Vacationing With Tweety and Sylvester

I did this illustration for an article about vacationing with pets. A concept I've never had the luxury to explore, but, hey, there are people whose pets have more disposable income than I do.

Life is a Quest

I did this illustration for Buddhadharma magazine, art directed by Seth Levinson. The article was about finding ones way among many options. Sometimes a metaphor, like this signpost, seems inanimate and I want to add some life to it. I often add birds. They add color too. It's an apt choice in this case, because birds are migratory, and have an admirable sense of direction. The last thing I added was the blue drop shadows, to give it a suggestion of sunshine.

Mr. Park Ranger

When I think of park rangers I think of Yogi Bear and a song starts going through my head. It's going through my head now and will continue to for most of the afternoon. Cartoons are a constant influence. Mostly Bullwinkle, but also Quickdraw and Yogi and Babalooey. I've always worked with brush on paper. Adding digital color to a brushed line, as I did in this piece for the Sunday LA Times, brings me closer to the look of flat paint on cartoon cels. It's a bright, interesting look, and a new variation for me. I've always admired people like Seymour Chwast and Steve Guarnaccia for their pure colors, without drying lines. This brings me closer to that too. But I still use a brush and a pencil.

Birdy with a yellow bill

I was reading a piece Roy Blount wrote for the Times about E. B. White. He was remembering an essay White wrote about robins, which made me think of this painting I did a few years ago, thinking it would look nice on a magazine cover in April. I associate robins with the New Yorker. Abe Birnbaum did a perfect cover painting of a robin once. Maira Kalman did a wonderful robin too. There is something about the orange and the dark gray just lighter than black, the yellow bill, the spindly yellow legs. I identify with them, apart from the bill, and the orange and dark gray. The way they listen by cocking their heads. The spindly legs I do have.

There is no rhyme or reason

It would be interesting to put this in a frame on a wall and sit with a magazine nearby listening to what people thought it meant. Usually I reject juxtapositions that seem meaningful, unless the meaning is absurd or funny. Funny to me will usually not be funny to anyone else. Am I an obscurist at heart? Or is it just perverse?

A Globe and Not a Globe

The nice thing about pencil line is it's unrehearsed. The thought comes right off the top of my head onto the paper. The roughness allows one thing to be another thing without making the viewer stretch too much. More simile than metaphor, maybe. Stories are written first in pencil.

Birds in Tree

I'm a student of patterns. How leaves fill a tree's interior space, how vines occupy a fence, how blackbirds organize themselves in flocks, organic and inorganic patterns like brickwork and windows on tall buildings, the way people sprawl across grassy spaces. Knowing the algorithm for such things would ruin it. Everything can be reduced to numbers, but I'd rather paint them. Patterns are reassuring, which is why we put them on wallpaper and fabrics and wine labels and dishes. Pattern is the counter-argument to randomness and disorder. I often insert an element of imperfection, though, to keep it from seeming precious. There are dead branches lopped off here and there and I don't think the birds like each other very much.

The Bird

I sat down one morning and drew this. Don't know where the creature came from. Is it a bird or something else impersonating a bird? Why is it wearing a hat? How does the hat stay on when it flies? And how does it play that guitar with no fingers? These are questions the artist doesn't have to answer.

Birds Out of Thin Air

Is he a magician producing doves out of his sleeves? I don't know. The sketchbook functions like a dream sometimes, conjuring odd, hard-to-explain imagery.