Stan Getz (take 1 of 5)

March 7, 2015
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At this point I’ve learned enough about Stan Getz’s face to picture it and describe it without looking at a photo: Pale. Nose slightly aquiline. Short but not weak chin. Deep-set eyes, with sockets sloping upward toward the middle of the face. Ears small but protrusive. (Birth trauma trivia: Stan’s poor mom, Goldie, had 35 hours of labor. The doctor went in with forceps. Stan’s head was so big one of his ears was almost torn off and needed suturing. The doctor said they couldn’t leave with Stan until they’d paid an additional $52–a huge sum of money in 1927–for the ear work. “$52?” Al Getz gasped. “That’s too much. You can keep him.” Then he paid up.)

Here is a first take on a solo headshot of Stan Getz. There will be four more.

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Words:

Smoothened F then sharpened G
Talk with tune of what will be
Anthemed improv free of rust
No one’s catspaw no one’s klutz

Tenor Sax

March 6, 2015
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Here is that work in progress from a couple of posts ago. Adding the acrostic and a great deal of detail on the sax, and subtracting the “mood indigo” photoediting effects I had used before, turns it into a different visual experience.

saxophone 030615

Here are the words to the double acrostic poem:

Tension eases Music rises
Effortlessly on it goes
Energy averts the crisis
Nestling riffs to curl the toes
Oscillating chordage drove ya
Out of country–Bossa Nova
Rendered Heaven pressed in wax
Rife with Wonder none dare tax

Stan Getz from Beak to Bell (LtS, p5a)

March 5, 2015
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Now it can be told: My recent interest in the saxophone and the world of jazz is due to my acceptance of a commission to do a portrait of Stan Getz, the tenor saxophonist known as The Sound. I knew next to nothing about Getz, and was completely unfamiliar with the structure of the saxophone. Now, with several drawings under my belt, armed with the critically praised STAN GETZ: A LIFE IN JAZZ by Donald L. Maggin, and (just as important) having listened to some Getz sides, I am well on the way to meeting my deadline of April Fool’s Day with some familiarity with Mr. Getz and the world he inhabited. This is an enjoyable project, and I think I’ll come out of it a better artist. I’m a long way from the finish line, though!

Learning the Saxophone, part 5 (ambience)

March 4, 2015
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0304152139-00~2~2~2

Here is a new drawing, a work in progress. For the first time there is a real effort to put some of the keys and rods where they belong–to learn how things work together. There’s also “post-production” work with the tablet’s photoeditor, experimenting with selective focus and “mood lighting.” All of this is in the service of making the final drawing of the series more genuine, and all that jazz.

Loose as a Seuss

March 2, 2015
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Happy 111th birthday to the Good Dr.

onewithclay's avatarOne with Clay, Image and Text

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As I indicate by my signature, I am an admiring fan of Theodor Geisel, known to the world as Dr. Seuss. FOX IN SOCKS charmed my own socks off me, and one of my fondest memories is reading it aloud to my toddler daughter.

Here are the words to the acrostic:

Let’s start with a task that will not anger bees
Leaves zinnias unfettered and gracing the trees
Out where it’s assumed that a favoring breeze
Obscures a disaster with greatest of ease
One way to get smash hits as featured in Hulu
Opine that the seaside has snagged you a lulu
See–he’ll never cease to amaze all us toddlers
Serves up Feats of antics for Mollies & Coddlers
Escape to his Casa–it’s Perfect for Dawdlers

…and please do visit http://www.seussville.com, where the Good Doctor lives on!

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Learning the Saxophone, part 3

March 1, 2015
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saxophone 030115

If March goes well, it will be chock-full of drawings of saxophones and jazz combos and portraits of major jazz musicians. In that spirit I kicked off March with a drawing of a saxophone of a friend of mine. No poetry, no “value added” distracting ancillary material–just a saxophone, a hint of the stand it rode in on, and some counterbalancing background.

Learning the Saxophone, part 2 (IWY)

February 28, 2015
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There’s this great Bob Dylan song whose title is repeated four times in its forthright chorus, thus:

I Want You
I Want You
I Want You
So bad
Honey, I Want You.

In its image-rich first verse there is reference to Silver Saxophones, thus:

The silver saxophones say I
Should refuse you . . .

Everything on the page I just made followed. It may be flavored by my recent partnerlessness (notice, for instance, how the word WANT is emphasized), but hey, so many love & longing songs have been fueled by such. I wonder if Mr. Dylan’s song had such roots. The Truth is out there, no doubt, but let’s find out later, if at all.

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Here are the words to the triple acrostic:

Idle wallowing won’t play
If we’re wishing woo today
If that candlelight won’t do
Inch & pinch & bill & coo
Itches scratched may be très fou

TRIVIA: In the film BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, Holly Golightly uses the phrase “très fou,” thus: “I suppose you think I’m very brazen or très fou or something.” It means Quite Crazy.

HISTORICAL NOTE: The movie 50 SHADES OF GREY is currently playing in theatres around the world.

the horse fakerer

February 28, 2015
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Today I tried drawing a horse without looking at a horse. I kept using drawing-trickery to disguise my ignorance of horse anatomy–then a Yiddish word popped into my head that I’d seen in Philip Roth’s PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT and also Herman Wouk’s YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE. The word is chazerai. Wouk defined it in HAWKE as “faking, foolishness, trash.”

So here’s my fake horse, under which is some fake haiku, with a bad-pun title to boot.

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equinimityku

this is not a horse
an artist ought LOOK at a horse
before he draws one

from more than half a life ago

February 25, 2015
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from more than half a life ago
some artifacts remain and so
they raise me up and lay me low

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an uncle and his nieces sit
the inkwash sloppiness may fit
if smiles persist and moods acquit

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some ink dissolved in lithotine
on fingerpainting paper clean
may slosh then be erased–it’s keen

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on plates of zinc with beveled edge
may be a mirror image–hedge
your bets and stack ’em on a ledge

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this fella thought he was so smart
and dabbed and dribbled at his art
a lifetime later? time to start

*****

My brother Brian and I were going through boxes in the carport this morning and found many blasts from the past, from more than a century ago to and through the 1975-1982 period when these images of mine were made. Pride, embarrassment, a pang of grief for my now-deceased niece Lori Marie, and frustrated regret for the art career I never really had swept through me in five seconds or less. “What’s past is prologue,” said Shakespeare’s Antonio in THE TEMPEST. “It’s never too late to do something great,” I wrote in our Glendale High School 20th Reunion souvenir book more than 20 years ago. I hope I was right!