Man in Yellow Vest — #35 at the DMV Watching TV

Borrowed ballpoint pen on the back of an “Assigning A ND VIN Plate Procedure” form with a "US Passport Fee" plastic display stand used as a hard surface.

“What is that you have?” Deedra, the DMV attendant, asked as I stepped to the counter. “I drew this guy” I said “while waiting.” She laughed. “I call it ‘Man in Yellow Vest’” I said. “I’m a big Wes Anderson fan” Deedra said. “I have all his movies at home and when you said Man in Yellow Vest, I immediately thought ‘Boy with Apple’ — the painting playing a pivotal backstory in The Grand Budapest Hotel.” We shared a laugh as Deedra said, “you made my day.”

TIRESIAS’ DAUGHTER — Travel Agency Logo for a Man Who Played the Blind-Seer at Armory Theatre

This is the way the blind man comes, lock-step, two heads lit by the eyes of one. Blind as a bat, yet more cunning than Bruce Wayne, more omniscient than the hundred-eyed giant, Argus.

You’ve seen it all — from Amphion’s tortoise shell guitar, gifted by the swift-footed Hermes, charming the stones into the seven-gated walls of Thebes; you too have been know to make stones move, trees to speak, cedars and firs to march to the Song of Solomon.

You Augur, with your understood relations, have by maggot-pies, and choughs and rooks brought forth the secret’st man of blood.

Who can withstand Zeus’ indignation? Who can endure his fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire; the rocks are shattered like fire. Yet that same fire bestowed upon you, Tiresias, in an act of illuminating sympathy by the hand of god after his spiteful wife plucked out your eyes long before Oedipus Rex took his own.

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this gift clean from your mind? No, this your mind will rather the multitudinous deeds divine making the unknown known.

Not only do you see a wide swath like Helios’ arc ‘cross the sky sitting in your chair of augury in a whirlwind of wings clashing, you Birdman, but you don’t forget either. Even in death the implacable muse held your head above water wading through The River of Forget on your way to see the secret, black and midnight brother of the one who bestowed your seeing.

While every other soul in Sheol is a pale shade of near nothingness, you retain your cognizance, your memory, your ability. When wily Ulysses and his Ithicans fight their way through Hell to find you and divine your secret to click their heels home; offering blood, fending off the surrounding zombies; when you speak, do they listen Mr. Wizard?

History is the great teacher — the farther you look back the farther you see forward, but it also has the least apt pupils. The Trojan Horse men made mince-meat of Helios’ sacred cows against your better judgment. Those sailors supp’d full of horrors; direness, familiar to their slaughtering of the cattle on a thousand hills cannot once start them.

Did they pay the price? Did Oedipus before being beamed up in apotheosis like fire in the sky in a hidden grove of Sophocles’ home-village as his two daughters witnessed no martyr’d bones for Cain and Able to pick over?

Did Creon, more draconian and hardened by pride-of-state than the sown dragon fangs of Cadmus? As he desperately tried to understand pummeling the labyrinth walls like a raging bull. Clawing the jewels from his crown for pawn diminishing Thebes’ to that of synthetic gold from Sardis. Kings have always loved brass, just as prophets have always loved gold. He tried to understand, never seeing eyes so blue. Mamma Mia Jocasta says she’s worried, Antigone’s growin’ up in a hurry. Creon, try to understand, try to understand, try, try, try to understand — which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not — he’s a magic man...(cue Greek chorus).

peanut portraits — a chance encounter

“I knew Charles Schulz” Shannon said as I scribbled her caricature in thick-black outline in the back corner of an award ceremony at the Grand Williston Hotel. “You knew ‘The’ Charles Schulz?” I said. “Yes” she said. “The legendary creator of ‘Peanuts’ Charles Schulz?” “Yes” she said, “he taught at Northern Illinois in the early nineties when I was an art undergraduate.” “Must’ve been surreal” I said, “being under the tutelage of the most influential cartoonist of the twentieth century?” “I was too young to comprehend how important he is at the time, but looking back I know now I was in the presence of a true-creator.” “Wow...” I said, “what was his teaching like?” “He made us draw from life a lot” she said. “Still lifes?” I said, “models, figures, busts...?” “Yes” Shannon said, “All that. And we’d go out as a class and draw landscapes, trees on campus, and cars in the parking lot...anything in life was fair game.” As I finished the drawing with the next eager person in line, I shook Shannon’s hand and said “Thank you for your story on a man who’s had resounding influence on aspiring creatives like me.”

As I packed up after drawing the six stylists at ‘All the Rage’ hair studio over two near-beers after the show, and blowin’ n’ goin’ to the American State Bank back lot with spray-fixative aerosol cans jingling in my cartoon-supply messenger-bag ascending to the downtown loft, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Shannon said, “He made us draw from life a lot...”

