IF: Geekish Guffaw


"A geek is an individual who is fascinated by knowledge and imagination, usually electronic or virtual in nature. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word geek as "1: a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken, bat or snake 2: a person often of an intellectual bent who is disliked 3: an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity,"

This guy is a total geek, more like the ones that bite heads off chickens or bats. He is raucously guffawing at some joke a peer just made!

this and that

As I have been working on these dog pictures, I have been learning a bunch of things. First, dogs are shiny. Unlike birds who are not shiny. They're fluffy. So the idea of shininess is new--and with that comes the seeing and trying to understand the wonder of highlights (and shadows). But for me, the lights are on about highlights. Man. Can they do a lot in a pretty brief amount of time. I find myself squinting these days to get to the highlights in everything, faster. Highlights can really pop a subject and at the same time, define the shape (and in the case of the dogs, either their skeleton or the muscle structure under the shiny skin). I have been sketching for a while, and never saw the highlights or the ping in the eye. To me, now that I am on the path of trying to see, the eye is made up of all sorts of highlights and shadows as the round shape moves in and out of how it sits in the eye socket. The glossier the dog, the more obvious the highlights and high mid tones...the more graphic the dog becomes.

More later. Gotta go.

Mac's Drive-In Curb Service Restaurant


Mac's Drive-In Curb Service Restaurant
1166 Waterloo-Geneva Road (Routes US 20 & NY 5)
Waterloo, New York
website>>
I was coming home via the bunny route from Rochester, missed the turn I wanted to make and decided to take Route 20 to Waterloo and take 96 down from there. As I was savoring the delights of Rt. 20 (odd motels and used car dealerships, cabbage stands and livestock auction houses etc.) what did I see? Macs! Plopped right in the middle, no kidding, so you had to see it was the huge oak cask that means root beer in these parts. Plus, they had the Richardson logotype (a thirties style bus boy hustling with a tray laden with an oversized mug of frosty root beer). Macs is def. a summer time place with louvered wooden doors that open the entire place up to the outside and the road. Typical fare--hamburgers etc's (menu here>> now that's food photography!!)...but with the local specialties such as "white hots"(which they grill and then deep fry). The locals were out in force--slugging down frosty ones and wolfing down dogs and burgers (to the tune of $2.29 or so)like it was going out of business. Go for the rootbeer...and maybe a white hot for a change. The fries for $1.50 looked good..Maybe lunch today?

Cited in the Roadside Peek, its a place we should all make pilgrimages to on our journey or our rubbernecking tours of Routes five and twenty.

Woken by a semi psychotic woodpecker....or so I thought. It was a consistent tap tap tap...nothing out of the ordinary..like the woodpecker pecking the margin board in the massive Tburg house. Only it wasnt. It was Henry et al... Henry the Amish Roofer, his dad, and a posse of boys around 13-15 yrs. old. Pulling off the old, cheap roof, and neatly, as they go, stripping it down (in the rain) and putting paper down with hammers (no nail guns here). R. is going to quiz Henry at the end of the job about his cell phone and how it works within the scema of the rights are wrongs of the Amish people. A friend told us about a guy who has basically, a phone booth, in the middle of his field. Its good...as it is in his field, not his house. More to learn. We love these guys. Paying them is ploughing money back into the local economy, and supporting the people who are buying acreage and keeping it agricultural--as it should be, not developments. Totally low carbon guys. If I were in government, I would appoint about 100 amish guys to figure out the carbon thing. Plus, they have great style, great horses, and the right head set.

Henry and team left as the rain cranked up. We did all sorts of dumb stuff with R. taking the lead on the yucky duty...from the emptying of the old composter to the Mantis (cat vomit fever) and the cleaning of the continual crap by our friends the Seagulls. R. purchased (at Walmart) a wonderful bobblehead owl to scare away the Seagull crapmeisters. Fear the dock, birds!

We were woken by our neighbor teen dude and pals firing fireworks horozontally at our bedroom window. Urg. R. went down and defined our rules. Lesson learned, define early, chastise later. Now we know.

Rainy, downpoury Fourth. Good for the ground and the fields. Not much FUN, but hey, I could work on my dachshund.

more later>>

Independence Day: July 4

In the spirit of independence and patriotism, I turn to my betters, Digby and Brodner for their insight about the state of the state:

Digby proclaims:

This is a very touching story about Bush's many weeks of agonized deliberation and careful thought about whether he should pardon Libby or commute his sentence. It is a portrait of a man wracked by the weight of presidential responsibility. It was, after all, among the most important decisions a leader ever makes. A man's life was at stake.

for more>>

Digby goes on to quote others, link to others and in general, sum up the sham this faux pardon that Bush has given Libby--trying to make sense out of nonsense. July the third, Digby addresses Impeachment, which to me is just a whisper of what we should expect in the future. How about much more? How 'bout a jail term for all of those liars and cheats that we call our leaders.

