A Frolic or a Cavort?

This is a Snubbler. That’s about all I know about him. Well, that, and he apparently loves a good frolic.

Or would that be a cavort? Or maybe a romp? Or a gambol? How ’bout a caper?

Whatever. All I know is, he looks like he’s enjoying himself immensely.

Maybe you should go out and indulge in a good dose of frolicking right now, too. Just try to keep the drooling to a minimum.

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INCOMING!!!

It makes me sad to see one of my doodles so giddy and happy when he’s only seconds away from being obliterated by a tiny little rocket man.

Let’s not tell him, though. I want his last moments to be pleasant ones.

Burning Up the Skies (PILOT FINAL)

As promised in a previous post, here is the finished “pilot” illustration that will be in the June 2009 In Touch magazine. I had a lot of fun doing this one. Click on the thumbnail to view a larger version of the final piece.

How to Spot a Galoot

A galoot is, by definition,  a person with an ungainly, cumbersome, and clumsy personality, or one who is strange or foolish.

But I have it on good authority that a galoot is also a doodle that magically appears on your notepad during a company troubleshooting meeting.

Wait. His name WASN’T Trippy?

Remember when you saw your first “Draw Me” ad? Maybe it was in the back of a comic book. Or on a matchbook cover. Or in TV Guide.

You old-timers know what I’m talking about..the ones that promised you an exciting career in cartooning if your rendition of the supplied art was deemed worthy of a scholarship to the prestigious Art Instruction Schools. There was Cubby the bear, a pirate, a cowboy…and, of course, Tippy the Turtle. My main memory of those ads was that, even as a kid, I knew there was no real creativity involved in just copying someone else’s art.

Don’t get me wrong. As a child, I did my fair share of copying other people’s work, and even (gasp!) tracing it on occasion. But I was working on my technique, not my creativity, in those instances, and I knew it. I think that differentiation is lost on a LOT of people.

Anyway, before I get too soap-boxy, I present for your viewing pleasure my take on Tippy. Hope you enjoy it. And if you can draw it exactly as it looks…well….you have too much time on your hands.

And you need therapy.

You! Come Pleat Me!!!!!

Soooooo sorry for the bad pun. But I saw Jerry Maguire listed on TV last night, and couldn’t help but doodling my rendition of what I believe to be the most horrifying, soul-destroying, shudder-inducing line ever uttered on the big screen.

Of Bouncing Santas and Truck-driving Reindeer

So I didn’t do the drunken Santa of a prior post, but I still had fun doing this one. It’s for the Tucker Tree Lighting, an event each year here in my town where Santa shows up in various ways to thrill the kids. This year he’s getting to arrive in a too-cool-for-words 1928 Ford Model A truck owned by a local gentleman with a PHENOMENAL car collection. I didn’t do the old beauty justice with my drawing.

(Sorry for the watermark and all, but- seeing as how this is for a client, and seeing as how some of my doodles have been showing up around the web on some odd, unforeseen places- I figured I had to get all boring and legal on this one.)

An Elusive Tease, or Who’s Sam?

As a child, back in the pre-internet days (remember those?) and growing up in a small town, one of the most frustrating things I would encounter was what I’ll refer to as “comic book snippet syndrome” (CBSS). I’d catch a glimpse of some comic book, or even read the whole issue if there was time, as I wandered through a bookstore on one of our occasional visits to the “big city”. Then, being from the booming metropolis that I was, and having NO BOOKSTORES in said hometown, I’d never get to read the rest of the story or find out what happened after the cliffhanger ending that only made me want more.

Oh, the agonies such teasing, elusive comic book encounters can inflict on the tortured mind of a ten-year-old boy!

But I also feel like not knowing helped me. It forced me to create my own stories in my head, and to draw them out on paper. Those teases were the seeds of creativity, the impetus for all my future artistic endeavors.

So now I’m giving a little back to the great Swirl of the Unfinished. This doodle started out as the big pointy frog thingy. Then I realized he had to be talking to someone….hence the little man. The dialogue…well…heck, I don’t know where that came from. Or where it’s leading. Or who this Sam character is they’re talking about.

That’s up to you. And the curious, hungry-for-more ten-year-old I hope we all still have inside.

 

 

Meetings, doodle fodder for the doodling doodler

Meetings. They can either bore you to tears or inspire rampant doodling….’cause they sure as heck don’t serve any real business purpose!

Ex Libris!

 

I was enjoying some of the beautiful bookplates (ex libris) on the BibliOdyssey blog, and it dawned on me that- while I have always loved bookplate art- it’s been ages since I created one of my own. After doing so, I started feeling all giddy and generous and such and decided I wanted to share it with everybody else in the blogosphere!

So download away, dear reader! I have uploaded a high-res version (click on the thumbnail to get to it) so you’ll have a cleaner printout. All I ask is that you don’t try to re-sell it in any shape, form or fashion, and that you leave my little signature on it. Other than that..feel free to printout 5 billion of them for you and your closest friends. Also, please remember to use only a good acid-free paper and library grade glue to paste it in the front of your books.

Hope you like it. Happy reading, everybody.

[UPDATE: My apologies for a bit of confusion I may have caused. By “library grade glue”, I mean any acid-free glue or paste. Guess I shoulda just said that, huh?]