To This New World

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Tourists walk to new places with light hearts, because they want to.

Refugees run to new places with heavy hearts, because they have to.

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Weight

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Another drawing that was roughed out in pencil while I was at the Emmys. 

This is the smaller Moleskine book (the one that slips neatly into my jacket), so the dimensions seem a little different. Probably the kind of thing that only I would notice. 

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Dry Dock

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     Ever dream about fixing up an old boat and sailing away into the sunset?

     I do. 

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Goggle Cat

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     I roughed this out at the Emmy awards last weekend. I took a Moleskine notebook in my jacket, a very small one, and doodled stuff out while the ceremony was going on. After our category went by (we lost to another show, BTW*), I used the time to draw. The Creative Arts Emmy show is almost four hours long, and people warned me about this ahead of time, So I made sure to bring a sketchbook and some snacks. 

     Inside the Nokia theater, it was actually pretty bright and good for drawing. They kept bringing up the house lights so that the awards winners could be seen hugging each other and walking down the aisles. Plenty of light for drawing. And it had blissful air conditioning, which was good because the whole limousine ride and red carpet stuff was blindingly hot - 102 degrees! As long as I had to wear a black wool suit, it was better to be indoors with the AC. 

     The small notebook worked out well, considering. It's easier to draw on the train, and I get better ideas when I'm clickity-clacking upon wheels of steel. But it was still a good time to draw, because nobody was bothering me and I had nowhere else I needed to be. 

     I didn't ink these at the show (Ha! That would be funny). I inked them later when I was sitting in my studio. 

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     *[I wrote for an episode of Disney's Phineas and Ferb: The Doonkleberry Imperitive. It was up for an Emmy in the category of Best Animated Program, Short Format. But we lost out to The Regular Show]

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Found by a Wanted Man

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     You are wondering if light bulbs really shave. 

     They absolutely do.

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     I did this one on the train last Friday, after grumbling (to myself) about one of my posted drawings being a little too "normal". I could have pushed the creativity a lot farther. 

     Is it possible that I'm getting a little burned out? Possible. This trick of drawing something every business day does take a fair amount of time and effort. But I probably just need to slow down a little bit. Take a drawing "vacation", as it were. 

     In that vein, I've already done my drawings for this week. They are solid drawings, but simple. I found myself sitting in one place for four hours last weekend (and I knew I would be ahead of time), so I took a small sketchbook and doodled out a bunch of simple stuff. 

   So now the pressure is off this week, which means that I can become seized by a new cool fancy drawing, or I can just sit back and daydream as I look out of the window of the train. 

Sub

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Barn Stormer

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Here is a mellow piece of art. Or what *I* consider to be mellow. A few characters floating around in space, with no real background to speak of. To my mind, this isn't really the kind of piece that will resonate with people. 

But I've learned to stuff my preconceptions about my art in the trash because-

It turns out that I am a horrible judge of what pieces of mine will resonate with people. Sometimes the drawings that I think are just so-so get a HUGE reaction, and vice versa. I've learned (at this late point in my life) that my job is to draw a whole lot, and then to throw absolutely everything at the viewing audience so that they can do their job, which is to decide what's worthwhile and what's not. 

True story about an artist who had no idea which of his works would resonate or not: 

Rod Stewart, the singer (look him up, you young whippersnappers) almost didn't have a career, but he put one of the songs he thought was pretty lame, Maggie May, on the B side of one of his singles. A bleary eyed late-night radio DJ mistakenly put it on one night, and the song took off like a rocket. Rod Stewart got to have his singing career after all, but he had to learn to put ALL of his songs out there where people could hear them. After that, he learned what his job really was.  

Joan Rivers put it another way. She said that when she was young and just starting out, her intention was to be a great actress. But just in case the actress thing didn't open up for her, she learned how to dance, how to sing and as an afterthought, how to tell some jokes up on stage -and that turned out to be her big break. She has often said, "I wanted to get into the world of show business, and I was smart enough to walk through any door door that opened for me". Wise woman, Joan Rivers. 

So yeah, the lesson is to put it all out there. Even if you think it's only so-so. 

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