Perseids

Excited by a tidbit of news on my welcome screen I raced out of doors at the stroke of midnight, hopped my bicycle and pedaled for the park next door in hopes of finding a suitably bedarkened piece of real estate from which to view the expected meteor shower.

Alas, while there was, as foretold, no moon to obfuscate the streaking arcs, there was in place of that orb plenty of slow moving cloud cover. Waahh. Still, it was a pleasant interlude, quiet and still around the neighborhood with a soft breeze wafting about.

In other news: Despite the pressing presence of several crafting projects here in the toy lab I succumbed to a wild hair and created a new cartoon self-portrait. Like one wasn't enough! But as much as I like my Classic Plastick 'retro logo' I've always held a slight sneaking grudge because it wasn't my own rendering but that of a talented patron of my homespun enterprise pitching in with some unsolicited- but welcome, to be sure! -signage. We made some kind of deal with my makings for his graphical input and both came away happy little toy geeks.

Anyway, I figure this new cartoon'll serve as a little calling card, as it were, for graphical employment and the like.

It reminds me of my last self-portrait done as a drawing class assignment in art school. Simply in subject matter, not in style or execution. It was in all modesty a quantum leap in my rendering skills at the time as I devoted hours and hours and hours to it, trying not only to create a realistic portrait but also to replicate the aesthetic stylings of my wizardly professor. The head and hands were drawn separately and added into the whole as 'puzzle parts' of a sort with miscellaneous doodads drawn into the clothing in a non-sequitur approach to illustrative ornamentation. I was growing my hair out at that point and still wearing suspenders as a fashion statement. Or I drew them in so I could add buttons and hanging things onto them, I forget which.

But, sad to say, it disappeared somewhere not too long after I came home from school. I know there were times thereafter when I cleaned out sketchbooks and loose drawings, gleaningthose worth saving and pitching the detritus of three years of doodling and printmaking and drawing but what became of that particular drawing I just don't know. It was practically life sized so it's not as if it would have slipped away undetected on its own...

Anyway, here's the new calling card for your perusal. I may have to see about registering a site name for drawing bidness as it might be a wee bit confusing for the uninitiated to navigate from the front page of the toy making site to the drawing archives. We'll see: