In the second vignette, Early Birdie pulls her fellow wrongdoer Ronald away from their adversaries Dust Devil, Speed Cameron and June Monsoon. (Ronald and Birdie are two of a cadre of ersatz fast-food mascots.)
My Karaoke Fanboy friend, Russ Kazmierczak, Jr., asked me months ago to be his featured artist for the cover of the August issue of AMAZING ARIZONA COMICS. The plan solidified when he did a 24-hour drawing stint in a storefront window in downtown Glendale (my home town!), and used those 24 hours to draw the August issue. I asked him what the deadline was, and he said two weeks would be fine. Twelve days later I met my self-imposed Thursday-Midnight deadline, giving Russ two days of wiggle room.
The story is of four vignettes, so my design of the August cover includes four panels, each relevant to a vignette. Without further ado, and with Russ’s kind permission to post before release (“It’s not NASA secrets, after all,” he said with a karaoke sidelong grin), here is a panel from Vignette 1. Santa Claus has unmasked a Hobgoblinesque troublemaker, only to find a normal, befuddled guy under the mask, who had been possessed by the hot and dire villain Heatstroke. I was fairly faithful to the source, adding an incoming, dashing Speed Cameron.
My thanks again to Russ for recruiting my involvement in his Magnum Opus. It is a privilege and an honor!
NOTE: This poem originally appeared in my Notes in Facebook, under the title “lonely for.” I changed the title because it was bet-hedging and wishy-washy.
demanding to be seen and acknowledged
and it is embarrassing to acknowledge your taunting truth
and yes first intimacy first joining
the beat of its hovering wings makes an irritating noise
and there is the background hissy rasp of many more
it is dangerous to seek relief instead of rightness
this one says “any day now”
Last night I finished the design of the cover of the August issue of AMAZING ARIZONA COMICS, meeting my self-imposed deadline of midnight by 20 minutes. Now I can go back to this stuff. [smiles]
This edition of this stuff is in a way a blast from the past. It finishes a drawing I’d begun while still the front desk clerk at Sedona Winds, a year and a half and a lifetime ago. The acrostic poem was created today.
tone in tone
tenacity is sometimes silent
oboes, faint but not pianissimo
nudge silence aside for satisfaction
entreating the listener to drowse
Note that there is the mildest violation of my arbitrary Acrostic rules: the last line does not go through the n of In, the middle acrostic word. The last n of Entreating would have fit perfectly, but the text would have been too squeezed.
On this page I wish my brother Harold a happy 64th birthday. This is a first. “To err is human; to forgive, divine.”
Here as promised is the new, improved Work In Progress. I feel I have fulfilled the promise that it be better, in two ways. One, it’s in color and has a fuller range of light-to-dark. Two, the acrostics are done.
But there’s a tradeoff, and it’s been disimproved due to my yet-clumsiness with the oil pastel medium. WIP III will be created as a new image based on this one, with care taken and proper media selected–and an order of magnitude of additional time spent–to present this image/concept as it deserves.
planets twinkle
peaish green as i of newt
liquid as ye droppe of dew
angsty as a java’d gui [graphic user interface]
newton law’d and al [albert einstein] sed pfui; in
each ecliptic falls some silk
the mother’s milk of wit and will
sustaining cecil b de mille
stars shine
some hum some hiss
trill yon year ish
age brings satori
rituals overween
stasis, sis, is crystalline
I can promise without reservation, WIP III is NOT coming tomorrow, nor the next day. I have a comic book cover to draw, and a drop-dead deadline of but a few days from now. But WIP III will include image, annotation, and valedictory. Please stay tuned!
Manager Michelle just called and asked if I could come early. I told her I’d catch the 11:35. Then I stopped work on the work in progress below:
Sorry for its upside-downedness. I’ve got a bus to catch. Part II, pronounced Whippeee, comes tomorrow . . .
It is the last day of the month. It is my personal superstition that to do things on the last day of the month is to increase the probability of their occurrence on other days. (This also applies to the first day of the month.) So I have cooked and cleaned a little, and, though my heart wasn’t in it, having received two reminders of things over and done with, I’ve created this minimalist acrostic/image card. Abs is for abdominal muscles; Orb is for that “cold-hearted orb that rules the night;” Ent is for that singular creature of J.R.R. Tolkien’s invention, a humanoid partaking of a tree.
An allotrope is one of at least two arrangements of the same atoms in differing array. A burden is represented here as a pack mule loaded down with another’s possessions. A sailboat is often delightful.
Watson and Crick were the scientists who found that DNA, the stuff of life, was double-helical in form. Even Linus Pauling, supernally brilliant as he was, didn’t deduce that.
I have a feeling of deja vu. Have I done this acrostic before?
In these parts, if you say “Figures!” it means “Obviously, that was going to happen!” But in Artland, Figures are human forms represented by some sort of expressive medium as pencil or paint.
I love to do sketches of the human from in various attitudes. It figures that on my day off, I would relax by doing this.
?
I hope I haven’t spoiled the sport of the man who’s holding the fish. I would be hypocritical to denounce fishing. I’ve enjoyed fishing myself, though it’s been years. But thoughts occur, and with them seeds for more, such as the many ways Spoilsport might be interpreted. Spoils sport: To the victor go the spoils. Spoil sport: a mutant fish’s putrefaction. I the Spoilsport, tainting a happy moment by taking sides with the fish. The fish the spoilsport, not going along with Survival of the Fittest. The fisherman the spoilsport, ending a creature’s life on a whim. Th’ gods the spoilsports, creating such somebody’s-gotta-lose-here situations.
spoilsport
snag yourself a smallmouth Bass
place its fate within your grasp
oleo a pan with goo
in the cove with boat at moor
LIKE & tweet bon appetit
YUM factor
You have eaten ambrosia, naif
You have tasted buffets at Vee Quiva
U have been in the dark in a new story arc
U five-star near & far till u like to infarct
Mastication verbatim–will U take ye bait? O
Mayhap a tomato au gratin won’t scar
I work for a restaurant. We provide made-from-scratch meals as part of a dining experience intended to relieve, fortify, and empower the bedraggled traveler. We charge airport prices. Overwhelmingly our diners think it’s well worth it, judging from the repeat business (“Laura on Thursday,” for instance) and wonderful comments our diners make on their way from our place to their flights.
Today I ate a breakfast brioche prepared by Bertha’s Cafe. The grill marks on the bread somehow made the sandwich taste that much more exquisite. Cooking is an art, not a science.
