Tall Tuesday: Donate your tall clothes

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

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

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!

Tall Tuesday: More Work

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

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.