Here is another try at capturing the inimitable Kelly Felicia. It is Conté Crayon on Canson Black Drawing paper. I went this route this time around because I thought it would reveal facial planes of light better. It does, but my relative inexperience with white Conté compared to regular pencil is making me wrestle and strain, and it shows. I would call this attempt neither failure nor success. I will try again.
Today I got a call from Niagara Falls, New York, honest to goodness, I can prove it. The lady on the line says if I drop whatever I’m doing and draw a portrait of Wyatt Earp, she’ll pay me at least a hundred bucks on the spot, even more if it’s good. I need the money, so I put her on speakerphone and find WE on Wikipedia. Fifteen minutes later I say “OK, done.”
“Young man, may I see it?”
“Sure.” I video-call her. She stays on audio. I hold Wyatt up to my smartphone.
“Well, that’s marvelous. I think you should get a five-dollar bonus.”
And I think my own dark thoughts, but say, “Glad you like it. May I ask WHY?”
“Because it’s HIS Day!!”
“What?!”
“It’s EARP DAY!”
“No, no, no! It’s EARTH Day. Not Earp Day–wait a minute. Is your name Emily Litella?”
“Why, yes. Thank you, young man, and…nevermind…”
RIP to the immortal and brilliant Gilda Radner, who as Emily Litella cracked me up no end.
Part of my morning routine is to work on unfinished poetry and drawings while having my first cup of coffee. Today I was picking at two Acrostics, ODD HIS SEA and TAPE PEST STRY, I’d started long ago. The lower third of the paper I had them on was blank, so I bookended it with PUSH BACK, which had been nagging at me for some weeks. (“Pushback” is a term used to describe a reaction of a political faction’s forces when their opposition has said, or accomplished, something that seems to have done some damage to their cause. Here and now, government shutdown, tweetstorms, and propaganda blizzards are Trump Administration’s pushback against opposition to the Trump Wall, the Mueller Russian investigation, and miscellaneous callings-to-account.)
My acrostic-composing reverie was interrupted when my gaze fell on a corner of paper. I recognized it as the printed material that was given to mourners at my Uncle Paul’s funeral last February 23rd. It was wildly improbable that it should be on my dining room table, buried under a pile of stuff, but there it was. And on it was a photo of Paul with humor, grumpiness, and a defiant gleam in his eye. “Draw me NOW, Nephew,” he seemed to be saying.
So I did, and I did a better Paul in ten minutes than I’d done in hours a few years ago.
“Sign it, but don’t date it.” I did.
“You’re done.”
I had a second cup of coffee this morning. Then I put on a pair of dirty jeans that need to be thrown away due to a rip near the inseam, gathered a load of laundry and got a wash cycle going, and found a public-domain photo of Chloë Grace Morentz, whom I had just seen in the DVD of THE EQUALIZER, starring Denzel Washington.
This is proving to be a good way to ease into a productive first-day-off. Washing takes about half an hour; drying, 45 minutes. The breaks are just right for stretching the legs, going out and coming back, and having a fresh look at the work in progress. I paid enough mind to this portrait to deem it “finished sketch” so I signed it and scanned it. The scan revealed a few flaws that I tweaked.
Time to go back out to the laundry room . . .
Here is a consummate professional AND a real Sweetheart. Her husband Zach (or Zac, or Zak, or Zack? unsure), who tends bar at Zipp’s, says “I’m good, but she’s a REAL Bartender.”
Yesterday Katie accidentally video-called me, and so I had a screen shot to work from. My drawing doesn’t do her justice though. Needs to be much more Glow-y.
She used to call me Gair-Bear, but now she calls me Gary Berry. “Move it, Gary Berry,” she says playfully, when I’m in her way behind the bar. I’ll take it. She can call me whatever she wants to.
Last night the Muse whispered “Inktober is nigh.” So I froze a frame from JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM and sketched Bryce Dallas Howard quickly in pencil, then did a do-over with the ink from a Papermate Flair pen. I’d left plenty of room for minimal acrostic poetry. Two things occur when regarding BDH: Actor, and Woman. With WOMAN as the end word the poem, though minimal, can end with a triplet, if we cheat a little by hotwiring the last line with the indefinite article “A” from the end of the fourth line. The final form of the poem is a couplet and a triplet, in ultra-minimal iambic biameter, including such elements of stage plays as Scrim and House Lights, and such (for me, anyway) Woman-associated words as Silk, Rousing, and Lift. And the total word count, including the acrostic title, is 20.
But is it smooth as a downy forearm? Does it read as easily as the pep talk in HENRY V? Let’s present the words with no line breaks and see how it reads.
Ah, yes, the show can lift you so through silkscreen scrim old houselights dim–a rousing hymn.
My muse holds up her verdict: 9.2. Far from perfect, but great dismount, and it stuck the landing. 🙂
Uh oh. She’s holding up another number for the portraiture: a dismal 6.7. 😦 Thank Goodness this was the prelims, and not Inktober itself!
My girlfriend Melony, known to her friends as Mel, was sitting next to me in my apartment’s tiny dining area, checking her phone. She looked Mellow.
Often her texts are accompanied by hearts. Mine too.
Words:
Methinks meknows a gal
Encryptically well. O
Let the Glow-wax flow
In the midst of reading ALL HIS JAZZ: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BOB FOSSE by Martin Gottfried, and learning of the friendship between Fosse and Paddy Chayefsky, the acrostic “Show Folk” occurred. Flashy Fosse is Show; and who is more Folksy than the hero of Chayefsky’s MARTY? Off we went.
Here are the words of the double-acrostic sonnet:
Show Folk
SUCCESS: best taken with that grain of snuff
Seize moments, lest the dark steal like a thief
Some mama cats won’t tote us by the scruff
Some ships are built to f o u n d e r on a reef
Huge OPPORTUNITIES have trapdoors too
How quickly handshook YES becomes a No
How quickly sours the Love Nest bill & coo
Howbeit, STRIVE–you may Behold & Lo
Ovations never last. PERSISTENCE will
Obliterate frustration and will quell
Oy-Vehish dark despair. We must distill
Our spirits from beyond ephemeral
We’ll Break A Leg, yet rise above the murk
With Old School secret sauce: workworkWorkWORK
Wkipedia tells us that David Jude Heyworth Law, born in 1972, was first-middle-named after both the Jude of the “Hey Jude” of the Beatles and the Jude of the JUDE THE OBSCURE of Thomas Hardy. Jude Law, as we have come to know him, makes a good match for this mixture.
And he has been paired with some fine actors, among them Matt Damon, Haley Joel Osment, the junior Robert Downey, and, as illustrated above, Tom Hanks, who is at once off-camera and camera-captured in this endgame scene from ROAD TO PERDITION. (I added the “smile” word balloon to resonate with the cover of the classic BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE graphic novel.) Law plays an evil hit man who double-dips by sellimg photos of his victims to the press. He is chillingly mundane, and great, in this role, one of many weird roles he has had for which he was a perfect match.
My friend Clottee Hammons has been fearlessly battling racism forever. This June 24 she will host the 20th annual Emancipation Marathon, wherein “volunteers read out loud from historic and contemporary literature about American Chattel Slavery.” She has also posted extensive historical accounts on her Facebook page.
She is a modern Daniel, surrounded by carnivorous lions, interacting with steadfastness and enormous courage. Just recently she faced down a woman about leaving children alone in a car. Here in the Valley of the Sun, that is downright criminal. Neglected children have died from such heat. Clottee is the champion and protector of such children. She hashtagged her post of the incident “DontLetTheGreyHairFoolYou.” Damn good advice!!
