Ketchup spoon

This Just In!

Why did they bury a story like this on page 12?

Shark on Driveway

See the finished drawing at Rachel Draws A Lot.

Crane on Couch

Mr. Anteater Does Not Suffer Fools Gladly.

Art Lesson

I'm sitting on the couch, drawing with my daughter Rachel. I'm drawing the couch we're sitting on, and the bookshelves next to it - just a little perspective drawing. She's watching, and guessing what I'm going to draw next. I draw one of her drawings in a large frame hanging above the couch. She turns around and looks at the bare wall and says "Where is it?!".

More soon. . .

The suspense is just killing you, isn't it?

Mr. Anteater Stars in the 100th FIMP Book of the Month

Here's the cover to September's Book of the Month. Back in 2000 I mailed out A Short Short Fairy Tail Tale to a few folks. I never suspected I'd still be making these tiny books ten years later. This month's offering is the 100th book in the series.

Liftoff! Rachel draws an animal in a rocket.

For more of Rachel's drawings visit Rachel Draws A Lot.

If it were up to my daughter, I would just make contour drawings.

Our house is full of tiny creatures.

Critique

Meat Motor

charcoal and acrylic, 20" x 20"

The Scrambler

skate park

in the desert

Loud Duck.

Stampede!

The Green in Greensburg - Alternative Energy

Greensburg's way ahead of the curve when it comes to alternative sources of energy. We have drawn on the enormous potential of trees to power the grid. Here's one of the tree-outlets. It's kind of like tapping them for maple syrup. . . you'd be amazed at how much electricity is generated by all of those fluttering leaves.

How To Draw Ernest Hemingway, FIMP's 3rd How To Draw book

"How To Draw Ernest Hemingway" will be arriving in FIMP Book of the Month Club subscribers' mailboxes in the next couple of days - it went to the post office this afternoon.

"How To Draw Ernest Hemingway" is the third of FIMP's "How To Draw" books, which have included "How To Draw Jean Paul Sartre (With Genuine Human Dignity)" and "How To Draw Sigmund Freud (And Your Subconscious Reasons For Doing So)".

My standard disclaimer is, of course, that you will learn absolutely nothing useful about drawing by reading these books.

A Face

More of Rachel's drawings at Rachel Draws A Lot.

Another Motor

charcoal and acrylic, 12" x 16"

Motor

charcoal and acrylic, 20" x 20"

My 4 year old explains things.

"The moon goes around the earth. The earth goes around the sun. The sun is in the middle. The dinosaurs stay in the museum. The museum stays in Pittsburgh."



More of Rachel's drawings at Rachel Draws A Lot.

Before and After

"Before and After" is the 98th tiny book published by the Fiji Island Mermaid Press. It's not my usual practice to reproduce the entire book on the blog right after it's been sent out to FIMP Book of the Month subscribers, but this one is dealing with the ongoing oil spill, and it seems to make sense to put it out there while that horrible situation is still unfolding.

I'm happy with this month's book for a couple of reasons. Back in my graduate school days at Indiana University I studied concrete poetry with Mary Ellen Solt, and this book puts some of those ideas to use. She was a great professor - I remember her passing out her syllabus in two week increments over the course of the semester, as she was putting the class together as she went along, being responsive to what was happening with the students. Pretty amazing for someone who was near the end of a long teaching career. If she were still around I'd send her one of these. . .

I'm pleased with the way this book translates to xerox. As a printmaker I always feel like my work should take advantage of the peculiar strengths of whatever medium I'm working in, and that includes xerography. I don't always achieve that, but in this case the xerox did nice things to the pages that include both laser-printed and rubber-stamped text. Things that I wanted it to do, like increasing the contrast and making them less distinct from each other, so that the "OIL" stamp takes a few more seconds to read as something other than just pattern and noise. In the xerox, you're much more likely to see the page as a picture first, before you start reading, than you do with the "printing plate" from which the xerox is made. It's nice when things like that actually work out the way you hoped they would.

And I'm happy that the front and back covers are full participants in the little drama of the book. I especially like the back cover - I sacrificed the usual FIMP logo for the drama of the black swallowing up the page.

So, anyway, I'm happy with this one, and that's why. I wish the subject matter were something less awful. There's something that makes me sick.