team rosters and you find players from several European countries and some African. Thanks to Yao Ming even China is represented.

Here are two other examples of new young international recruits searching for brighter future through basketball. In another post I mentioned, Marvadene "Bubbles" Anderson, at 6'10" the tallest 16 year old in the world, coming to America from Jamaica to play basketball. In another recent article two brothers coming from Canada via India, Sim (age 17) and Tanveer Bhullar (age 15), 7'4" and 7'2", respectively, to search out U.S. high schools. Perhaps one day they will make it as the "Twin Towers of India"!

About the art:
I had another idea for some Hindu gods playing basketball, but ran out of time and thought the Statue of Liberty was a little more universal for welcoming people to America. Image (1) is the original drawing done in ink with black Conte crayon shading. Image (2) was colored in ArtRage Studio Pro using the watercolor brush on a layer in "multiply" blend mode. In image (3) I added another layer in "multiply" blend mode with color applied with the paint roller and used the palette knife tool to soften it. I thought this might add more drama like a sunset, but it still didn't seem right.

I could have tried fussing with the watercolor tool more to make it look softer and blended, but then I found David Gothard's site and drooled over his ink and watercolor work. And the ideas behind his illustrations! It's almost enough to make me give up. But no! One must press on if one is to find one's inner voice. So I went back to the original art and added watercolor to it. The Conte crayon did smear a little where it was darker but still provided a nice texture.

Tall Tuesday: A Giraffe Quartet

2010-06-08T23:18:00.005-04:00

I completed my illustration job yesterday, so here to help me celebrate is a giraffe quartet. This is an old scan of a drawing I did for my niece's birthday a couple years ago. It seemed like a reasonably sized scan at the time with a 600x800 monitor resolution. Back then I was into hand lettering after being inspired by Edward Gorey's work.

Tall Tuesday: I'll Bet You Play Basketball!

2010-06-01T22:44:00.006-04:00

"I'll bet you play basketball!", you say? "Do you play basketball?", you ask? This is the number one question I receive from people. It's a very innocent question and makes sense when NBA point guards are 6'6". I did play basketball, but gave it up a couple years ago. There are other sports tall people play as well. Venus Williams is 6' tall. So don't be offended if you are asked, "Do you play miniature golf?" in return.

About the art:

I didn't have much time this week since I am actual working on a paying job. So I thought, "Oh, I'll just toss off a drawing like Robert Weber does for New Yorker cartoons." Wrong! Although the drawing did not take long, it lacks the looseness and spontaneity of his work. I used an old General's charcoal pencil, but I think was trying to force it to look like an inked line. How cocky was I to think I could master someone else's style in one take? See more of his work in the New Yorker Cartoon Bank.

Tall Tuesday: Taylor Swift

2010-05-25T00:01:00.004-04:00

Who is that taking an early lead in her career over such established country artists like The Dixie Chicks, Faith Hill and Carrie Underwood? Why it's Taylor Swift of course! It doesn't hurt that her 5'11" height and long legs gives her some advantage (in more ways than one). I can't say much about her music since I'm not into the pop country style, but I'm sure my niece can fill me in on how good it is. She was charming and funny on Saturday Night Live and in the movie, "Valentine's Day." Time will tell if she has the endurance to maintain her star power.

About the art:
I checked out a book called "Live & Learn: Expressive Drawing: A Practical Guide to Freeing the Artist Within" by Steven Aimone from the library. Seeing some of the freestyle charcoal and brush strokes made me want to cut loose a little with my inking. I had some of that feeling inking Paganini. Once I got past the tricky violin in was fun using broad strokes to fill in his hair and clothing.

In this case I drew a very light, loose pencil sketch, which I purposely left showing in the final. You can just make out a few lines. I used a natural hair Utrecht #4 brush. The brush tip is a bit longer than the Nylon brushes I normally use with a few hairs making a very flexible tip. It's a little more difficult to control and dries out a little faster, but I wanted that looser look and was able to achieve some dry brush textures more easily. It reminds me just how far computers have to go before they can replicate such inking work.

I tried not to overdo the color in Photoshop, which is where I still struggle the most.

P.S. Look for upcoming posts on Neko Case and Janelle Monae, two unique singers of the music world.

Tall Tuesday: Tall & Misshapen

2010-05-18T00:01:00.001-04:00

It's a busy week at work, so I resurrected a sketch from 2002 and patched in some color in Photoshop. A little low brow tall humor for you.

Illustration Friday: Equipment

2010-05-16T23:40:00.002-04:00

When you're a few million miles away on Mars you want to have the right equipment, in this case, a Hayden drill bit. I created this illustration a few years ago for a local drill bit company. When they ship their drills they would include stickers in the packaging. They hired me to create one with a light touch to promote the fact that one of their products was used on a Mars rover, which I thought was pretty cool. The requirements were to keep the colors under four plus black and the white of the paper for the sticker and try to include Marvin Martian from Bugs Bunny cartoons. I did not feel comfortable ripping off Warner Brothers, so I made my Martian an homage instead. It was a challenge to anthropomorphize the Mars rover. In the end they were happy with it.

Tall Tuesday: Ode to Lux Interior of The Cramps

2010-05-11T23:50:00.015-04:00

This is my ode to Lux Interior (1946-2009), lead singer for The Cramps. I have enjoyed listening to The Cramps ever since I heard their version of "Green Door" back in high school on Akron's WAPS. While listening to their song, "Mad Daddy" the other day the lyric, "Six foot three with my feet on the floor, Hey, baby, whatcha waitin' for!?" I realized he must be referring to himself! I verified it by reading the back cover of "The Cramps: A Short History of Rock 'n' Roll Psychosis" on Amazon, which said he was 6'4".

May Lux's wife and lead guitarist, Poison Ivy Rorschach, continue to find happiness after 37 years of marriage. It is absolutely amazing that this couple met with a shared vision of music and performed together night in and night out for over 3o years, giving the audience 200% every time they did. I had the opportunity to see them in concert at St. Andrew's Hall for their Flamejob tour, and it was a blast! If everyone could put as much passion and love into what they do as they did, the world would be a better place. Rock on.

About the art:
I went through several sketches of Lux in various poses trying to capture his energy and stage presence after watching several videos on YouTube. I thought I would ink a few, compile them in Photoshop and be done with it, but then I sketched her face and mass of curls. How could I leave out Poison Ivy? The Cramps would not exist if either either was missing. On stage she hardly moves while he is everywhere, limbs flailing, torso twisting, writhing and sweating in pure animal frenzy.

I doodled another few thumbnails trying to figure out a composition. Then I looked at a sketch where I had him bent into a "S" shape and then at the band name; BAM! The final was drawn and inked on Strathmore 100lb Bristol vellum using a #3 Nylon brush. The coloring was done in Photoshop using gradients in dissolve mode.

Tall Tuesday: Look to the Shins

2010-05-04T23:18:00.003-04:00

Occasionally this question comes ups among friends when discussing clothes, "Where do you carry your height?" What I learned from "The Tall Book" is that taller people usually have longer shins. Long legs are a sign of good health. In poorer countries where nutrition is not as good people generally have shorter legs and longer torsos. Looking back on my business trips to Mexico I would say this is generally true. Here is a brief Korean study on height relative to leg length and arm span.

The book's author, Arianne Cohen, writes that her shins are quite a bit longer than average. She should feel proud as this study found that a high leg length to height ratio is found to be more attractive.

About the art:

I had made this sketch in 2002 where I must of been thinking of trying to do tall gag humor, which went nowhere. I'm better at making humorous art than writing humor.

I stuck with the same concept and redrew it on a cheap sketch pad and added watercolor. I won't do that again as the paper warped and the watercolor soaked in erratically. But it was good practice. I think it's missing a little texture.

Tall Tuesday: Paganini

2010-04-27T23:42:00.012-04:00

I've been listening to a great audio lecture course on the concerto put out by The Teaching Company and taught by the exuberant, entertaining and educational, Professor Robert Greenberg. If you can find any of his audio courses at your library, I highly recommend them! In the lead off lesson about the Romantic era of the concerto, Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) was the violinist and composer who set off the trend of the instrumentalist virtuoso as hero. When Greenberg quoted a description of him so vivid and colorful I had to draw him! Dressed in black, skeletal features, long black hair with a playing style so extraordinary that people believed he had sold his sole to the devil - too juicy! One of his gimmicks was to play a piece on a single G-string after breaking the other three strings and playing in the highest register of the violin. In my illustration I left the E-string being held by his little finger. It seemed a bit more dramatic to me, but I'm not a musician.

While researching Paganini it is thought he had Marfan Syndrome, which could explain his ultra-flexible fingers and gaunt appearance. Abe Lincoln suffered from this as well. It is a genetic disorder and generally seems to affect tall people as explained in "The Tall Book". So I am going out on a limb that Paganini was several inches taller than average for his time. If I'm wrong, what of it? He stands tall as a pivotal musical figure!

There are several performances of Paganini's music on YouTube. To get an idea of how dexterous these players are turn off the sound and just watch the violinist's fingers and be amazed!

This is available as a poster in my Zazzle store.

About the art:

It sounded like Paganini also had a way with women, contracting syphilis as a result. The treatment of which rotted his jawbone and added to his spectral features. The description in the lecture also mentioned deep blue tinted spectacles, which I wanted to add but decided it was too distracting from the violin. I wanted to capture the sensuous aspect of the violin and the violinist's fingers in action.

The most difficult part was drawing the violin in deep perspective and the fingers. In addition to the notes below I also found a 3D violin in Google that helped, and posed in a mirror playing a T-square instead of a violin. The arch of the devil-woman's back in place of the scroll throws off the balance of the violin, making it droopy looking, but I stuck with it anyway. There are even more sketches than these. Enjoy!

Tall Tuesday: Dad

2010-04-20T23:46:00.009-04:00

"Being 6'7", do you have tall parents?" you ask (as others have). Yes, I do. My dad was 6'5" and my mom is 5'10". So in this Tall Tuesday, I honor my dad.

I'll decipher some of the imagery for you. He worked in the accounting field but also had a creative side. He loved working in the yard and garden. Setting up flower beds, creating a fish pond and waterfall and sculpting bulky juniper bushes into shapely bonsai were just a few of his feats. When gardening he used to where some old college sweatshirt that was worn ragged and faded into some nondescript shade of mauve. A cup of iced tea was always handy in a green plastic cup. His old army boots had lost all their tread and were stained from years of treading wet grass. Behind him is a reproduction of Picasso's "Woman Dressing Her Hair" that he painted in high school and now hangs in my basement. He also had a large collection of jazz records from the 60's that were kept in pristine condition: Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderly, Dave Brubeck and many others.

Dad loved tracking the stock market. "The Wall Street Journal" and "U.S. News and World Report" were standard reading material. As a kid I used to love playing with his electronic calculator with it's futuristic blue lit text. He had a favorite watch that was worn at all times and made a very distinct sound when shaken. Last is a box of computer print outs he brought home that was my drawing paper for years and years growing up.

My sister reminded me of his love of sailing and windsurfing, but it was too late to fit into the composition.

I'll follow up about the art later. For now here are two detail views.

Tall Tuesday: Standard Door Heights

2010-04-13T12:01:00.003-04:00

Being 6'7" I've learned the hard way that there is a difference between standard door heights in the U.S. and Europe. When I stand straight under a standard door in the U.S. my hair just brushes the top of the door jamb, which is 80" high. Years ago I periodically travelled to the U.K. and Germany for work and found myself ducking under typical interior doorways. I have since learned the standard door height over there is 78". One time as I was exiting a bathroom stall I forgot to fully duck under the steel door frame and scalped the top of my head, drawing a little blood, which was both embarrassing and painful!

Many old (over 200 years) European doors are significantly shorter than 78". I can only imagine how many people bumped there heads as the population's average height increased.

About the art:

I created this using Inkscape and tried to emulate those old two color technical graphics from the 50's and 60's. I found Inkscape to be very clunky to use compared to Illustrator for this. Some of this is due to having much more training in Illustrator. I do like the calligraphy tool better in Inkscape, which I used to draw the figure.

I was trying to make another illustration involving the bathroom stall in the same manner but ran out of time trying to figure out the best combination of Inkscape, Illustrator and Photoshop to use. In the future I'll stick to drawing with real ink and converting to vector art. Drawing straight into vector format just doesn't come as natural to me.

ArtRage 3 Watercolor: Strutting Broccoli

2010-04-06T22:55:00.006-04:00

I did this sketch at lunch using the marker and watercolor tools in ArtRage3 Studio Pro. It took some experimenting but I was able to pull off a somewhat natural watercolor look with it. It helps to have worked with real watercolor to have some idea of how colors can run together if you want to replicate watercolor's unique attributes. One trick is to squiggle the stylus and "skip" off the tablet with little randomness to make it appear that the color is "running" or make it look like a real brush was skipping across real paper. It's a little difficult to lay colors on top of others in the wet mode. I was constantly adjusting the amount of thinning to either add color on top of the existing or smudge it out. By lightly tapping the tip of the stylus I could create a light spatter effect. It's also difficult to create a sweeping wash with a brush over 100% in size as the computer really bogs down. It also helps to mix in some complementary colors for variety. I created this at 300 dpi and it printed out quite well.

Tall Tuesday: U.S. Underperforms in Height

2010-04-05T23:58:00.011-04:00

I found the original report that Arianne Cohen references in her book about the U.S.'s decline in average height. You can download a PDF of the full report with the statistical data and graphs here. The report is by John Komlos and is titled, "Underperformance in affluence: the remarkable relative decline in American heights in the second half of the 20th-century."

