Visited the 'Gundo Starbucks last week--the place where it all started for BPB.

Done in Zen Brush, which added an eraser function. I tried not to abuse it.

Grant Memorial, Washington D.C.

In honor of today's vote, I give you the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial. This was going to be such a great one, but this freezing wind began whipping at me and after twenty minutes or so, I gave up and ran for the shelter of the Capitol building, (just as many Congressional hopefuls are doing today). Does give an idea of how I begin these iPad sketches--do the sky on my BKG layer, then sketch in the figure and begin building him up--just like in painting, only without that great linseed smell (there must be an ap for that, right? "iOdor'?).

We're home now, so this might be my last D.C./Virginia post.

Halloween Hip-Hop Class

Statues in the Capitol: liked the drapery.

A proper brush pen excursion. Northern Virginia, and more specifically, the suburbs of D.C. People look funny here. My drawing doesn't begin to define the dimensions of this uniqueness. Hard not to notice a certain hard-bitten homeliness that makes for a seriousness that is not the seriousness of airy academia. The massive magnetic pull of the capital it felt in every crease and line. Don't think much about the capital as a physical place at home, but you get near and suddenly you're imgining every person in line at the grocery store is a lobbyist.

Even the baristas.
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UPDATE: I screwed up the post time for this--you were supposed to see it t 7:52 A.m.

Pastoral setting of Northern Virginia. Includes tornado warnings.

Out of date, but just transferred over.

R. E. Lee Episcopal Church in Lexington, VA. The church sits right on the W&L campus; Blair attended all through her college years. Done on the iPad in finger-paint mode.

Good news: I found my stylus.

OK, I am not one to share YouTube links--I understand most people share them with the very best of intent, but I find it irritating in the same way that my friends and family find me annoying when I routinely interrupt whatever they're doing and badger them (again, with the best of intent) to look at whatever I've just stumbled across in my reading.

HOWEVER, in the spirit of Halloween, I've got to share this video snippet.

It took a while to track this movie down. I'd caught it once, on TCM, during that channel's broad-minded celebration of the film "Chariot of the Gods" and it's offspring (y'know, those UFO psuedo-documentaries from the 70's obsessed with proving a connection between extraterrestrials and ancient man).

The film is called "Mysteries From Beyond Earth" (available on DVD--and Ellis, don't think I ain't ordering you a copy), a film so obscure IMDB doesn't have much to say about it.

In fact, Ellis, it was your post on the immortal Paul Frees that got me thinking of this: when I first saw this film, I mistook the narrator for Paul Frees. No longer.

The narrator of "M.F.B.E." is someone named Lawrence Dobkin, (a man IMDB tells us is one of only two men to both act in, and direct an episode of the original "Star Trek" TV series, but whose extensive list of credits on his IMDB page fails to mention "M.F.B.E.")  As you'll see, not only is his voice gargantuan, his demeanor is fantastic--just watch for his slide-show film advance gesture. Priceless!

There is a line of dialogue unfortunately not included in this clip. At one point he asks the rhetorical question, "why can't man travel between the stars, like these extraterrestrials?" and quickly cites the dangers of "cosmic rays." He describes their danger thus, with barely concealed rage: "The power of these cosmic rays is so great, should a crew of astronauts travel into deep space, they would return to earth a pack of gibbering idiots."

!!!

More iPad, this time from the National Museum of the American Indian in D.C. Really great museum, and an amazing museum cafe--even if you've only got time for the Aerospace Museum next door, eat at this museum--admission is free, (like all of the D.C. museums). The cafeteria here is divided into 5 (?) serving stations, each featuring cuisine from a corresponding area of the Americas--fer inst, turkey and cranberries and cornbread from the New England area, tortillas and pablano from the southwest,  wild rice, salmon and bison (!) from the northwest/Pacific, etc., etc. These are inexcusably bland descriptions of the fare--we had a julienne'ed squash that was presented like a pasta, a wheat berry salad, a dish of roasted root veggies, spicy Mexican hot chocolate (which I spilled--oof), a buffalo chili on "fry bread."

Really good stuff.

There's a weird moray (morey?) pattern on him, isn't there? Don't know where that's coming from....
Drawn on iPad (with fat finger) in the W&L administration building. I was sent there for not agreeing to vote for Meg Whitman.

What righteous fury burns in the heart of this man?

Did you like the album cover? You can get this on vinyl, or on iTunes! Quality stuff that you and the whole family can enjoy. And I did the cover. Of Peet!

For Peet's wedding. Tanti auguri!

Hey, help the newlyweds by buying his latest solo album, FANGIO. It's great!

Another Roma player, Taddei.

Shares his name with an early Renaissance painter...

...and wears a face like a sex offender's.

But they won.

(just sketched while watching the game...I think it's a pretty good likeness)

My Serie A team has been, and will remain, AS Roma. Currently their lineup looks a little...scabrous (and I haven't even drawn Mexes or Menez, Vukinic or DeRossi).

But they won this weekend. So, hooray.

Hey, let's do a compar-o: my brush pen LeBrun vs. the real thing (and yes, that's brush pen I used--it's just dusty with dryness).

 Hey, in my defense I was seated kinda cock-eyed to the thing...

Got to go to the Getty with Blair last Friday. Visiting her dissertation adviser, a really lovely lady who's written a couple great art history books. Heard the drawing curator give a tour of their latest little print exhibit, Charles LeBrun.

