All real people, all drawn while wandering Disneyland.

The girls were prettier--but then, I always struggle with pretty.

Sunday morning breakfast...on a Tuesday a month ago.

I loved this guy--he looked like some British actor transplanted to Santa Monica and living the good life.

I've joined this Facebook caricature group. This week's theme is Japan. I chose Empress Michiko.

...could you tell?

I made up the pose and the expression--everything, really--I came up with it while looking at a buncha  pix of her (Google Images, 'natch), but sadly I think it looks like a unimaginative copy done from a single photographic source. Bland....

Still, does she look like QE2's sister or what?

Pencil for Friday (I should start a "Felt-Tip Friday"). I arranged a riding lesson for Blair's birthday--she hadn't been on a horse for years. Lots of fun to see her with the crop in her hand, and wind in her...helmet.

I have never been very solid on quadrapeds. One day this will improve.

This was interesting.

Girl in Santa Monica wearing a very old fashioned hat. Can you tell it's a hat? Those are feathers drooping forward.

I ran out of page and then I messed up the far side of her face.  Shadows are hard in brushpen--it's either black or it's daredevil.

So I cleaned it up a little in PhoSho...please forgive my post-scan manipulation.

Girls are hard.

John Ireland is an actor who just looks to be carrying some kind of socially transmitted disease, no?

(You know what I mean by social, don't you?)
These images come from watching "A Walk In The Sun," a 1946 WWII film, and one of Lloyd Bridges' earliest roles. I did this drawing of Lloyd while watching, and then the next day opened my KUSC Classical newsletter to find this picture of composer and keyboard virtuoso Franz Liszt. Was Bridges born to play Liszt in the biopic, or what?

"Stand down, Julian Sands!"

Partly, it's just a reminder of our shared humanity.

...and hair issues.

The poignancy of the Japanese tourist. Spied at Disneyland in a pre-quake world.

Some of my least favorite friends are artists.

Gillian!

From a recent day at Disneyland with the McMahons. Drawn during the interminable Roger Rabbit line (I strongly suggest Fast Passing). It's shaky, but hey, it's hard to do a likeness while walking in line...right?

Hope this cheers people up.

Heads bowed. Watched live Japan coverage last night. Unbelievable footage of pastoral landscape  devoured by tsunami. From the air the water looked so slow, but so inexorable. When they turned the helicopter camera back out to sea and you were able to watch a new tidal wave form and roll into shore...you felt like you were watching the birth of the world. Primordial, biblical. Unbelievable--and absolutely hair-raising.

I don't want to mouth empty pieties. But I couldn't watch those fleeing cars being swept away by the water and not be deeply worried.

Also, bad timing for my in-laws' trip to Tokyo. They arrived the day before (everyone is fine--but no one's idea of a vacation after that).

Unbelievable.

I don't much care for violin concertos. Or the heroin.

I made God a promise. For Lent I will give up not posting a new drawing everyday on this blog.

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.