Brodner takes the same subject and puts a face on it>>

It's a shame we have a sullied view of ourselves as much as the world views our actions. It is hard to keep your head up as Americans. So much to be ashamed of.

Top Illustrator to Exhibit Work from Hartford's MFA Program


Some of the best illustrators in the country will be exhibiting at the Silpe Gallery this month as the culmination of their work in a one-of-a-kind MFA (Master of Fine Arts) program.

The inaugural MFA in Illustration Thesis Exhibition will take place from July 9–20 in the Silpe Gallery, which is located in the Hartford Art School. There will be an Artists’ Reception at the gallery on Friday, July 20, from 5 to 7 p.m.

Both the exhibition and the reception are free and open to the public. Silpe Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.me

View the complete article from the UNotes Daily>>

Above:
Ken Smith's thesis project includes illustrations of famous actresses in classic theater roles. The illustration above is titled "Pray, Love, Remember" (Ellen Terry as Ophelia).

Musings

I have been absorbed with the MLA requirements (which absolutely confounds me) and hope to get the next draft of my thesis to the boys in Syracuse tonight. I chopped and hoed, I weeded and culled, I removed and inserted...complete with a "Work Cited"section and an edited body of work. The paper has reduced fro 42 pages of mainly illustration...to 24 pages of a blend of writing and illustration. I have tightened the writing...added more detail when it has felt thin...and all in all...much better.

The illustrations have been puckering in their frames ( the paper is in a big poster frame..punto) and it worries me. I called around and am going to get all of them mounted for the Thesis work (imagine the embarassment when presenting or defending the thesis and as you get wound up to talk...gasp! the work is sinking to the bottom of the frames and bucking at the bottom). So, that is being taken care of tout suite. However, it does pose a question of presentation and display. I have been surfing around for gorgeous, juicy, archival, double thick mats with backing boards--and the maximum size the off the shelf versions that are out there. From that point, I will begin to scale the work to that size--versus the "church of what's happening now" approach I have been taking. Totally unstrategic. Totally willy nilly. I know none of you are surprised.

The dog pictures are coming on. I now have completed the Boston Terrier, dachshund, papillon, chiuaua, and a pug is on the desk right now. What with my new pile of cloud reference, I hope the next one will have a cloud or two. Then, there is another dachshund, a snarling dog, and hopefully a whippet. I am searching for a topiary poodle to do either a full body or just an enormous head. There will be 10-12 images in this collection of work...which hopefully will be all complete by the Ithaca Art Trail weekends. They will make nice prints and nice cards.

I am also reading a nice, short biographic book on Hans Holbein. Man. Do I love this guy. More on him later. I am ruminating on all of this.

The 4th promises something on the grill...and maybe some weeding. There was some talk about emptying our "helping hands at home" composter (a plastic wine barrel hanging from a frame) into the new mammouth, high tech "Mantis" R has purchased and built. The Mantis has two chambers and is on wheels so one can crank the huge barrels to mix it with ease. The big stink it made initially with compost and the "activator" has died down (thankfully) and we can get down to lots of composting to our delight.

More later>>

Rochester Red Wings

Frontier Field is really nice--though my preference is the Sky Chief's field in Syracuse as it it lower and more park like. However, the Rochester field boasts the integration of some buildings that have always been part of the downtown landscape and other ball-parky structures as part of the baseball complex--like picnic pavillions (a la the State Parks around here) and some umbrella-ed areas where companies can provide picnics for their employees in a very tasteful and low key way. Rochester also has lovely, grassy berms on either side of the field that people can plop down on and sit in the grass versus the seats.

Every seat was sold for the game we attended on Saturday. Chock a block people (when the ticket prices are $6, $8.50 or $10. and you know what movies cost...this is a deal, a chance to sit outside and scream). Every person was handed a pair of black, blow-up thundersticks (you get the idea)--so everyone was banging these balloons, eating up a storm and yelling their heads off during a classic upstate stand-off between the Buffalo Bisons and The Rochester Redwings. The local community church choir sang the opener. We had handicapped kids playing ball. We had young dads throwing tennis balls into a net to win lottery tickets. We had the Rochester Redwings boy and girl mascots hopping around with kids or riding in the backs of shiny pick up trucks. And then we had the presentations by the blow-up mascots, the Zooperstars

The Zooperstars are these enormous, blow-up mascots in the tradition of the huge Santie Clauses or the bloated Frosties people keep on their front lawns around the holidays but they are shiny fabric and someone is inside. They bounce when they move, and often they do little innocuous things like dance. However, they all reference sports in some way ie Cow Ripkin, Tiger Woodchuck, and Roger Clamson. Roger is the most frightening as it is a clam on the body of a person. The clam has a long, gross tongue which picks up baseballs and hurls them at an "unsuspecting" person. The high jinx go on to have the Clam eat the ball player and then after a little time, reguritate this person out sans clothes. I guess it was funny, but I was rather disturbed by this...I cannot figure it out, but I was. The head above is of a character called Harry Canary who did all the dancing etc and then shot silly string out of one of his button holes.