The U.S. ranks 7th in terms of the average male height behind such countries as the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, West Germany, Sweden, Finland, Belgium (all unfairly represented as a viking) and Canada. Komlos' report only shows data on the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and West Germany. Up until the early 20th century the U.S. was on top of the world in terms of height, but then, despite our superpower status and wealth, we've slowly dropped in height and gained in girth. To quote from the report's abstract as to one reason why this may have occurred:

"Conclusion: We conjecture that the American health-care system, as well as the relatively weak welfare safety net might be the reason why human growth in the United States has not performed as well in relative terms as one would expect on the basis of income. The comparative pattern bears some similarly to that of life expectancy insofar as the US is also lagging behind in that respect."

All of the countries taller than the U.S. have some form of universal health care. Having travelled to Europe they generally eat smaller portions and walk much more than Americans due to the layouts of their towns and cities. So for all those opposed to the new health care reform, think of it as trying to grow Americans to their full potential!

About the art:
It was all done in ArtRage3 Studio Pro. I was going to do a line up of an American Bald Eagle, a crowned lion to represent several of the Scandinavian countries and a black eagle for Germany but opted for the viking and Uncle Sam instead. I'm continuing to experiment with coloring. The color was added with the pastel tool over a diagonal hatched paper texture. The inking was done with the marker tool set at 96% pressure, 75% softness and 15% wetness.

Once again I've updated the art. I thought the pastel with the ink looked to blah. So I added a layer underneath the pastel and added more color with the marker tool. Here is a detail of the result.

When looking for Uncle Sam references I came across this image.

It was created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1917 during World War I. It wouldn't be a bad idea to bring these kind of posters and ads back in support of Michelle Obama's war on obesity, but it would probably be killed by the agribusiness lobby and Tea Partiers who would call it socialist and part of the liberal totalitarian government. That being said Big Tall Uncle Ken says, "Chow down on those fruits and veggies today!"

Tall Tuesday: Standing Tall

2010-03-30T23:40:00.007-04:00

I was going to post an image of President Obama standing tall in the face of opposition on the health care reform bill, but as I thought about it most every president has had to stand tall on some issue. Not every one is successful, though; hence this image.

In our travels ML and I have seen some impressively tall trees in the Hoh Rain Forest of Washington state and in the California's Mariposa Grove. When these trees topple they become a nurse tree where saplings can take root and grow.

If someone gets chopped down on an cause they stand for, that doesn't necessarily mean the cause is dead. Others may come along to build off the work that was done and carry it further. U.S. health care reform has been an issue since the early 19oo's. It's taken almost 100 years for something to be done about it as imperfect as it may be.

Carrying this analogy one step further - not all causes should be carried on, extremism, hate, fear mongering, etc. for you may just reap what you sow.

About the art:

This was penciled in non-photo blue, inked with a #3 brush on linen stock, scanned into GIMP and colored in ArtRage3 Studio Pro.

MODOK Madness

2010-03-28T22:58:00.011-04:00

For some reason I felt inspired this year to contribute to March MODOK Madness. I do have a soft spot for this once obscure character. I discovered him back in "What If" #37. Although I bought several comics growing up I was not a serious collector and had no idea who this character was. Something about MODOK's giant head of matted hair painfully squeezed into that crazy chair outfit slightly disturbed me. What was more disturbing was Giant Man jumping on top of it and shaking him around. Poor MODOK seemed so fragile and pathetic after just freezing Captain America with his "invincible" mind beam. This issue gave just enough information to let you know he is a mad, genetically altered scientist on one hand bent on world domination but on the other hand feels the world needs his genius. I didn't get it, but I do remember being briefly obessed with drawing this guy and another bizarre villain, Arnim Zola. Here is a page from that issue.

The once obscure MODOK now has fame with his own fan pages here and here. I decided instead of a Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing (M.O.D.O.K.) that Knitting might be fun substitute for K. Sitting upon his Rocket Rocker all his yarn and needles are neatly stored in his armor, and he has his A.I.M. henchmen on hand to try out his wool products.

Tall Tuesday: The Kucinich's Revisited

2010-03-23T00:01:00.005-04:00

I feel a bit like a prophet. In November 2008 I made this T-shirt design as a Christmas gift, which I posted about earlier.

Dennis Kucinich has received quite a bit of press this last week for his change of heart in choosing to support the Obama health care reform plan, which has now passed! When I made this shirt I was thinking of organic vegan foods and health not health care policy. Funny how the meaning of art can change with time.

If you would like to purchase this T-shirt, you can do so at my new Zazzle store and can even order it on an organic T-shirt! The one shown here also provides the wearer the ability to separate their head and arms from their body! Amaze your friends!

"Wait!" you say? What does this have to do with Tall Tuesday? Well as you can see from this picture of the Kucinich's Elizabeth is quite a bit taller than Dennis. Her MySpace page lists her as 5'10", which, granted, is the bottom end of tall for women. Other sites list Dennis as 5'7". Assuming she is wearing 3" heels in this photo she is at least 6" taller than Dennis. This is a striking difference in height to say the least, and, after all, tall is relative.

From what I've read in The Tall Book it is not easy for women to "date down", i.e. date someone shorter than themselves. Ladies read Elizabeth's lovely story of how they found each other. It can happen.

Tall Tuesday: Gabrielle Reece

2010-03-16T09:53:00.000-04:00

In "The Tall Book" I learned about tall fetishes for the first time. I live a sheltered life. Anyway I caught a "Seinfeld" rerun at about the same time where George (5'4.5") wanted to have sex with a tall woman. I must have been reading some quotes from Gabrielle Reece in the book and thought of her with George. She's 6'3", a former pro beach volleyball player and model. I thought of her treating George as only she could since he was always getting stuck in awkward situations with women in the show.

Jason Alexander is a fun guy to caricature and almost hard to draw wrong. Gabrielle Reece was more difficult. I had to completely redrew her face in Photoshop. YouTube volleyball video was referenced to try and draw the pose in a way that looked right. The artwork was inked with a brush. Then I spattered ink on a separate sheet of paper and layered it in with Photoshop.

Tall Tuesday: #@$%! Duct!!!!

2010-03-09T03:01:00.000-05:00

This was going to be sentimental posting. Instead it's an exercise in one handed drawing and typing, while nursing an ice pack on my head and resisting the urge to taking a sledgehammer to destroy my basement's drywalled duct work! I have blue painters tape to mark off the edges but still forget where I'm at! I was flipping through a photo album underneath one and nailed an edge when I stood up. This is one of the disadvantages of being 6'7" and why I hope I keep my hair, so it hides the numerous bumps!

Artwork: charcoal pencil with angry red and bruised blue watercolor.

