Graffito

On October 8, 1980 I thought this was a good idea. According to a note on the original sketch, it was "from a dream." There are several drawings of record covers that I did that I dreamt up. I was a little obsessed with the idea of becoming a record cover designer at the time, so I'm not really surprised. I just wished that I'd dreamed something good, since clearly I knew even less about design and art than I know now. The beauty of recreating this artwork is that I now have a brick pattern in my library. The photograph of the band was borrowed from the internet. 

Oddly enough, I've never really liked ARS.

Black Sabbath

On October 21, 1980, I thought this was a good idea. I was young; cut me some slack. Since Black Sabbath is about to release their first album in a hundred or so years, I thought I'd build my original idea in Adobe Illustrator and see how it looked.

Not unsurprisingly, 21st Century technology will not save questionable and juvenile ideas.

MN XII

This is just something I threw together to mark the historic occasion of Minnesota being the twelfth state to make marriage equality a law. Hurrah!

Mother's Day Treats

With this drawing, I am reserving my own personal very special penthouse in Hell. Carry on.

Noo Spinoolean Tarot - Seven of Ankhs

As I stewed and fretted over the final card for the suit of Ankhs, it finally dawn-of-the-dead-ed on me that there was a tried-and-true pop culture icon upon which I could draw (no pun intended). So I drew it.

And by the way, are not undead mummies zombies?

Anyway, I will now move on to trying to figure out the suits of Roses and Pears (and perhaps a couple of others that are lurking in my tiny mind). I still have nearly 300 Major Arcana card ideas to realize too.

I have more artwork to make than I have lifespan left. An awesome and terrifying notion...

Glass Half Monster

The Three Box Rule

Star Wars Episode VII

Procrastination Nation

This is what I'm doing instead of doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

What are you doing?

Cleansing the palate, cleansing the palette

Sometimes it's just fun to play with shapes (okay, shape) and colors. Well, it is.

It's like pushing the reset button. Kind of. Not really. But sort of.

Nah.

Yeah.

Noo Spinoolean Tarot - Ten of Ankhs

Noo Spinoolean Tarot - Six of Ankhs

"Quinquaginta Marti umbras."

I haven't seen my friend Marti for a while. She's enduring the same kind of convalescence prison situation that I had a few months ago. But a few days ago, she put this on my profile: "Since I'm the Queen of Everything, shouldn't you make one that hobbles around smacking young people in their shins with her cane when then don't get out of the way? Of course she'd be muttering, "Young whippersnappers," or perhaps something a bit more graphic..."

Inspiration comes from marvelous and unexpected places, and her request resulted in yesterday's card and today's, and may wind up having enough legs to get me through the last two also. I realized that the cane could easily be the Pharaoh's crook, but what's a crook without a flail? So here, our goddess has both -- and uses them to wicked good purpose. 

While this card isn't the Queen of Ankhs, if it comes up in your reading, you can call it the "Queen of Everything" card, or the "Whippersnapper" card, or -- and this is my preference -- the "Marti" card. Interpret it as "having aggressive wisdom," or in the reverse, "coming through, pipsqueak, get out of my way."

Oh, and the Latin at the beginning of this ramble? "Fifty Shades of Marti."

Noo Spinoolean Tarot - Five of Ankhs

Now that the suit of Snow is finished, I can move on to warmer climes and finish Ankhs. This is one of those drawings that started out one thing and finished another. 

May I present Tawaret. She's very tall. Or possibly in the foreground.

Winged Figure

I do this all the time: I'll have a flash of an idea and I'll jot it down, fuss with it for a while, and then realize that it's not going to work out. I'll save the drawing, file it, and forget it.

While I know that this was for the Noo Tarot, I have no idea what card I was working on, but it was probably for the suit of Ankhs. And it was only a month ago. I have dozens of "sketchbook" ideas -- from antiquity until now -- that leave me without inkling as to their original purpose. You'd think I'd be making notes on them by now!

What this shows, though, is an example of the bold colors I use when sketching so that I can see the shapes with which I'm working. The garments would have eventually become white, the wings probably golden, and Lord knows what on earth I was thinking with the headdress. One thing is certain: one of these days I'll need this drawing for something and there it will be, ready-made.

Daevos

My charming and beautiful daughter asked me to draw on of the characters from her novel, Daevos. This is him. 

Noo Spinoolean Tarot - Four of Snow

Since the snow is rapidly diminishing and reminders of winter weather seem to be a sore spot for my friends, this is the last of the Snow cards I will present...until later.

This is a reworking of the original card -- The Slow Meteors -- that was responsible for the invention of the suit. I was never happy with the trails on the snowflakes, so it was on the redo list since it was originally drawn. It went through multiple iterations this time, most of which looked like The Blazing Fast Meteors, but I finally found a pattern for the trails and a color scheme that I liked. 

Planetary Poker - Kepler-62

NASA's Kepler Mission -- like so many of their other projects lately -- is enjoying fantastic success. Kepler was built to detect Earth-like worlds around other stars and has found over 2300 candidates so far, including Kepler-62e and -62f.

Kepler-62 is a star somewhat smaller and dimmer than the sun. The fantastic thing is that its five-planet solar system has not one but two planets in the Goldilocks Zone, the region around any star where liquid water can exist. NASA's models suggest that both planets, while 1.4-1.6 times the size of Earth, feature planetary oceans.

Trivia: How many Star Trek episodes featured two M-Class planets within a single star system that were at war with each other? Kepler may have just found one of those solar systems...

Read more.

Noo Spinoolean Tarot - World Peace

Happy Earth Day, everybody!

When I drew the Universal Destruction Coloring Calendar in late 1986 and early 1987, I had a firm vision for the December panel: the earth exploding in space. I completed it with the legend, "Figure 12, World Peace." For the Noo Tarot, I decided to keep that title -- though "World Pieces" might be more apt.

Just call me Mr. Uplifting.

Binguin

"Baby It's Cold Outside" seems as appropriate a song as any for this chilly, cloudy day. Oh, Bing! You could sing!

A really long time ago, a friend at work asked me to draw a penguin in a fedora. I quickly drew one with a pen on a "re-purposed" memo, but he was unimpressed. Maybe this will be received better?

Noo Spinoolean Tarot - Seven of Snow Redux Redux

I've done two previous versions of the Seven of Snow and have loathed them both equally (enjoy the schadenfreude here and here). During the other night's round of insomnia, I revisited the card again, this time coughing up a snowman like a hairball. I looked at it, then looked again through one eye, questioned my sanity, and then added a scythe dripping with blood.

Then I gave up and went to bed.

Yesterday, having now been tasked by both my daughter and a friend at work to draw a penguin, I capitulated and did so. I put the penguin on the snowman's head. Then I giggled. To conform to other cards, I removed the snowman's eyes and realized that it was exactly what I wanted.

Finally.

Noo Spinoolean Tarot - Five of Snow

So during my bout of insomnia overnight, I decided to attack the last remaining Snow cards. I worked on the Four, the Five, and the Seven. 

This is an homage to my beautiful and brilliant daughter who, before I even turned 40, demonstrated that her imagination was firing on more thrusters than mine. She suggested that I draw a penguin, and I yet might, but for now, an orca will have to do.