DVD Drawing Exercise

November 12, 2020
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Pencil drawing sometimes reminds me of playing the guitar. You can learn a few tricks, and a few fundamentals, fairly quickly. But if you really want to grow and stretch in the use of your pencil, or your guitar, you have to dig in and do things not just for fun.

With this drawing exercise, to keep the images random, I froze the frame a little after I decided to freeze the frame. It was random, but with veto power: if the frozen image was totally uninteresting, I didn’t attempt a drawing.

I’ve done this exercise many times since DVDs became available to the video consumer. I rarely get an image that isn’t either too busy or unfinished-looking. But I almost always get something that makes the image a keeper. In this case, I have a believable wheelbarrow and a stitched baseball that feels like it is occupying three-dimensional space. I also like that the text on the page has both descriptions and a scrap of dialogue from the movie.

2020 1112 drawing exercise

whimsical tribute

November 7, 2020
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My friend Niccolea M. Nance and I recently celebrated our eleventh-year “Friendaversary” on Facebook. Facebook generated a montage, mostly of photos Ms. Nance had taken, and wished us well. And this morning I had been working on an index-card drawing I started a couple of days ago, an out-of-scale “two-shot,” and it needed something…the two talking to each other would make word balloons that would be visual elements…but the balloons wouldn’t allow much to be said…hey wait! Niccolea back in the day called herself Miouo, and pronounced it “Me/You.” And that is how this odd tribute came to be.

Election Days 2020

November 4, 2020
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20201104 election days

I live in Phoenix, Arizona. I am a member of the Democratic Party. I think the Second Amendment was written long ago, when citizens could make a real difference in preventing hostile overthrow with the weaponry available at the time, and that time has passed; but I am not anti-gun–I am against guns getting into the wrong hands.

For all of those reasons, there is cause for me to celebrate today. It is all but certain that Arizona has “flipped” from a Republican (“Red”) state to a Democratic (“Blue”) state. In the Senate race, victory has been declared by Mark Kelly, whose wife, former Congresswoman Gabrielle “Gabby” Giffords, was shot in the head some years ago. (It is miraculous that she is alive, and inspiring to see what she has done since she was shot.) I not only voted for Kelly, I contributed a modest amount ($35 US) to his campaign. He will certainly be an advocate for keeping guns out of the wrong hands.

In the Presidential election, it is too close to call right now, but if both Nevada and Arizona go Blue for Biden, and the despicable Donald Trump’s attempt to steal this election is in vain, then the Trump gang will be ousted from the White House. (Trump “vows” to take an election challenge to the Supreme court if need be. Meanwhile his hand-picked Postmaster has a lot of explaining to do for the hundreds of thousands of ballots that never made it to their destinations.)

On the down side, the “Blue Tsunami” we Democrats hoped for did not materialize. The hope that we would gain control of the Senate looks forlorn at this point. And what makes many of us shake our heads is that Mitch McConnell, whose corrupt influence was directly responsible for a sham of an Impeachment trial AND the rushthrough of newly confirmed Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, has been undeniably re-elected to the Senate.

Nothing is 100% certain in this election, Friends. But no matter the outcome, each American citizen has a responsibility to be ethical, decent, and honest. Our country needs to heal from its disunity.

BPBTC, First of November

November 1, 2020
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Friends, I had another Bad Pun Brain Teaser contest on Facebook.. I will not reveal the answer here, but it is on my Facebook timeline. What I will do is pose the question and then reveal the prize I’ve made for the winner.

Ed was on a special blind date, with special instructions. He had a young, talking rubber tree in a pot that was easy to carry. As he walked toward his Blind Date rendezvous the tree kept saying to passers-by “Nice hat, Sweetheart” or “Have a wonderful day in that great-looking suit, fella” or “Heaven just called. They want you back, Angel.”

Ed’s date was easy to spot. She was at a table at the Alfresco Bistro and the lovely bonsai she had brought had just told the server, “You look dapper indeed, Sir.”

“Marcia?”

The young lady stood and said, “Hello, Edward. Very nice to meet you.” She gestured to the tree. “This is for you.”

Her bonsai said, “Yippee! I know I’m going to like you, Ed. And you can call ME Ed if you want. Two Eds are better than one!”

Ed smiled and said, “Thanks, Other Ed, I will.” He then placed the rubber tree next to Marcia’s chair. “I hope you like him, Marcia.”

In a smooth, Morgan-Freeman-reassuring voice the rubber tree said, “I can tell we’ll get along famously, my dear Marcia.” And Marcia smiled.

Friends, this scene may seem bizarre, but with the help of a Bad Pun it becomes something that happens all the time on blind dates. What were Ed and Marcia doing?

First correct answer will get an original drawing of the blind date scene, including the talking plants.

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Congrats again to Scott, and here’s a heads-up, Friends: I intend before the end of the month to conduct a Bad Pun Brain Teaser Contest on this blog! 🙂

Inktober 30th, 2020: Ominous

October 30, 2020
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When I was growing up there was a kid who had a Rabbit’s Foot in his pocket for good luck. Horseshoes were put over doorways, but in the U shape, to contain the luck, and not in the upside down Omega shape, which would make all the good luck run out. Seven was considered a lucky number.

And thirteen was considered unlucky. Walking under ladders, spilling salt, breaking a mirror, having a black cat cross your path. And if you stepped on a crack you could break your mother’s back.

Of course, different cultures have different notions. My college sweetheart, of Japanese ancestry, was horrified when I ladled something from the stove onto a plate, and tipped it away from me. “DON’T DO THAT,” she said. “When you do that, you’re pointing at a dead person.” She also told me that for every tsubu (grain) of go-han (rice) I left in my bowl, a child would be starving.

I have my personal superstitions, and I imagine everyone else does too. I have two that relate to oral hygiene. The first one is that I must never run out of dental floss. If I don’t have another dispenser of floss waiting in the wings when the last bit of floss comes out of the dispenser I’m using, it means I will endure poverty in the immediate future. And the second one is that whenever I intend to floss or brush my teeth, or (usually) both, I MUST look in the mirror and say, “Be careful.” If I don’t, something terrible will happen when I tend to my teeth.

It’s silly, but it’s real. We are comforted when we do some of these things, and we are discomfited when certain other things occur. Nor should we stop just because we are being irrational. If it does no harm, it does some good.

When I learned that today’s prompt was “ominous,” the first thing I thought of was the connection to the word Omen. And when I did, a little drama with a “Lady or the Tiger” ending unfolded. And good noticers will see one reason why going for the money might bring Bad Luck.

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