I did a little research on these things--and it seems that Walk Around does the making and designing of these things...Man. They could use some illustration help--designing better looking creatures. Check out their gallery>>
 Or their rentals>> Or the video of the Pepsi Logo as a Walk Around>>

This should get us going during a short week. Think of the possibilies!

Boy Wonder

We all miss K. We dropped her off at her school which was wonderful and to us, seemed filled with potential. We propped her room and threatened the R and our friend M would show up with miles of gauze, staple guns and ribbon to do the room up the way it needed to be done .K was very interested. Lots of diversity of the kids. Counsellors seemed nice and interesting. Lots of greenery and a stones throw to a sandy beach on Lake Ontario (Hamlin Beach) which we visited and throughly enjoyed albeit comparing it closely to the divine Taughannock. She is going to have art history, faculty lectures, a dress ball, trips to museums and galleries, discussions on portfolios and homework. It will be a growing experience for her. I hope it is promising and fun. More as we go>>

We have been feeling like our hearts are emptier and she is missing. We call her...and bore her with our curiosities of friends, food and doings. Things will unfold as we go.

Boy Wonder inquires regularly to K about the hotness of the chicks. Isn't it nice to be 13? Boy Wonder, above, caught after a pose he struck to be fabulous for us. Not.
This is him.

A cloud filled day



This wonderful boat came down the lake early this morning. R said "Hey! It's Horatio (Hornblower)!" and though it wasnt as big as a boat Nelson might use, it was quite impressive for our little lake. The clouds were picture perfect--and I shot and shot pictures from on foot to in the passenger seat in the Wonderbus.

New cellphones for the littles and me. We shopped and switched from Vera Zone to AT and T as well. Cool new phones with AT&T with the oppt'y to scale up to an iphone when the desire and price meet. It was impressive to watch all of us with iphones on the brain for now or even later pour into the AT&T store--all with the same pleas on our lips, the same complaints of Verizon's crap service and unresponsiveness....welcoming even a slight shift in product and servicee from the "please wait for a half an hour before one of our highly qualified service deliverers can deliver their quality service" insult. Hope for the future.

Grassroots programs are printed and at Gimme! for the planning and scheduling in the near future of four musical days. The Rongo features "pregame" music the night before and our Pourhouse is revving up with the Chokers doing a set or two before the opening. So, for those of us in the 'Burg, Grassroots starts at least a day early. Pencil them in!

More later>>

More rain


Buckets yesterday. More promised today. Four new monarda plants added to the collection--all new plants going gangbusters. Need to get K. figured out today--getting cash card approved, getting toiletries and detergent for her clothes. Wrapping up some comps for our clients. Got a nibble from the ISpot yesterday with a deadline that I cannot deliver on. Exciting there is some interest.

I am cited today on Illosaurus>>

Traded pdfs with a classmate of our thesis. His work is amazing and the story he tells in the thesis, heartening and rich. He also sprinkled his references and development work throughout the paper to enliven the story and make it easier to read versus flipping back and forth. I am in process of picking up that same approach for my paper. Additionally, need to get the "Works Cited" page for the addendum. The end is in sight.

Had a nice email chat with Carol from HAS (Hartford Art School) with the ISDP MFA program. She sent me links to the folks in the program--some very accomplished and interesting work. I need to start revving up about this program. It's going to be fun. I hope the wine job will yield some money to pay for this program this year. That would be great.

More later>>

Sheldrake Clean-up

All gone. All the wood. All the leaves, all the branches. Clean as a whistle. I pitied the scheduled weddings last weekend as the place looked trashed. Now, neat and tidy. Mr. Hair came and did a lovely job...stacking the oak ( from the thrice struck oak known by the locals and Luckystoners as the "dangerous oak) logs which were interesting curly like typographic curlie Qs. After the hedge trimming and the bit of weeding, we are looking a little less like a bomb hit. Henry, the Amish roofer will be giving us a new roof at the Lodge as we have roof tiles flying across the yard with some of them worn to it's core. Thankfully this is something we can do now...before the rain and snow. Might happen this week.

