Woodring-ian Scooter Girl

Got into a thread on the Comics Journal message board about a cool show in Seattle: [link]


So, I ended up drawing my idea of what a scooter girl would look like if Jim Woodring was drawing her:



Not quite what he did:
http://jimwoodring.blogspot.com/2006/09/dangerous-curves-ahead.html

Actually the scooter is a rare Cronenberg two-stroke, with Woodring modifications.

Empty Room

Been pretty busy, so not much time to draw. But wanna post something, just to keep things alive here. Did this last night. It's a bit more creepy than I thought at the time, but there you go. The tilting doesn't help. Makes me think of "Psycho." Actually, it's a picture of a woman looking at an apartment she doesn't think she's going to take.

Bleah

Listening to a webcast of an interview of Aline Kominsky Crumb, about her husband, R. Crumb. Then tonight a documentary on Marie Antoinette featuring rioting women and a fortress-like castle. No links for any of this, and there are other strange references which would be difficult and longwinded to explain. Also, very busy work-wise, and fighting anxiety, as usual.

Actually, with the photoshop-py colour and texture on a darkened pencil drawing, this one has a nice Renaissance drawing feel to it.

This Week's McGillustration

This week (actually, the paper comes out every two weeks), the question I'm illustrating is "Why are traffic lights red, green, and yellow?" The answer is here.

Always With the Drawings

Wish I could say this was part of some brilliant and great project, but I'm just screwing around. This is a man from Ma Vie en Cinemascope who was in a 1950s nightclub, and holding his cigarette in an incredibly cool manner, and a fluffy pussycat.



It's the head of an intellectual guy who was walking past, and probably hates cartoons and caricatures, and all that silly stuff. I'm drawing more on him, later.

Fly Boy and Forest Girl

Flyboy alights after another successful flight, while Forest Girl from some French Bande Dessinee looks on.

Oh yeah, my TV show goet renewed for another year, so it's bananas and cat food (for the cats) for the months to come! Yay!

Cute Jazz Singer

Here's a picture of a cute jazz singer. I drew her because I'm writing about her, and others like her, for work. Not like I'm actually going out to clubs and seeing her.

Pacino and Bike Girl

Watching the news this evening, with the school shooting in Montreal. That's upsetting. Can't relate it to the silly pictures, but drawing them, and looking at them, have got me through tough times, so they have a value.



This is supposed to be Al Pacino, as I was watching a bit of a French dub of a bad movie Simone.

Little girl on a bike, coloured in Photoshop:

DVD guy abuse

The special effects guy from a DVD is getting shot out of a cannon, or something.

This week's McGill Reporter Illo

I so enjoy doing these. They just take a half hour or so to draw, and they're usually a break from a difficult writing assignment.



This one was a little tougher than previous. The question asked was, "Why, if we've got iron in our systems, aren't we magnetic when we're stuck in the MRI machine?"

Something more elegantly phrased than that. Still, a bizarre question, me-thinks, and always hard to draw an MRI machine, and make it look cute and funny.

I had begun with having the lab tech look puzzled, but instead, her expression seemed to say "bad news." Never fun, when you're in an MRI. I've been there. But don't worry, they didn't find anything.



This was another idea I had for the "Magnetic" concept. But the editor wanted the MRI machine. Also, maybe, a singles bar was not the right image for the McGill Faculty organ. I didn't fill in the black and shaded parts on this one. So, it qualifies as a "rough."

Neighbourhood Orc Guys

Orcs are fun to draw, but sometimes they mutate into suburbanites.

More sketches, Watercolour Pencils, and Stanley Lewis

More strange sketches of guys. I guess things go in waves. Drawing lots of old men at the moment, and other things you might see later on.



This one isn't very technically accomplished. I was trying to fill a relatively large area (10"x13") with those watercolour pencils, and they aren't made for that (I know. I've seen it. But I'm very lazy, and also very sloppy). So, I had to cheat with the paints, but hadn't wetted the paper beforehand. Also, it's tough doing a bigger-scale scene without some planning. Still, it captures pretty well the feeling of the street this afternoon, as I sketched it from my second-floor balcony step.

Sad today to learn that Stanley Lewis died. He was this crochety old sculptor who lived above the headstone yard that was next door to the used bookstore on Saint Laurence Boulevard where I used to work. He'd always go out around noon with his Tilley hat, looking like Mr. Punch with his big nose and chin, and say hello to me.

I was lucky in that a few months ago, he actually took me up to see his studio. Very cluttered and dusty. Lots of sheets covering things, rock powder from the tools he used. Plenty of magazine clippings on the wall of old statuary: Michelangelo and the Greeks. He showed me his pride and joy, a Brancusi-like abstract female nude carved from pink marble. The trouble with marble was, he explained, that it was often veined with a darker material, and planning had to be careful, because you can't have the veins in the wrong places.

I wonder if Praxitele's Venus had to worry about that?

Anyhow, Stanley's style, while "modern," is a little dated now. There's actually a gallery on Sherbrooke, the Galerie Milhalis (if it still exists), which has an upper room crowded with his stuff. It would be neat if it came back into fashion, the way art that gets stuck in attics sometimes does.

Now, without Stanley, Mr. George the bookseller, and Simcha the grocer, Montreal's lost a part of its feeling. Still I hope there are younger "characters" who can rise up and fill their places.

ADDENDUM: Zeke's Gallery Blog, from whom I lifted that link to the art image up there, has a note about a tribute concert to Lewis. [link]

New Co-op Art Gallery in Montreal

My friend Eric Braün, launched, with a few of his friends, a new co-operative art gallery in Montreal, last Friday. It's called Usine 106-U (that's a pun for "sans issue," or "no exit" pronounced "sonz-ishoo" for you non French-speakers).



Here's a shot of the gallery with a great view of R. Gagnon's back. Eric B. is in black to the right of him.



Cephalopods, and other stuffed items, for sale.



I picked up a pretty little watercolour (5" x 7") by artist and Montreal Mirror music editor Rupert Bottenberg, and am happy to have it on my wall.

The gallery is at 112 Mont Royal Ave. East, in Montreal, Canada, above a freaky little used record shop. Hope they like the plug!

More Oddballs

Speaking of woodly weirdoes, here's this guy:


I have to admit I photoshopped out my double chin. After a certain age, photos from that angle no longer look flattering. You start looking like a Tenniel drawing from Alice in Wonderland, or maybe a Gerald Scarfe caricature.

Not exactly anything to do with that, but here's a knight on a horse:

Forest Spirit

A forest spirit, leprechaun, or Park Nixie, which in my cynicism I cruelly caricatured. But I swear he was there. Maybe I was the only one who saw him....