Tall Tuesday: Oprah with Bubbles and George

2010-03-02T03:01:00.000-05:00

ML also records Oprah daily. Thankfully she showed me this, "That's Incredible!" show from February 23rd. There were several guests on the show, two of which stood out as the world's tallest. One was Marvadene "Bubbles" Anderson, at 6'10" the tallest 16 year old in the world and is predicted to hit 7'1". She recently moved to the U.S. from Jamaica and is very well spoken and charming for her age with a strong sense of self and good sense of humor. I am confident she will meet her goals of playing in the WNBA and being a pediatrician or whatever she sets her mind to. I hope her body is able to keep up with the pressures of basketball training as she was shown using crutches.

Another guest who also exuded personality was George, the world's tallest dog. He is a great dane about 43" to the shoulder and 7'3" from nose to tail. He looked quite at home sitting in a chair with his front legs propping him up.

About the art:
I used an old piece of Strathmore 400 series watercolor paper that was yellowed with age. I lightly penciled in the rough, put down the watercolor then used a crow quill pen to ink over it. The rough paper is not ideal for the pen but was heavy enough not to tear. I was trying to keep it spontaneous looking like the work of Richard Thompson or John Cuneo (NSFW), which was not as easy as they make it look, especially when I don't use my watercolors that often. Working with traditional mediums makes corrections much more tricky, too. I added a line in George's hind leg that should not have been there but was able to clone and smudge it out in Photoshop. I also used Photoshop to add highlights to the noses of Bubbles and Oprah and white space around the dog's head to break it out from Bubbles' clothing. The original art is about 6"x6".

Cloud 9

2010-02-28T22:45:00.001-05:00

This is how I feel with ML.

Tall Tuesday: Martha Stewart Tall Show Review

2010-02-23T03:01:00.001-05:00

My significant other records Martha Stewart daily and on Friday we watched "The Tall Show" where the entire audience and guests were over six foot tall. Arianne Cohen was one of the guests and talked about her book, "The Tall Book", along with a model/fashion designer and a chef who made a towering, 10'5" tall chocolate cake which the audience later enjoyed.

While talking with the designer, Martha admitted that her daughter slouched in here early teens because of her height. So Martha told her daughter Alexis she could buy whatever clothes she wanted as long as she would stand straight and tall. Within a year and spending $60,000, Alexis was cured of her slouch! Imagine that!

During Miss Cohen's segment, she talked about some of the issues tall people have to deal with which are all mentioned in her book. She was able to answer a few standard questions from the audience about airplane legroom and what to say when asked if you play basketball, to which Martha chimed in and said how people come up to her and say, "You look just like Martha Stewart!" Martha's reply? "Oh, how I hate her!"

One segment we did not enjoy watching was when four of the tallest audience members, three men and one woman, were given Martha's feather dusters to dust the upper reaches of her set that the staff "can't reach." It's one thing to do a good deed for someone at the grocery store, however this segment seemed in poor taste as we watched these people act as her giant feather dusters as she smiled and said, "You're all doing such a good job!" One man was clearly not enjoying himself! And what they received as a prize? ... a set of Martha Stewart's cleaning products! It seemed a bit like a circus act to me.

Though based on Arriane's write up on her blog, it was a very pleasant experience for everyone.

About the art:
I sampled the Martha Stewart color palette from her website. Martha's clothes are colored to match her logo to reinforce her as a product.

Tall Tuesday: Taller Soccer Players Penalized More Often

2010-02-16T03:01:00.000-05:00

I recently heard a story on the radio about a study finding that taller players were given a penalty in the majority of ambiguous fouls. I don't think of soccer as being a tall person sport because of the footwork involved. So when I heard the story I pictured a 5'9" player getting a penalty over a 5'5" player, figuring only a goalie would be over 6' tall. My stereotype was shattered when I learned that there are several tall players out there. The tallest being Jan Koller of the Czech Republic who stands 6'7.5" tall.

Updated for Illustration Friday:

Quoted from the study, "Results indicate that respectively taller people are more likely to be perceived by referees (and fans!) as foul perpetrators and their respectively smaller opponents as foul victims." If the referee were taller than both players, perhaps his perspective would change and his judgements would be more balanced. Perhaps that's why a judge is seated higher than everyone else in a courtroom. It makes it more difficult for him to be intimidated by others and to be perceived as a "higher" authority.

Tall Tuesday: Tall Clothes

2010-02-09T03:01:00.000-05:00

What is shown here actually exists at the Nordstrom department store near me and is not an exaggeration. If I'm lucky I hit their store at a time when the table is full with new items, which is about twice a year. The rest of the time I'll see the same hand full of shirts from six months ago. And they don't carry long rise pants for talls, just shirts and sweaters.

Fortunately I have a Rochester Big & Tall/XL Male near me. It's the only store I can actually try clothes on and shop like a normal person. But even at Big & Tall stores they lean toward the XXXL. Despite my website name, bigtallken.com, I am not an XXL.

This leaves me with the less exciting experience of shopping on line. I'll go to a store like Banana Republic, see something I like, hope they have it in a tall size on line and wait for it to arrive; only to find out the pants feel like I have a wedgie and have to return them.

At least for men fashions don't change much, and it's not impossible to find clothing. Arianne Cohen writes that finding clothes for women over six foot tall is darn near impossible. Despite there being stores for petites and plus sizes tall stores for women are rare.

When all else fails there is JC Penney's!

About the art:

The first illustration was drawn with a brush and ink over blue line with litho crayon shading and colored in Photoshop.

The second drawing is really just a rough I made in ArtRage.

Tall Tuesday: Dancing Under the Stars

2010-02-01T20:30:00.002-05:00

From what I've seen in Dancing With the Stars a big height mismatch is real challenge where you're trying to hold a solid frame with correct posture and still make good eye contact with your partner. Take a look at poor 6'7" NBA star, Clyde Drexler, with his 5'4" partner, Elena Grinkecko. His longing gaze is searching for the nearest exit door while Elena valiantly tries to reach his shoulder and guide him around the floor. Granted he didn't seem to put much effort into the show, but I remember judges telling him to extend and not dance small. I can tell you it takes some guts to get out on a dance floor and not think that everyone is waiting to see what goofy moves the tall guy/girl is going to do.

Having said that -short, tall, fat, skinny - don't be self conscience and hold back. Have a good time! Get out there, and cut a rug on the dance floor!

About the art:

When debating on what stars to caricature I noticed the Seinfeld cast had a wide range of heights: Jerry Seinfeld-5'11", Michael Richards-6'3", Jason Alexander-5'4", Julia Louis Dreyfus-5"3", Patrick Warburton-6'3". Richards' lanky height just adds to his physical humor as Kramer, as Warburton's huge, solid frame contrasts next to Julia's tiny, animated figure. Their heights were taken from a fun site I found, CelebHeights.com. I was going to pair Jason Alexander with a tall actress like Sigourney Weaver when I remembered an episode where Kramer and George ended up as a "couple" at some black tie party. I tried to capture their personalities and body language in this. The garish electric blue and fuchsia color scheme were to scream, "Dancing With the Stars", glam. The rough pencil sketch was scanned in and inked and chalked in ArtRage3 Studio Pro. I'm not sure the chalk works here, but I ran out of time to change course.