I pulled ‘Hot Tips: From Top Comic Creators’ off the book shelf. A book I bought over twenty years ago at Gatekeeper Comic, Topeka, Kansas on 29th and Macvicar before it relocated off Gage Avenue next to Churchill’s the cigar shop. It’s a quote book from cartoon professionals sharing their hard-earned industry secrets. I scoured every page looking for Schulz quotes in hopes I’d glean more insight from the man who had more impact on the industry than most cartoonists dream of and told a woman I just met that life drawing is the foundation for an arts education.

I came to a quote halfway through the book on page sixty-one, “People always used to ask me about what they call writer’s block. I say writer’s block is for amateurs. Cartoonists are like professional actors. The curtain goes up and you step out on stage and you do it. A cartoonist knows that the paper comes out every day, and so you do it.” I laughed as rain sprinkled the skylight overhead and kept reading.

I sifted through Schulz quotes on editors preferring reliability and consistency over quality, to being mindful of falling into slumps where you can’t judge your work. Towards the latter third of the book on page seventy-eight in the chapter ‘Style, Shapes and Substance’ a ‘Peanuts’ creator quote rang true to what Shannon told me earlier —

“There was an old time cartoonist, Frank Wing, and he was of the school where everything should be drawn quite accurately. I used to listen to him telling students, ‘Draw from life, draw from life. Take a shoe and place it across the room from yourself and draw it from different angles. Draw the wrinkles in people’s clothes.’ From that you can later exaggerate in your drawing.”

An artist known the world over for cartooning over-sized headed children in squiggly black ink for nearly five decades, told his students, quoting the realist, Frank Wing, that life drawing is the truest path to higher creative draftsmanship. “Know the rules, which can take half a lifetime to begin to comprehend, before you break them...” I thought. Here’s to you Mr. Schulz; I’ll look at your wobbly- lined renditions of Charlie and Lucy under a different light. I won’t just see sine-wave doodles that steadily got shakier as essential tremors progressed in your sixties to late seventies, but a craftsman who put in the countless time to master the minutia of life drawing to better form the Peanuts gang that’s transcended popular culture to this day. All while sharing this knowledge with a young student thirty years ago who I met today.

MICHAELA

Quick #2 pencil life sketch at Ol' Armory, heat mounted on matte board, brushed india-ink, blended chalk pastel with plastic eraser highlights and signed with Fantasia color pencil.

Mercury rising

Ballpoint pen, chisel tip Sharpie & highlighters waiting for the rainbow wheel on the screen keeps on turnin' - I'm lookin' at you Mac-Mini...taken home from the rag, Prismacolor marker'd, level-crunch'd in Photochop n' kiss'd with a 2D-Strip 'Color Lookup.'

People say they like my ol' ginger look and that I resemble Freddie Mercury. All I hear is referential goo goo, misreferenced blah blah.

For you I'd write a symphony. I'd tell the violin it's time to sink r' swim when you compare me to Sacha Baron Cohen.

I just need somebody to love, oh, no no no no. I don't need too much. Just somebody to love that it hurts when you compare me to Wyatt Earp.

Too late, my time has come. Sends shivers down my spine, body's achin' all the time. Good bye everybody, I gotta go when y'all compare me to Vernon Wells in Arnold Schwarzenegger's 'Commando.'

James Anthony

Acrylic paint and color pencil highlight on 9” x 12” tan paper from life.

Shakespeare's Macbeth Script Illustrations and Transcription

"...Shakespeare possessed so enormously — Negative Capability — when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason..."

— John Keats

Shakespeare not judging his characters, is the ideal to Keats, instead opening himself up to their worlds and expressing the reality of even those considered evil. The need for certainly is the greatest disease the mind faces.

Tommy Teton Animation Pitch

I met Caitlin Pallai, the Communication Specialist at Williston State College at the monthly figure drawing session and she expressed interest in a 2D animation commercial to market what the university has to offer. I sketched this character based on their current Teton logo channeling Chris Farley’s ‘Tommy Boy.’

I TURN HOME

I TURN HOME...

“Is that the wind?” I asked from the north end of Williston State College’s drawing room. “Yes” Caitlin said as she modeled in repose for the monthly figure-drawing session as it beat the metal-on-metal Morton building housing the university’s art department. “It’s so loud” I said, “is it raining too?” “No” she said, “if it were raining it’d be louder.” We continued capturing Caitlin’s long n’ lithe profile in a semi-circle as wind howled against the tin can. “I hope my new roof isn’t this loud” Daphne said from the cresent-shaped easels. “Is it metal?” Kathy asked. “Yes” Daphne said. We all grimaced silently as the Short-Grass-Prairie wind ripped across us. “Lino calls it ‘The Marching Army’” Caitlin said. “No kiddin’” I said, “sounds like Genghis Khan crossing Eurasia.”

