I came up with this over breakfast on Sunday. My fiancée Jamie seemed a little disturbed by this guy and perhaps a bit frightened by the crazy look in my eye and maniacal cackle I uttered while working on him. There can be such strange delight in conjuring grotesque imagery or truly pitiable characters. It’s just so raw. Kind of a pure expression of some dusty corner of the imagination.I tried to imagine what was going on with this guy, somewhat after the fact. I think maybe he’s having a little moral dilemma and carnivorous guilt over his soon-to-be snack. Or perhaps he’s contemplating his own decay, of which the fly is a reminder, waiting for him to rot a little more so it can have a snack of its own. Reading into this image sends chills down my spine.
My impulse is to delete this post and not subject you, dear viewers, to its sad visage, and to save myself the embarrassment of exposing what might be some ugly part of myself. But I will try to be brave in the face of all this. Look upon this tortured soul if thou wilt, but I beg you, do not judge me.
I doodled this while watching this one-hour interview from 1986 with Oliver Sacks:
As you might see from the comment I left on the YouTube page, I found it fascinating and inspiring. Now I want to read his book, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.” I’m pretty sure this title has come up in conversation fairly recently, it so rings a bell, but I also think one of my figure drawing teachers in college may have handed out an excerpt from this book. Something about learning to see and a recounting of a blind patient who became able to see, but did not understand what he was seeing. Because he had never seen, everything was completely abstract and he had to take the wild sensory information of color, light, dark, and shape, and learn to associate it with actual 3-Dimensional forms and space, of things he’d been familiar in a tactile way for his entire life thus far. It’s possible this wasn’t from Sacks’s book, but watching the interview called this to mind, all the same.
A big round of applause to the entire cast and crew of Pixar’s Ratatouille! It was a true delight! Superbe! Genial! Credit must be given to Jan Pinkava as originator of the film, but accolades to Brad Bird’s script and his unbeatable skills of direction, omission, and selection. The timing of the action sequences was just spot-on. I loved all the little touches. All the characters were a joy to watch (and superbly voiced — I couldn’t believe that was Janeane Garofolo doing a french accent), and I loved the designs of the rats. I could go on and on. Little rats are dancing in my head.
See story artist Jenny Lerew’s post on Ratatouille for much more thoughtful and eloquently stated observations, of which I wish I could plagiarize word for word.
Yes! Hello. I’m Back! I know, it’s been a while. I skipped a couple months. Hey, sometimes you’re just not in a blogging mood. And sometimes that feeling lasts for two months or maybe more. And anyway, I’ve been busy. My girlfriend and I went to New York on business (for her) and pleasure (for me) and then we both vacationed in Paris for a week, where we got engaged! It’s been exactly a month since we got back, and I’ve thought about posting to the ol’ blog, but… Blogging is a habit and like many habits, it can be fallen out of. Once that happens it can be difficult to pick it back up, but that’s what I’m going to try. It’s July 1st. A new month and the first day of the second half of 2007. Beginning of Act II. I’ve got doodles and photos and inspiration to share, so… we’ll see what happens!
I’m not feeling very big on explanation right now, so if you feel like digging, go here, here, and here. Sorry I’m so lazy, but here’s a drawing for you to look at. Hope this makes things all better.
I’m a Story Artist and Illustrator living in Los Angeles with my wife, daughter, and three cats.
In my earliest memory, I am drawing a picture. Three decades later, the picture is still being drawn. It’s one I never want to finish.
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