Update:
Knowing that very few people have viewed this, I completely reworked the illustration in ArtRage and Photoshop. It was driving me crazy to look at it! I toned down the blue color, gave Kramer and Puddy a makeover, and tried to make the lights look less like red blood cells. I realized Michael Richards is bit bulky in the neck with hunched shoulders rather than gangly. By firming up the background oval I felt I could drop the floor reflections and still have the characters feel grounded. Ah! I feel much better now.

Tall Tuesday: How's the Weather Up There?

2010-01-26T03:01:00.000-05:00

I can't tell you how many time's I've heard this question in my lifetime. It's a question learned in elementary school and continues through adulthood. It may be a subconscious humorous icebreaker for the shorter person as if asking, "Aren't you a pretty boy?" to a snarling pitbull. I'm not offended by the question. It's just that it's so inane I don't even feel like responding to it most of the time.

However if you do get asked this question, here are a couple of possible replies. If you are male and feel attracted to the person asking you, you might say with a wink and a smile, "Well I have a flagpole about half way up if you'd like to climb up and take a look!" or for the tall woman, "I have an observation deck about three quarters up if you'd care to see for yourself!"

If you're in a particularly beligerant mood (and feel you could take the other person in a fair fight), you're retort might be, "Cloudy - WITH A CHANCE OF RAINING FISTS UPON YOUR HEAD!!!"

But most of the time just answer, "FANTASTIC!"

About the art:

The buildings and raining fist illustrations were drawn on linen cardstock using india ink and brush and a black litho crayon with a non-repro blue pencil underlay. They were then scanned and colored in Photoshop using the dissolve setting of the paintbrush and airbrush tools.

I created the top illustration using only ArtRage3 Studio Pro to see how closely I could replicate the others. I used multiple layers; the first for the rough pencil sketch. The drawing was done using a black, dry marker on a basic paper layer. The linen texture was created using a black chalk tool on a cross hatched texture layer. Separate layers were made for the blue and white colors on basic paper settings using a mix of the oil brush and marker. It was faster to make, but I still find working with real tools, where I can feel and hear the brush and pencil dragging across the course paper to be a much more sensual and satisfying experience. And I have something concrete when I finish.

Tall Tuesday: "The Tall Book" review

2010-01-18T22:24:00.000-05:00

This is the first of my new “Tall Tuesday” posts that deal with life as a taller than average person. I was inspired by one of the new books in my local library, “The Tall Book, A Celebration of Life from on High,” by Arianne Cohen, 6’3”. Being 6’7” myself I thought, “I have got to read this!” It gave me a whole new perspective on my height.

A word of warning for those below 6 feet tall, you will either find the book interesting or read the first few pages, get irked and insult the next tall person you run into. The book unabashedly promotes the benefits of being tall from societal views, health, money and power, especially in the first chapter. From chapter two on you dive into what it’s like growing up tall, fitting into public transportation, chairs and toilets made for the average height person, tall dating and relationships and being a very public entity due your stature.

Miss Cohen gathered a wealth of information from people around the world on the subject of human tallness and shares several stories from her own life. Besides there being many stories where I thought, “That was me! That happened to me!” her book caused me to reflect on my own life and wondered if some things worked out a certain way because I was tall or because of my character. It also caused my to take another look around the corner offices at work think about the relative height of the upper management. The tall trend seems to measure up.

I saw plenty of fun illustration opportunities within the book in addition to the ones already there. As already mentioned at the start it also sparked the idea of an illustrated Tall Tuesday for my blog.

I thought my first post would be my take on a cover for the book. After several doodles I came up with the one shown. I thought there needed to be a human element and made a light caricature of the author herself standing head and shoulders above others. I stuck with the blue, orange, white and black color scheme of the original cover. The figures were inked with a brush then scanned and cleaned up in Photoshop. This was imported into the newly released ArtRage3 where the color and text were added. I wanted "Tall" to grab the reader first with the figures coming in secondary.

There is a phrase, "shoot the engineer," in the automotive industry because left on their own, engineers will typically take forever to release a design because there is always something to improve. I could have used a good art director to "shoot the illustrator" because I kept noodling over this cover. I would be interested to hear what others have to say.

And check out Miss Cohen’s website ! It has tons of fun and informative stories and promotes tall activism. More airplane legroom! More tall clothes! You get the picture.

Continuous Improvement Christmas Card 2009

2009-12-19T09:27:00.000-05:00

The services of Krampus Kwality Group, LLC were retained by Clause, Inc. to implement a continuous improvement program using Kaizen techniques for a more efficient, safe and litigation free Christmas. The internal quality auditor elves found the following four opportunities for improvement in Santa’s Christmas Run. See if you can determine what they are:

1) One gift was found clearly on tipped on its side in a poor location, neither in a stocking nor under the tree leaving the recipient to potentially trip.
2) The chimney tube was bent upon exiting, leaving a gap in the joints and a potential source of toxic gases to fill the customer’s home.
3) Upon exiting the dryer vent to the roof a candy cane was dropped, resulting in waste.
4) Upon making an exit through a heating duct a screw was left on the floor as a potential choking hazard to the cat and degradation of the Santa mystique.

Fast - Pony Express Cartoon Character

2009-10-24T19:38:00.000-04:00

This is another older piece I did for the Ann Arbor Ad Club. There were a series of little characters using different forms of communication - alpine horn, conch shell, smoke signals, etc. - used in a "call for entries" mailer for the Addy awards. They were the first pieces where I converted scanned inked art into vector format. It took me a while to figure out the best way to do it. It's one of my favorites. I have free wallpapers available with him at my website.

Frozen or The Chilly Penguin

2009-10-21T23:06:00.000-04:00

This was a spot illustration I did years ago for the Ann Arbor Ad Club , which I used to be a member of. It was part of a series of little spots that went into a mailer, encouraging people to brave the Michigan winter and see the club's gallery show. I was quite proud to receive an Addy award for them.

You can see some more of them at my newly updated website, www.bigtallken.com. I'm still in the process of sorting thumbnails but felt ready to cut it loose.

Bobtoberfest

2009-09-30T22:15:00.000-04:00

Following up on my previous post I just completed another job for Biker Bob's Motown. This was for their first annual Bobtoberfest event coming up in October. The first version with the barrel and steins, which is shown on their homepage, ran into problems with one of the sponsors. So I had to do a last minute change to remove the offending items and salvage the design. So, which design do you prefer?

Version 1 showing drunken debauchery?

or version 2: up close and personal with Biker Bob and "friend"?

