642 Things to Draw

The By-Product will achieve its tenth year early in 2018, believe it or not! It has more than 3000 distinct images and with a few interruptions has been posted every day. So many things to draw....am I running out of vintage art, and am I running out of ideas to draw? Or "reality" things to draw, how many wastebaskets or wine glasses can I depict? I found an answer in what might be called a "play sketchbook" for artists. It's called "642 Things to Draw" and I found it on the "art inspiration" table at Plaza Arts. Each page of this chunky book has one or two places reserved for drawings, and at the top is the art  prompt word. My opportunity is to make a drawing inspired by the word. At first I was sniffy about it, since Real Professional Artists don't need kiddie prompts to get ideas. But then, why not. So I now have 642 places to put a clever sketch, each with a different prompt word. Many of the prompts are ordinary things like "salt shaker," or "spiral bound notebook," but others are fanciful. I intend to be fanciful all the way through, using the prompt to do visual puns, funny stuff, scary stuff, cartoons, twisted little draws, and surrealism.

I still have plenty of vintage art to scan and show, so you will never be rid of my fan art. I will also be doing plenty more Geometrika. I'm not giving up reality drawings either. My drawings from 642 will be identified as "642" and since every page is more or less the same size (7" x 9") I'll just quote the prompt word and maybe say a little about the drawing. Here the prompt word is "Footprints." Something is happening to the human who is making these footprints. What is it? The line is part of the divider between two prompt areas.

So get ready for creativity and feel free to comment. The "642" book is published by Chronicle Books in (where else?) San Francisco. 

Unicorn Fail

And here are the other two panel illustrations for the "King and Unicorn" story. They were published in a fan magazine called "Fesarius" in mid-1984. In the top panel the young King meets with a richly dressed woman who is not an aristocrat but the Madam of the whole town. The lower panel shows the Unicorn's horn becoming less....horny. There you have it. 

Black ink on illustration board, 2 panels on page 7" x 10", summer 1984.

Molesting the Unicorn

Once upon a time there was a young king who went on a quest to find himself a bride. For the usual dynastic reasons, she needed to be a virgin. To assure that she was, he took along a Unicorn with him on his royal progress. Unicorns, as is known in fantasy, will not allow any non-virgin to ride them, and are uneasy in the presence of, uh, sexually active people. The king realized he was going to have a problem from the very first village he visited. The Unicorn stood unridden and upset, because every woman from adult to child (yes, children too) turned out not to be a virgin, in fact they were all for sale. Isn't that cute? Now that we are hearing what happens to women of all ages in the presence of powerful men, these "ribald" stories just aren't that entertaining. At least they weren't for me. I didn't like the story, but I did the illustrations anyway. You didn't talk about those things in 1984.

Black ink on illustration board, 8 1//2" x 11", summer 1984. Click for larger view.

Geometric Sunset Remix

Once I draw a geometrikon (or anything) on paper, I have the option of coloring it in Photoshop and then re-coloring the original in colored pencil or watercolor or markers. Using the terminology of recorded music, this would be a "re-mix." Here's the re-mix of my entry for November 17 of this year, done with colored pencils. The color of the background is done in Photoshop. After the mixed media, I leave it alone.

I guess the "Mike" who comments here is the Canadian composer though there are at least two more "Mikes" it could be. Yes, the Amgyal white dwarf planet has been blogged before but in a previous blog I produced from 2004 - 2008. That was "Electron Blue" which was much more wordy and less illustrated than the current By-product. Here is the Amgyal entry from November 2007. That was 10 years ago! Has Mike really been reading this old Blog? If so, I'm amazed. I still have an "Electron Blue" blog but it isn't very active these days. There are always gateways to the world of Noantri if anyone is interested.

Mixed media on sketchbook page, 5 1/2" x 2", November-December 2017.

Amgyal, the dead planet

This is an image from my own imaginary world, the world of Noantri. It is a view of the surface of the planet Amgyal, orbiting a white dwarf star named Tur. This planet, among others, was one of the bases for the Great Gate through which the Noantri people passed to settle on New  Earth.

Amgyal had once been a thriving center of an ancient civilization, a place with beautiful, technically advanced cities and a benevolent technology. Tur was not a white dwarf then. Something happened on planet Amgyal that induced the sunlike yellow dwarf to go nova. Within seconds, Amgyal had been crushed into a radioactive wasteland unable to support life. The black ruins at bottom are the remains of one of their cities.

The line you see at bottom with a few red lights is a surface transport channel. When the Noantri built their gateway system, a project that took centuries, they dug through the ruins to build an underground city which would support a Gate. The surface transport channel was heavily shielded against the radiation from Tur. Only a few technicians or adventurers ever walked on the surface itself, and they could not do so without protective space suits. 

The only life left on Amgyal was bacteria and fungi underground. If the explorers looked hard enough, they could find tiny plants in the old ruined places, which had evolved to survive deadly radiation. Amgyal was locked down to the Noantri public and they were sent through the Gate as quickly as possible to minimize radiation exposure.

Only a few of the Noantri on New Earth, those in the psionic community, know what really happened to Amgyal, and they have devoted their lives to making sure it doesn't happen to New Earth.

Digital on Photoshop, 6" x 4", 2007.

Sunny Corner 1974

In my younger days I was much influenced by early 20th century printed advertising. The ads for home care products were especially attractive to me. These images, originally painted in watercolor, portrayed the mundane kitchen as a place of lightness and enchantment, presided over by a spotless lady in a glowing apron. Imitating that style, I tried to portray my own dwelling in that way. The light-filled corner is softened by sheer curtains. The triangular corner desk, made by my father, bears objects I had brought with me from college: an empty aquarium, a duffel bag, and some of the plants I grew even in my small dorm room. After all these years I can't remember what the central plant with the pink flowers was. I think it was an impatiens.

Watercolor and pencil on sketchbook page, 5 1/2" x 9", July 9, 1974. Click on image for larger view.

Left-Handed Writer Cuts off Own Head: Graphic Details

On a bright warm September day I drew outside and found this scene in front of Starbucks. The girl was absorbed in writing in her journal. I wanted to see her face but my viewpoint and her arm's perspective almost entirely cut off her head. If she had been right-handed this wouldn't have happened. So I got a faceless and rather anxious-looking writer. She couldn't see me, either. It was one of those nothing moments in time which has now been recorded in the journal of life, possibly for centuries. You never know.

Black tech pen ink on sketchbook page, about 5" x 6", September 8, 1999.