I drew this dog as part of this poster for September’s West Chester Story Slam. Figured I’d, you know, multi-purpose-multi-task.
Started on this earlier in the week, got waylaid and delayed and worked in bits and pieces throughout the week late at night when I had the chance.
Pulled out my little blue book again today while I was awaiting some updates from the Left Coast and was going to try to draw a quick something. I flipped through the pages and found this one (on the right) which I did back in April but guess I never posted it. On the opposite page* is the inspiration for the drawing: Jess’ back alley find in March.
Well, this has certainly turned into “Inspiration Week”. Thanks, Kristen and Jess, for feeding the fire while my flame done gone out for a while.
I’ll aim for current things next week.
This is the bookmark my daughter made for me this evening as she was reading about The Epic of Gilgamesh. It’s a Mesopotamian poem found written on tablets and is considered one of the earliest forms of literature found in the world.
I haven’t read it but this is her depiction of the creatures that inhabit the underworld as described in the poem. At one point Enkidu, Gilgamesh’s friend, has a nightmare about paying [a price] for helping slay a bull:
The heavens roared, and earth rumbled back an answer; between them stood I before an awful being, the somber-faced man-bird; he had directed on me his purpose. His was a vampire face, his foot was a lion’s foot, his hand was an eagle’s talon. he fell on me and his claws were in my hair, he held me fast and I smothered; then he transformed me so that my arms became wings covered with feathers….
He goes on to describe the people that inhabit the underworld:
There is the house whose people sit in darkness; dust is their food and clay their meat. They are clothed like birds with wings for covering, they see no light, they sit in darkness.
It’s the second day of the new school year and have high hopes that I at least get more cool bookmarks out of her World Literature class.
I have the unfortunate knack, occasionally, to witness things I’d rather not witness. The worst of which was a few years ago in Texas and I’m still trying to forget it and don’t tell the story at all to anyone.
Another event happened one morning when I left my South Philly apartment for class in the mid 1980s. A neighbor down the street was on the second story roof of his row home threatening to do harm to himself with a large carving knife. The police and firemen below mulled around on the street. His mother pleaded with him.
As I made my way to the intersection he decided to wrap the coaxial TV cable around his neck and jump from the roof. All that happened to him was he fell into a tree below and the cable pulled away from the house. I still wonder if he really thought that he was doing himself in or just wanted to make it look like he was trying.
My most recent thing-I’d-rather-not-see happened the other day as I was pruning branches on the bush in front of the house where caterpillars were making a nest. I clipped the dying branch and pulled it away and saw something drop and heard it go smack on the sidewalk.
I looked down and saw the remains of a bird’s egg with the partially formed bird creature splatted on the slate. I grimaced. I hadn’t seen the good nest holding a single egg inside above the offending caterpillar nest.
I’m extremely weak-kneed when it comes to killing creatures (mice) and especially when it’s baby-to-be-bird or other young creature. This was especially painful coming two months after 2-week effort to document a different nest in the back of our house earlier in the summer:
Purple Finch Babies from mcglinch on Vimeo.
I grabbed a broom and quickly swept the mess into the ground cover below the bush. I’lll keep watching this video to try to sweep the memory of the baby bird splat away.
It’s been a real long time since I’ve been doing much in the way of drawing, doodling, sketching or anything else. So I thought I’d pull this unfinished piece out of the basement.
I started painting it on the back of a six pack cardboard panel after I was done working on my skateboard project in March of this year.r That project re-ignited my acrylic painting enjoyment after years (decade+?) of dormancy. I wanted to keep the brush moving and worked on this for several nights before Spring kicked in and the outdoor labors called.
At the time, my friend-in-the-ether, Kristen had been writing a lot of posts about venturing into basements and the things you find there. I enjoy the imagery she paints with her words of a late 1970s kid with a wild imagination venturing into places that she knows she shouldn’t go.
So with that in mind, I started painting out this scene of a pre-tween making her way into a darkened basement using a lightning bug as her guide-light. Thinking of the terror of that light blinking out every few seconds, wondering what’s going to be there in front of you when that light blinks back on.
For now, since I needed to clean up the craft room in anticipation of the major last party of the summer before school, this remains unfinished — need to add more color depth, fix those eyes, darken that door. I think once the weather cools I’ll get back to finishing it.
Another scrap from the high school journals. Self-portrait of 17-year-old me ca. 1981.
My daughter made this for me several (or more) years ago. I’ve always loved dioramas ever since my father and I made my first one in a wine box in elementary school. It was a an oil field in a Texas landscape. I built the required oil rigs out of — yeah, that’s right — popsicle sticks. There was a Matchbox Jeep and sand glued to the ground.
Later, in junior high, I built one depicting a scene from my then favorite book, Logan’s Run. It was the flameout scene where people get lasered for entertainment when they turn 30.
I’ve had the daughter’s robot hanging on my bulletin board above my desk since I don’t have a place for it to be displayed properly anywhere else due to my horrible office clutter.
In the next couple of days I’ll post one of her latest creations she brought home from art class the other day. But in the meantime, I share my friendly robot buddy with you.
Czarne chmury from Rrrodrigo (creative commons)
Too many electron transmission failures in the house these days driving me crazy with the wifi, airtunes, roku, alarm system and basic cable all misbehaving. I’m blaming sunspots or the kids. Maybe if we got a microwave again it would get things back to “normal”.
By the way, I’ve moved this blog for now to blog.mcglinch.com from mcglinch.com/blog for now. If you subscribed via my feedburner url, you shouldn’t have to change a thing. Same thing with you email subscribers.
Didn’t make the leap to WordPress yet – just reconfigured the Blogger thing finally after a month of putting it off.
Click to see slightly bigger real-life version.
Drew the drawing part last night before bed waiting for a server reboot.
Add the morning newspaper textures and colors throughout the day today on breaks from heavy data lifting.
Oh, and for my readers, I’m under a deadline to migrate this all off Blogger’s FTP platform by, oh, I don’t know, Saturday? Otherwise bad things might happen. I very much doubt I’ll make that deadline so if it’s all gone after this weekend, I will try my darndest to piece it all back together. My understanding is that the worst case scenario is that I won’t be able to post until I migrate this to blog.mcglinch.com under Blogger or some other platform. Have been wanting to make the switch to WordPress for years now. Might go ahead and do it for real this time.