Pattern - Biker Boxers

2009-09-30T21:47:00.000-04:00

I found this old pair of boxers with a motorcycle pattern I made a couple years ago for the re-grand opening of Biker Bob's Motown Harley-Davidson in Taylor, Michigan.

The illustration pieces were assembled into a giant mobile in their showroom. You can see more of my Biker Bob work on my please-update-me website here.

Sketches - Saugatuck and Queretaro

2009-09-28T23:16:00.000-04:00

I had to travel to Queretaro, Mexico back at the end of June, and it sort of threw me off the blogging kick until now. I also decided to take a break from Illustration Friday. I enjoyed the feedback from people and checking out the work of others, but it really takes time.

Prior to Mexico we took a long weekend in Saugatuck, Michigan, a favorite town of ours - not too far away, a lovely beach on Lake Michigan with dunes, some good restaurants, art galleries and antiques. I'm ready to go back already! I made this water color sketch from a photograph I took of the sunset. Not one of my best, but it was fun to get the little watercolor set out.

While in Queretaro I actually had some weekend free time and used it to do these two sketches. I don't normally take the time to do outdoor sketching - or indoor for that matter! I have a difficult time with architecture and landscapes because of shrinking things down to a small piece of paper. I spent about 20 minutes on the pencil sketch and still managed to get the bell tower out of proportion, but that's how to learn.

The color sketch took about an hour and a half. It was supposed to be a loose sketch but became a more detailed study than I thought. I still have work to do on perspective as well.

Unfold, Sprout, Grow!

2009-06-14T09:27:00.000-04:00

"Seed, seed, grow!"

~ from the song, "Spark", by the Church from their album, "Starfish".

One of the unique abilities we all have is to grow and transform ourselves at any time, consciously or unconciously. That was the theme behind this little guy for the recipient of the T-shirt with him on it.

Here is the original sketch. I first tried to make the face part of the leaf shape, but it was looking too alien. So I took the more direct approach with the mouth and eyes. Looking at this with fresh eyes again I wish I had added more form to the seed pod with the shading. It looks a little flat.

As with the drawing of the Owl and Pussycat this was a pencil sketch converted into vector format via Inkscape. It was printed on a white T-shirt with no blue gradient.

Here's a desktop image (1200 px x 1024 px) for you to brighten your day with.

The Owl and the Pussy Cat

2009-06-09T18:07:00.000-04:00

How many times have this classic odd couple been illustrated? Thousands at least based on a quick Google search.

I rediscovered this blissful pair through a modern master of enigmatic written and illustrated works. I found Edward Gorey's, "Amphigorey", a few years ago in a used bookstore and became enamored. I read some biographies about Gorey where he listed Edward Lear as an influence and had illustrated Lear's, "The Jumblies" and "The Dong with the Luminous Nose." I managed to find both of these at a local library. Gorey's illustrations for "The Dong" are hauntingly beautiful with sweeping cross-hatched land and skyscapes, and I feel was his best illustrated work.

After reading some Lear at the library I bought his complete works edited by Vivien Noakes. He is a very interesting character himself traveling the world painting landscapes and wildlife. If I were basing his artistic ability solely by his illustrations for his nonsense writing I would say he was the Scott Adams of his day, where his writing was his strength. However you can't always judge a book by its cover. See his detailed painting of an eagle owl to see the difference.

About my color illustration:

The final art is actually in vector format and was used as another Christmas gift T-shirt. To create the pencil texture I scanned my pencil drawing, loose guidelines and all, and converted it into vector format using Inkscape. Here is a detail to see the texture.

This works best when you increase the contrast of your pencil scan to the point where the lines are nice and black. As I mentioned in other posts I still found it easier to color it in Illustrator.

A few years ago I took a stab at trying to make a few illustrations for "The Owl and the Pussycat" blending concepts from my engineering books with the animals into a nonsense world, but I couldn't quite get down on paper what was in my head. I think I was trying too hard to force a style on myself.

Let your curiosity take you places to find new sources of inspiration. And take advantage of your local library not just the Internet!

Craving Kucinich

2009-06-05T23:54:00.000-04:00

Dennis Kucinich seems to have a craving for the white house and carrots or at least carrot tops! This illustration was for another gift tee shirt at Christmas this year. I grew up hearing Kucinich's name in the news but never really new much about him. When he ran for President in 2004 I vaguely picked up that he was very left in his views, was a vegetarian and short in stature. So one of my initial doodles had him standing next to a giant carrot.

While searching for reference pictures of his portrait to caricature I kept seeing him with this stunning red head.

I was floored when I found out she was his wife! I still can't believe it. A 31 year age difference, and look at them! I thought this kind of thing only happened in the funny pages.

It was then a short (pardon the pun) jump to turning my giant carrot into a vague representation of his wife. I'm no Steve Brodner but was pretty happy with how it turned out and so was the receiver. Even though he has a distinctive elfish look about him I had a difficult time trying to figure out which aspects to exaggerate. I think I made him look too much like a game show host.

Here is what the shirt looked like when I loaded it to Zazzle. It was actually a very close representation of the final product.

I used Inkscape to create the "inked" lines using the calligraphy pen tool, which I find superior for my needs to Illustrator's equivalent brush tool. When I have more energy I'll post some tips on using it. However I colored the image in Illustrator because I find that easier to do than in Inkscape. No perfect software for me yet. Inkscape is Open Source and free by the way. I recommend trying it if you can't afford Illustrator.

Find out more about Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich. They are an interesting couple of people. Maybe there will be a made for TV movie about them someday. One can only hope.

Dancing Pelican

2009-06-03T23:50:00.000-04:00

Way back in November I posted some sketches of personal projects I was working on. Here is the final art for one of them. This goofy bird as well as the other sketches turned into T-shirt designs for my family at Christmas. The shirts were created through Zazzle and came out quite nice. As a warning the fitted shirts run much smaller than you think. Go large and loose with your shirts if possible!

I was thinking of the brave musicians playing there last performance in the movie, "Titanic", when I drew the fish and of women from old Japanese woodblock prints for the pelican.

Adapt

2009-06-01T22:52:00.000-04:00

The arctic fox's fur is highly adaptable to his environment, changing colors with the season. Check this site out for more interesting information about the little guy.

Those are his tails coiled on the top shelf. I wanted to show the coats hanging but felt no respectable fox would let his tail drag on the ground. Maybe they attach like clip on ties.

The polar bear however is not quite so fortunate. It's too bad he can't just drop his coat and run free to cope with global warming!

An interesting fact is that the polar bear's skin color is actually black, which helps absorb heat in the cold climate of the arctic.

I was trying to find out if the skin of the arctic fox is black as well, but I couldn't find anything. Does anyone know?