I love the French way of pronouncing "Charles."

Check it!

Makes my brush pens look a little shabby, non?

Oh, shoot: exhibit closed today.

Nevermind.

My hearing is famously poor. Yesterday driving for morning coffee the NPR announcer came on and began reciting the "This program brought to you by..." laundry list. She got to a language education company and I heard:

"And for fluency in a new tongue, try Pimps Learn Language, the software that let's you learn at your own speed--"

I do a "Say what--?!" take. Blair asks, "What's wrong?"

I tell her.

Exasperated (this happens all the time), she corrects me, "They said Pimsler Language--Pimsler Language!!"

"Not, Pimps Learn Language?"

"We really need to have your ears checked...."

(From Broken Star--I'm going to do a better job on him--you won't believe who this actor is)

Kids get so intense in the Apple Store. I needed to show how age-inappropriate it looked for this 12 year-old to be sitting at the 4 year-old table, pounding on the keyboard...His brother felt the same way and captured it on his iPhone.

Returning to BPB's roots.

Drawn on iPad while drinking morning coffee.

In order to post this sort of thing while "about town", I email image from iPad to myself, then download it on laptop, convert it to jpeg in Pho'sho', and upload it...

Piece o' cake.

Sketched in Par-ee, loitering in the Tuileries with a couple cute chicks. I doubt he was even 16, but already hard at work perfecting that veneer of soulful brooding (a great strategy for masking mere adolescent moodiness--but who knows? maybe this was true "soul"?). 

Ladies, did you ever love yourself some bad boy?

From "Broken Star," a movie I want to comment on--but not today. Sketched on the iPad while waiting for Roma-Napoli to start.

I should have stayed in bed.

Drawn while watching "Broken Star" on the Western Channel.

Watching Roma lose to Napoli. Damn.

Breakfast interlocutor.

Young but skeevy.

I declined his offer of early morning banter.

He then approached a middle school kid with the "Bro, wassup?" routine.

Donut enthusiast--or drug dealer?

iPhone sketch--some of it done by finger.

(Spectating at a dance class.)

"Swing, baby! You're platinum!"

Look what I found while going through our storage unit: evidence from Dear Wife's time in Japan. They wanted hip Anglo kids to hock wild quilt furniture.

SO CUTE.

(This is the second use of the word "Anglo" in as many days on this blog. Just saying.)

She claims no music was running through headphones. I bet she was grooving to Joy Division...or maybe Olivia Newton John.

Happy Anniversary, baby!

Among many, many other issues the 60's film "Flight To Fury" attempts to tackle is interracial marriage. Here Asian Industrialist contemplates his Anglo wife contemplating. They are moments away from a plane crash. Literally.

The 80's are back!!

Zebra action bandanna spotted warming neck of young high schooler--just in time for Sarah Fix's Birthday! (Sarah, I know you wore one of these...get yr Hazy Fantazy on!)

(spotted on drive-by--done from memory--I failed to capture that air of early morning stupor)

Real brush pen. Finally scanning some stuff from Paris '08 trip.

Incredulity.

(Created using a quaint old technique where actual ink flows thru actual bristles and is then applied to actual paper)

Our driver to the airport. Drive made uncomfortable by growing suspicion he was sloshed.

Otherwise, Idaho's village of Ketchum/Sun Valley and the surrounding mountains enchanted us totally.

Raining in Sun Valley today--spectacular! Done on the iPad with SketchBook Pro--I like the design-y-ness of trees in front.

Dawn at LAX.

Detail gets too pixelated in translation, and face is way too purple, but otherwise I was happy with this SketchBook Pro effort--done on iPhone with stylus while waiting for flight.

You can see my wonky perspective in full shot. But fun to use color again!

I'm cheating by backdating, but hey, I'm in transit.

Sketchbook Pro on iPad.

Trying my hand at "digital painting" (though most of this came from the scanned pencil drawing).

Looks like a tableau ready for action!

Zen Brush on iPad. Still haven't solved riddle of how to get these drawings into Blogger from the iPad/iPhone. Have to send 'em to laptop for uploading as it stands now. Any tips on solving this would be most appreciated!

Now I'm not posting this 'cuz it's a good drawing.

It's not.

But it's up!

SketchBook Pro "sketch" done on iPhone.

I'm learning the key to success in this modern world is bending technology to your will...

...or capitulating immediately.

Got an iPad. Got the Zen Brush app. Got to work.

(I'm OK with sharing half-baked art.)

Still on a Kirby Kick. These are from his old work with Joe Simon, before he really started drawing solid figures. It's bracing to see how "straight" they look when I reinterpret them--the lady looks like Buscema to me, which is totally disappointing! I want to look like Kirby! The man is better, but he looks Jack circa '62, where my source is Jack circa '47 (when he was still a little wobbly--due as much the speed he had to draw 'em, I guess).

(and think o' that...a gap of '47 to '62?!? And those 15 years span the part of his career BEFORE the Marvel explosion. It makes you think!)

I've been experiencing computer woes. Reduced to photographing drawings and importing 'em that way. I'm trying to get myself sorted.

John K. put up a funny post on trying to draw Jack Kirby-style caricatures.

My morning stab.

A kid stuffing Pooh in his pants. Spotted mid-afternoon unloading a moving van. In pajamas. With Pooh.

The things you see in Orange County....

I like real people.