Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!

Hey, after all the cloak-and-dagger exactly one of my latest pen products is unveiled; a little teaser, as it were, on the client's website. A simple feline character for all the cat lovers among you and, now that I think of it, right in tune with the latest pop culture phenomenon, the piratical anti-hero. Not that this furry little fellow is 'anti-anything' but he does have a big hat. And an eyepatch. And a sword. And a boat! Cool!

A seafaring cat.(Should that be hyphenated, I wonder?)Who'da thunk it?!?

Anyway, check it out if you've a mind to, right here:

Affable Comics' Uncle Fritz

Watch for more. Soon. Right here. Yay!

Burnin' the midnight oil

And how! It's been an exciting week- or has it been two? -it's all kinda run together, working up designs for several animation projects. What a blast! Definitely getting a workout for my under-utilized drawing skills; largely relegated to weekend doodles for, oh, nearly twenty years, they seem to be more than usable if not magnificent. Gimme a coupla weeks, he said, mustering a heaping helping of humility upon gentle self-deprecation, and it'll be at least super duper, Mr. Hooper.

The drawback- as always seems to be the case with illustrative endeavors -is the time factor. Ever since my high school art teacher, Mr. Klopp, recruited me to draw this and that for local businesses and what have you, everybody who needs art needs their drawing yesterday if not sooner! If I think about it honestly though, it's probably good for me: If I had three weeks to draw a stick man, I'd likely put it off until the night before anyway!

At any rate, I'll let you be the judge of their worth as soon as I can show them off. Right now it's still under wraps and highly guarded stuff(play 007 theme music here). But I think it'll be a swell credit and readily visible as an example of what I can accomplish when I knuckle down and put my mind and my pencil to work. Who knows, might be the thing that makes the next needful client say, 'Hey! Let's get that guy! He doesn't stink... and he probably works cheap!'

And that's all that's been going on of note really. Dry weather so mowing is unnecessary. Been too busy drawing for baseball or softball or volleyball. Waiting and watching the mailbox every day for two, count 'em two, oversized Cisco Kid coloring books. Which in all likelihood I won't color, just put them with the rest of the Cisco and Bonanza and Star Trek and Batman gewgaws and doodads, pull 'em out and look at 'em every so often.

At any rate, tomorrow's gonna be a long day. Resting my drawing hand until the weekend, taking a drive up country to see some places and things I'm sure I've never seen before. Worry about the cost of gasoline later... Honk, honk!

See how it all came back around to 'burnin' oil'... >bing!<

 

Highlights

...of the week include a walk in the sun con mi hijo. While mi esposa was off running errands all day and el carro numero dos is now officially a lawn ornament- soon to be replaced by another not-very-late model classic, more on that as details become available -we bravely braved the noonday sun and took off a pia for the Dover PO. Might be a two mile stretch, probably no more. But along the way we wet our heads and hats in a conveniently placed shrubbery sprinkler, thank you very much, and stopped on a bridge to watch a few oversized crawdads darting about in the stream below. We were hopeful of seeing one snag a passing minnow or at least get into a knock-down, drag-out claw fight but I guess they just weren't in the mood. So we amused ourselves waving our hands, making shadows on the water's surface, causing the mini-lobsters to dart away seeking shelter under rocks in the streambed.

Another notable moment was station-hopping the car radio and hearing the last verse or two of '99 Luftballoons', huzzah, huzzah. I forget who recorded this 80s one-hit-wonder of a classic but it has a line that goes, 'Everyone's a superhero, everyone's a Captain Kirk!' Hahahaa, so cool! Quite thrilling for this once-and-future Trekkie and card carrying aficianado of cape-and-tights comic book protagonists.

It was probably my favorite wacky Euro-disco-bubblegum ditty- C'mon, honestly, everybody has one, it's just nobody wants to admit to it! -until that little blonde girl came along singing... ohhh, what was that song now?!? Boy, I can see her in the video floating on a raft or an inner tube or something... singing in a breathy, little girl voice, 'Love me, love me, say that you love me...' Well, it'll come to me when I least expect it, I'm sure.

Gosh, I hope none of my erstwhile heavy metal pals read this...

Oh, and the last highlight: Boggle. Y'know, Boggle? The word game where you shake the cubes and have to form the random assortment of letters into as many words as possible before the sand runs outta the hourglass? Well, naturally it's available to play on the web with total strangers from who knows where with even stranger screen names. Oh, and fair warning: It is as addictive as anything known to man. The first night I spent hours playing it and it's drawn me back practically every day since. I can't type so muchas hunt-and-peck with two, sometimes three fingers, so it's hit-or-miss to say the least trying to get as many words down as possible. But I generally manage to end up somewhere in the middle of the pack, not among the brain surgeons or rocket scientists but not the  bottom of the barrel either.