P.S. This image was created from start to finish using ArtRage 2.5. The tools I used was the art marker for the "inked" lines and flat colors and the pastel and pencil for the rest

Cracked

2009-05-27T00:07:00.001-04:00

Like contagious the week before several ideas bounced around in my head. I had my heart set on doing a Wall Street / Humpty Dumpty theme, but time constraints won out. After looking for other cracked ideas I came up with this stripped down illustration. Read into the scene what you will.

Contagious

2009-05-16T15:54:00.000-04:00

Dolphin Surfing

2009-05-13T21:48:00.000-04:00

This is another T-shirt illustration I made for my other niece. Again the animals are from her Webkinz collection and the T-shirt printed through Zazzle.

The creation process involved inking a pencil drawing with a brush, the scanning and converting to a line art tiff file. I converted the vile to vector format using Inkscape. I used to use an old version of Adobe Streamline. The thing I like about Inkscape is it makes all the white areas transparent, making it easier to color in Illustrator. My version of Illustrator is several years old, so the newer versions probably have improved bitmap vector converters.

The colors are added in Illustrator using different layers. Drawing and editing shapes in Illustrator and layer control are superior to Inkscape's in terms of ease to use. Because my old version of Illustrator does not support PNG I have to export to SVG format, import into Inkscape to export once again into a PNG file, which Zazzle prefers. Clear as mud?

Parade - Sort of

2009-05-11T23:39:00.000-04:00

Think of this as an impromptu parade via a bunny with bubbles. I made a sketch more appropriate to the parade theme, but won't have time to finish it.

This illustration was for one of my nieces to go on a tee shirt for Easter. It's based on her Webkinz animals. I actually made several illustrations over Christmas and two for Easter as gifts for my family. The tees were made up through Zazzle. I'll post more on this later.

To make up for weak connection to this week's theme I thumbed through a sketchbook and found this "parade" of arctic animals. I can't believe it's been six years, almost to the day, since I made this. I wasn't quite as busy at my engineering job back then and would save doodles like this for posterity. At the time I was heavily influenced by Fiep Westendorp after I stumbled onto one of her books in the Amsterdam airport. She is one of many artists who've paraded through my life, littering my brain with their images, as I move on past them.

It's only recently I realized the first illustration is my real stylistic comfort zone.

Dandelion Queen

2009-05-06T00:15:00.000-04:00

While weeding this weekend the Illustration Friday topic, hierarchy, popped into my head. Kneeling over weeds for a couple hours I wondered who rules who? Every season I have to battle weeds in the yard. No matter how many I pull, carefully trying to get the whole root, they still come back - dandelions, violets, thistle, horsetails, what have you.

We constantly try to fight and control nature, bringing an old tune by Love and Rockets into my head:

You cannot go against nature.
Because when you do
Go against nature
It's part of nature too.

Our little lives get complicated.
It's a simple thing.
Simple as a flower,
And that's a complicated thing.

~ from "No New Tale to Tell"

Is pulling weeds in my lawn much different from the guy chopping down trees in the rain forest for his home or farm? We curse this man for deforesting. Should we not let our lawns go wild? Let the weeds grow! Let the maple seeds sprout and reclaim their forest land! Back to Walden!

(sigh)........Time to buy more lawn bags.

Climbing or Aspiration

2009-01-27T22:14:00.000-05:00

This was for one half of my 2005 Christmas card. The other half was the "darker" side of Christmas, which I'll post next week. This is a digital color version of the original drawing.

The actual card was laid out on 11"x17" white card stock paper so that two cards could be made from one sheet. XMAS was laid out horizontally such that each letter was on it's own panel of a quad fold card. The back of the card had the dark XMAS. The theme being "keep your Christmas on the lighter side." Copies were made at Kinko's and each card had areas of green and red added with watercolor since color copies were too expensive. It's always a bit tedious making cards every year, but it's worth it for my friends and family. This year engineering work has put me behind schedule, so my 2008 cards are trickling out into early Valentine's Day cards.

Keep climbing for your aspirations. You'll never know what you may find along the way. :)

Rambunctious

2008-12-15T23:46:00.000-05:00

I've read quite a bit about the arctic region when I tried to syndicate my own Arctic Circle comic strip. Obviously I did not make it after three attempts. Although the Arctic Circle title did with Alex Hallatt's strip, which was originally titled Polar Circle. Sour grapes on my part? Obviously some, but that's another post. You can check out some of my submissions here on my website.

My point on this post is that I read somewhere that arctic wolves don't like arctic foxes too much and will sometime throw one in the den for the cubs to "play" with. My memory may be faulty on the facts, but it made for a fun idea of a fox babysitting a group of rambunctious cubs. Since I'm still on business in Mexico, I went with my gut reaction and stuck to what I know.

On a side note for some reason the extremely nice babysitters my sister and I had brought out the most obnoxious behavior in us. To those nice sitters I apologize.

FYI - this was a pencil sketch on recycled paper, inked with a Pigma brush pen (hate 'em, but they do in pinch like this), photographed with a digital camera and white highlights added in GIMP.

Similar Triangles

2008-12-10T00:55:00.000-05:00

A little geometry rule we use everyday with our computers and may not realize it is the property of similar triangles. A common definition taken from this site is, "Triangles are similar if their corresponding (matching) angles are equal and the ratio of their corresponding sides are in proportion." Every time we scale an image or window we can thank this rule for making it work.

For my engineering work I often make use of similar triangles and simple trigonometry (remember sines, cosines and tangents anyone?) to calculate distances and positions. As long as you stick with right triangles (one of the three angles must be 90 degrees), know the length of one or more sides and know one or more angles, you can determine the remaining lengths and angles. Maybe I'll post something more on this in the future.

I tried to doctor up a poor photo of several of my triangles. The 30/60/90 triangles are ll similar, but alas poor 45/45/90 is not. Not many people use drafting triangles anymore but were once an indispensable tool for draftsmen, architects, graphic designers and illustrators until computers took their place.

Here is another link providing fun and probably forgotten definitions of triangles. Acute and obtuse - who can deny those aren't fun words to say?

By the way I am here in Mexico for work and this Friday is Saint Juan Diego's feast day, a national holiday. Adios!

P.S. The digital photo was altered and scribbled on using GIMP and a Wacom tablet.

Ottoline and the Yellow Cat

2008-12-04T22:37:00.000-05:00

I discovered this gem of a book while browsing an independent bookseller's store in northern Michigan and had to have it - I mean for my niece. Of course I had to assure the quality by reading it.

I thought Chris Riddell did a marvelous job blending the text and illustrations. Some pages the text is more dominant and the illustration in others. It keeps you wondering what the next page will bring. The whimsical shapes and vivid red spot colors were reminiscent of Dr. Seuss, while the cross hatching and formal sounding language brought in hints of Edward Gorey. I loved the caricatures of the women with their lap dogs and the dogs themselves.