Rochester Red Wings have a game this Saturday. I think we are on for that.

Shady Grove discovered little frogs yesterday. Even better than squirrels.

Syracuse still hasn't gotten us (any of us) our thesis papers to amend and send back. The dude that needs us to send us buckets of stuff ( paperwork, approvals, files etc) just happily came back from vacation (our deadline is July 1) with answers to a mass of questions from his stack of requirements we need to provide. He says they need all of our images at 300 dpi to size. This sounds extremely fishy. Do they have the right to use our images in University publications without our knowledge? I do not recall approving any document allowing Syracuse full usage rights to our images. I am beginning to see red about this and may, via email, crank it up publicly with my classmates to point up what this possibly means. I know they don't see this freight train coming down the tracks. To be honest, I don't have a problem with SU using our images...what I have a problem with is the covert and stupid way this is handled with no explanation or qualifications of how they would use them. Should I watermark all the files to cover myself? Urg. This shouldnt be such a pain--and it is, due to no one minding the store.

More later.

Philip Burke

I was stunned and inspired by a recent New Yorker image created by Philip Burke of Princess Diana. It was startlingly beautiful with rich, hot pinks, cool greens and the bigger head/smaller body thing that happens in caricatures. Burke confidently lays in slabs of color lusciously, staying big and bold yet portraying Diana with heart--showing her as a tentative, intelligent women...imbuing her with spirit. I found the Tommy Franks for your edification (above). Ray Charles (below) to continue. There is a mention of Burke in Wikipedia...and I found a gallery in Ohio that sells his giclees. Many of the magazines he has illustrated for cite him (New York Times, Harpers, Rolling Stone). I also love the black and white he did of Charleton Heston ...(see below). His brush work is calligraphic and energetic. Inspired.

Nice write up about the Ape, Darren Di Lieto, the Little Chimp Society founder and to me, a thought leader in the world off internet communities for illustrators. An excerpt speaks to his point of view:

The internet has given public access to a lot of rubbish ... ‘cough MySpace cough’ ... but at the same time I think it has given birth to a global community of like-minded image-making individuals. Being able to access the work of so many great illustrators at the same time has raised the bar as far as quality and competitive drawing goes. The problems start to show when you think about how big the internet is and how much choice there is. How can a freelancer compete with the rest of the world when someone on the other side of it is happy to work for half the fee and (allegedly) deliver the same goods…?

Right on. Check out the whole thing (http://www.illosaurus.com/vs-lcs.php)

summer emerges


Longest day, four days ago. Big work day of weeds and hedgecutting, helping friends, cooking and tidying. This striped rose peeked out--to declare the imminent summer (projections of ninties this week). Mr. Hair coming to clean up the trees and all their destruction--is our hope. He said Monday...so....

Been planning to take out some of the inked sketches I have done in the last few months and work them up in illustrator. There should be a good 6 of them to start with. Additionally, want to do some research on Hindu mythology to develop some sketches/body of work around them. Could be interesting. I spent some time with Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales to think about the possible children's book project for next summer...and feel its pretty much in free fall. Thank goodness I have a year to sweat it--maybe mythology might point to something.

Gotta go to get the babies up.

A perfect day to graduate


Congratulations to the Class of 2007, Trumansburg High School. It's a perfect, cornflower blue sky day for the Blue Raiders to graduate and move forward in their lives. It is a perfect day for the after graduation lunches and parties. It is a perfect day to remember.

K and I socked in a mess of plants with K doing more laughing and tumbling with the dog than planting. She was silly, funny company. We strolled the newly refurbished Main Street around 9 a.m. to find it buzzing between the sweet shop and Gimme! with people sitting outside, milling and gathering. We caught up with John about the little Village that is underconstruction with all sorts of happy news and positive, truly achieveable goals. It was a blue sky chat as it was all possible which often, here on our plateau, we lose scope and try to raise millions of dollars for activities and facilities that would be nice, but out of reach for a community of 2000 and with the folks in the environs taking it up to 8,000. Multi million dollar projects spread out among 8,000 still demands everyone give, and give big. These achievable, left foot/right foot projects reinforce that things can be really nice, just scaled for the communitity and those that support the project. We will have a little space for children with these large play houses made by people in the community that represent different aspects of the town. There is a lovely stone wall and plans for seating, a little garden and maybe a sand box. The owners of the laundromat has allowed the village to place this little garden parklet on their property--so moms can do their laundry, get a coffee and enjoy playtime with their littles (or not so littles). All good. All happy. All right with the world.

Off to buy art supplies with K. R. looked at a current illustration I did of a dog and suggested very good and affirming changes (I had tentatively thought about) so change will happen soon.

Must go>>