Which, I suppose, makes me just average... yay.

Anyway, here's the link. WeBoggle  And don't say I didn't warn you!

Goin's on

Well, it's another exciting week at the ranch. Making rubber goods and drawing drawings for a fellow toy/comic geek and his startup animation project, all very top-secret at this stage of the game, but it's cool stuff and great opportunity to stretch some under-used drawing muscles. Plenty more to come in the next few weeks too, yay! He seems real happy to have the things he's thought up taking shape and it's a little mutual admiration society of two for the nonce, until it all goes public in one form or another. All I can show you right now is the 'brand' I made up for myself to add to the copyright info on each image, pasted in my Bittersweet Art Album. I like it, based on my usual scribble of a first-name-only signature, it's simple and elegant all at once. Well, okay, maybe it's not so elegant...

Boy, after all that rain a few weeks ago it's dry as a bone now in the wake of the oppressive heat of last week. So my big lawn mowing assignment was a no-go as there wasn't much growth to speak of. But here at home I got my licks in mowing my own little tract- about fifteen minutes worth -and that of the two neighbor ladies on either side. It's funny, as a kid we had sixty acres of campground to tend and probably half of that was grass so there was no shortage of mowing week in and week out, all summer long. Year after year. It got to be a drag, to put it mildly. Later I guess I still wasn't a fan of the job while living at home, especially during the time my Dad and I cut grass for a living. Now, of course, it reminds me of those times and I get real satisfaction from a newly cut lawn, manicured and trimmed out. I still don't care for raking the clippings though...

Yesterday and today

...have pretty much run together like the proverbial watercolor in the rain. The last week or so has been fairly miserable, sleep-deprived anyway, go figure. Not 'deprived' so much as fitful, dream-filled periods of somnolence. Not fun dreams either, more like, well, let's just say... well, let's not say. It ain't flying or falling, just put it that way. It's not caffeine because I'm not a devotee of the coffee bean and we don't keep my beverage of choice, green tea, around the house because when we do I drink too much and/or too close to bedtime and get the twitches or just plain non-sleep-itis. I guess it must be all the excitement of the daytime heat- global warming is just a myth, really! -and nighttime television or vintage DVD selections, too much to keep up with; finished first seasons of Superman and Big Valley but I've got  Zorro, Cisco Kid and Hanna Barbera cartoon superheroes to catch up on yet.

  No, it ain't that either, I've really slowed down the vintage TV viewing the past two weeks. They're still coming in here and there but I've been filing them away for another day, too time-consuming to watch everything at once! This week it's late nights with a drawing assignment, lotta fun but a lot of work too. Funny how what seems like it oughta be a breeze upfront can be not so breezy once you get your feet wet. But it's good exercise for my under-utilized drawing chops, fer sure. Not much drawing involved in my little rubber-and-paint enterprise so when I gets the chance to drag a pencil around for a few days it's a good thing.

   In other, uh, art news: Today, er, yesterday I painted the lawn mower. Spray paint. Flat grill black and metallic crimson. What fun. It just came back from my pal, Jerry, who cleaned the carb, changed the oil- you do that on lawn mowers too?!? -and sharpened the blade. Don't ask me how he did the last because I tried to remove and replace the blade a while back and there was no loosening that bad boy after years of service. So I just kept a-goin' as is, long as it would start. Which it always has, it's gotta be ten years old, more, because I got when we had our own place, first lawn I had to mow. Hundred bucks and it's started like a champ ever since, coupla priming pumps, one pull, two at most and away it goes. Well, ya gotta push it, of course. I never did cotton to self-propelled.

   Anyway, Jerry- two doors down and a mechanically inclined sort, not to mention an all-around swell fellow -said he was tired of hearing it rumble and spit like it was dyin' and he was sure I was no longer cutting the grass so much as beatin' it down so he took it away for a few days, gave me a loaner and brought mine back yesterday. I thought as long as it was fixed up elsewise I might as well apply a little paint, spruce up some rust spots and places in the deck where it was rotted through and spot-welded together. Didn't have a red to match exactly so the metallic crimson served for the nonce. I may go all flat black before I'm done, I don't know. That's about as big a decision as has come around lately. At any rate, I can hardly wait to cut the grass again and see how it runs like a top after its long overdue pit stop. Then again, five minutes of pushing in this heat is about all I can take all at once. Yow! So it's a mixed blessing...

  Anyway, it's too late to do anything but ramble- not that there's anything weightier ever goin' on here -and it's tomorrow already. Too soon it'll be another fun-filled day of adventure and unexpected thrills! Gotta be ready so I gotta go sleep! Perchance to dream, don' cha know?!?