We sketched in silence through poses as the wind clanked our rectangle-dwelling into submission. The wind stopped and it got silent with the sound being our four pencils scribbling. After a moment of reprieve Caitlin said “It makes me nervous when it gets like this...” “Right” I said, “calm before the storm.” But the rain never came remaining motionless. We doodled in silence until breaking at twilight with sunrays penetrating the Step-Plains east of Williston in a kaleidoscope of gradation.

I Chevy’d home to the laboratory past the giant, docile American flag looming above Williams County Courthouse with a Badlands rendition of Dalton Trumbo’s verse from Kubrick’s “Spartacus” on my lips —

“When the blazing sun hangs low in the western sky. When the ‘squitos buzz in the Missouri no more, when Lake Sakakawea sleeps like a maiden at rest, when twilight touches the shape of the wandering earth and the wind dies away in The Bakken...I turn home. Through blue shadows and purple woods, I turn home. To Mamma Mia! who bore me and step-daddy who taught me. Long ago, long ago, long ago. Alone am I now lost and alone in a far, wide, wandering world. Yet still, when the sun hangs low, when Bird-Woman sleeps, when twilight touches the earth and the wind dies away...I turn home.”

TWIN FALLS FAREWELL

Semi n’ pumpjack tattoo bartop brainstorm, ballpoint-pen on Buffalo Wild Wings napkin.

“You’re an artist” Clint said pointing to me, “and you’re a tattooist” saying to James. “Sketch a semi in silhouette like this...” as he outlined a big-rig profile, “and I’ll have James ink it on my thigh.” “Alright” I said sipping a lemon seltzer with too much rocks. “Maybe throw in an oil-well...” he said. I humored him given his decade long on-n-off relationship with The Bakken before trekkin’ a stone’s throw from home in Pocatello...

Monkeying the Mouse

READING, WRITING and SKETCHING from Robert Greene's "Mastery," while transcribing Richard Williams' "Animation Survival Guide," mimicking Mickey from a 'Dole' celery wrapper commemorating ninety years of redefining global entertainment and aping a logo from a skater brand, Volcom — a derivative of Vulcan — the crippled Roman smith god who captured passionate War (Ares) and adulterous Beauty (Aphrodite) in an unbreakable net personifying the role of art in visual metaphor.

I finished Greene's "Mastery" enjoying the closing statement on following that "still, small voice that says, 'This might work, I'll try it'" according to Diane Mariechild. Here's my paraphrase:

Not striving for mastery leads to feelings of powerlessness and disappointment. This leads to enslavement of the FALSE SELF — accumulation of voices of conformity — parents, friends, society and ego to adhere to seductive values. EGO protects from unflattering truth and speaks lucidly, "Mastery is for geniuses, the lucky. It's immoral and ugly only for ambitious and egotistical. Accept your lot. It's too hard, why bother with pain?" EGO LIES — mastery isn't genetic or luck but following natural inclination of deep desire WITHIN. Not motivated by egotism or sheer ambition for power; emotions blocking mastery. Instead it's a deep expression of something natural marking you at birth as unique. Follow this INCLINATION to climb to mastery and contribute to society, enriching it with discovery and insight while making the most of the diversity of nature.

The height of SELFISHNESS is consumption of what others create and retreating in a shell of limited goals and immediate pleasure. Alienating from inclination leads to long-term pain and disappointment for trashing uniqueness expressed in bitterness and envy as the taproot of depression.

TRUE SELF doesn't speak in banality. It comes from DEEP WITHIN — from the substrata of psyche, embedded physically WITHIN YOU — emanating uniqueness through sensation and powerful desire that seems to transcend you. It's unknowable why you're drawn to certain activities or forms of knowledge. It can't be verbally explained — it's simply a fact of nature. Follow this voice to realize your potential satisfying your deep longing to create and express your uniqueness. It exists for a purpose — it's your LIFE'S TASK to bring it to FRUITION.

— Robert Greene (paraphrase)

Copy of Tinteretto's Emperor Vitellius

It’s always good to copy master works to see how artists past worked out problems to save face.

Christmas Story

Flyers and stage design concept art for Entertainment Inc’s. “A Christmas Story” on stage in Williston, North Dakota.

Entertainment INC! — audtion form redesign

I tried out for the local play in Williston, ND — A Christmas Carol. After the audition, Kyla, the producer, asked, “Will you please redesign our audition form.” Here is the result…