My only gripe was what appears to be a blatant rip of Chris Ware's book cover from "The Acme Novelty Library." The ornate gilded design repeated over itself, the black corners and binding and identical red color.

Paper Bag Wrapping Paper

2008-12-04T22:30:00.000-05:00

Out of wrapping paper? Tired of ink smudged fingers from using the Sunday newspaper comics? Try a grocery bag!

Belated Happy Thanksgiving

2008-12-04T22:12:00.000-05:00

Another doodle from the desk calendar. Orange highlighter and black fine point pen were used. Hope you had a nice holiday.

Sketches November 18, 2008

2008-11-18T23:29:00.000-05:00

Here are a few sketches of personal projects in the works.

Mechanical pencil with watercolor and white colored pencil highlights.

Pow Wow Dancers

2008-11-09T22:44:00.000-05:00

On a whim ML and I attended a mini pow wow at the Southfield Civic Center. It was hosted by various Michigan Indian tribes. It was an interesting experience, and we received a sampling of native American culture and history. Unfortunately there were a lot of cheap trinkets and kitsch to weed through. I don't take the time to do too much sketching of the world around me, but it was fun to try and capture the essence of the dancers. I really had to focus on the movements of their bodies and not be distracted by the adornments. I added the color references later with colored pencil, and not paying attention, smeared the sketch of the girl dancer slightly. I'm sure the dances and outfits are more impressive with the right lighting and atmosphere. Halogen lighting in a civic center doesn't induce the most spiritual experience. The fry bread was delicious by the way!

The Taming of a Maverick

2008-11-08T12:05:00.000-05:00

I like John McCain. I wish he could have won the Republican nomination for president back in 2000. He really showed his true colors during his concession speech.

Between the two campaigns Obama seemed to have a clear vision of his campaign and how it should be run. That clarity of vision helped rally the Democratic party to him after winning the nomination. Whereas the Republican party wanted to shape McCain, forcing him to continually change to meet the requirements of the moment. He couldn't be himself. It would have been nice to have seen him run the kind of campaign that he wanted to run rather than what his party wanted. He probably would have still lost, but it would have been a more interesting race.

Barackas Obamanous, Giftedous Oratorous

2008-11-05T22:30:00.001-05:00

Congratulations to Barack Obama! The man is a gifted orator. He is someone I actulally look forward to hearing speek. I am anxious to see how his speeches are received by Congress and the UN.

The following sketches were made while waiting in the polling line for forty-five minutes, which wasn't too bad compared to many places. Obviously nothing too serious was on my mind.

Anchors Away! Devil Girl!

2008-10-30T21:31:00.000-04:00

I've had to travel for my job quite a bit this year with launching a new product. So this summer I purchased a re-furbished Wacom Intuos 3 4"x6" digital tablet at DGR so I could putz with it in my free time, which on my business trips is not very much. It's small enough to carry in my laptop case and actually comes in handy for marking up engineering drawings with GIMP. People still comment on it. I don't think Wacom's products are as well known outside the digital arts community. I now carry it into work every day.

I also purchased a Nikon 8.1 megapixal Coolpix S51c camera, which also has come in handy for work. Too bad I don't get re-imbursed for either of these tools. However I was able to nearly pay for both of these items by doing a T-shirt design for a client while in Mexico over the 4th of July (so much for one holiday). I had one week to turn it around, which may sound like a lot of time to most people, but working 10 to 12 hours a day, including weekends, at the plant and dealing with a bout of Montezuma's revenge, it wasn't much. Enough whining.

The client emailed me his ideas for a devil girl T-shirt design for his boating team. He included scans from a rock poster book for reference. I came up with a few rough sketches, which I photographed and emailed to the client.

He liked the anchor idea.

This was the first time where I did a project away from my home, so aside from the initial sketch, everything had to be done digitally. I used ArtRage 2.5 to create more finished looking roughs and Inkscape 0.46 to create the text comps. Then I layered them into ArtRage again to export the final rough.

Once approved at this level I sketched, inked and colored the final drawing in ArtRage. For sketching I used the pastel tool and the marker tool for inking and coloring, each color on a different layer.

I exported each layer as an image and converted them to vector art using the trace tool in Inkscape. I wanted to do the final vector art in Inkscape, but for reasons I can't recall, I couldn't get it to work quite right, so I defaulted to an older version of Illustrator I had luckily loaded onto my laptop.

I wanted to use open source software for the whole project to prove to myself it could be done. Maybe next time. Also, to reduce guilt over using the company laptop, all the files were kept on a 2 Gb flash drive while working.

I made due with the fonts I had, used some jitter effects and cut out text flames in Illustrator. I also added the red circle in back, and after and few back and forths on the wording with the client, ended up with this. I delivered it as a jpg, eps and pdf file. I used PDF Creator for the generating the, you guessed it, pdf.

It was a good learning experience to use some new tools. Aside from her strangely angled legs I was pretty happy with it and so was the client.

That was the back of the T-shirt. He also wanted a drunken voodoo doll for the front pocket area.

By the way, it is Devil's Night here in southeast Michigan, so stay out of trouble and have a safe and happy Halloween!

Desktop Doodles Prevent Dementia

2008-10-29T23:23:00.000-04:00

I'm an engineer by trade, and a very busy one lately. I've also been struggling to get more organized with my time management. I've tried the Franklin planner thing; too bulky. An early Palm Pilot; too small and difficult to use(luckily paid for by work and now obsolete and dead). The Groupwise calendar. Good for looking at meetings but too time consuming to write in tasks.

Finally I cleared off my desk and went back to a method I used in college, the classic desk pad calendar. I bought the Staples version, which is very functional and cheap. I keep it under my keyboard for handy reference, which forces me to keep a cleaner desktop.

Being a visual person I like seeing the whole month laid out in front of me. I can scribble in my meetings (way too many!) and to do list for each day. I use Sunday to lay out the major goals for the week. It has also given me space to doodle during long phone conferences. Media: standard office tools - black pilot pen, red, blue and green colored pencil and highlighters.

Fun Phrases

2008-02-10T16:01:00.001-05:00

When my manager of 8 years retired I sent him off with my take on some of his favorite phrases.

1) 1-900-SEX-ME
2) Hey, crabby woman!
3) Finger on the sphincter (don't ask me to explain!)
4) Someone had their pee-pee slammed in a drawer!
5) Rode hard and put away wet.
6) Have you seen the latest deal on Travel Zoo?
7) X(He or She) is working without adult supervision.

The Newt in the Suit

2008-01-27T17:03:00.000-05:00

There was a neat orange newt
Who went about in a lavender suit.
He ate a light meal
Off a plate colored teal
Of turnip and horseradish root.

I wrote a series of nonsense limericks after being inspired by Edward Gorey, who led me to Edward Lear a few years ago and finally decided to start illustrating them, but did not get very far. The heavily flawed black and white version came first, followed by the less flawed, hastily colored version.