Finished some storyboard revisions this week, and haven’t had much of a chance to post until now.  This is a drawing for a small painting I’m going to do.

I’ve been reading boy and dog stories lately, Henry Huggins, Henry and Ribsy, by Beverly Cleary, and Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes.  I like the innocence of the Youth Fiction of the 50s and 60s.  I also like that the stories are super interesting and that the kids are responsible and outward focused.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the glorification of pagan-angsty-selfish-outcast-teenagers as much as the next guy, provided the next guy doesn’t like them at all.  Anyway, that’s neither here nor there.  I wanted this composition to be sort of poster-like, so I based it off the telescoping circle thing found in art nouveau jewelry.

This thing:

Not too subtle, I know.  The red circles are completely unnecessary, because it’s so obvious.

I hope to paint it up in the next week or so.  Keep you posted.

I was in Columbia the other day and I bought a book called 10 Books That Screwed Up The World: And 5 Others That Didn’t Help. Benjamin Wiker, the author, examines 15 foundational books that persuasively justify bad ideas.  Mr. Wiker suggests that the best way to inoculate one’s self from these ideologically diseased works is to read them.  In case you’re unpersuaded that this is necessary, Wiker explores  the arguments of each of the books and alerts the reader to their trendy current mutation.  The chapters are long enough to give you serious food for thought, but short enough to reach a wide audience. Mr. Wiker is a good stylist and he deftly distills abstract thoughts into concrete sentences.  His first chapter is a punchy take on Niccolo Machiavelli’s infamous book The Prince.  I like what he has to say so much that I did this painting.

The Prince is both controversial and strangely popular.  It is controversial because it rationalizes the separation of power from ethics and popular because many folks want this rationalization.  Wiker writes, “Machiavelli knew evil.  But then, so did many others, in many other times and places … What makes Machiavelli different is that he looked evil in the face and smiled.  That friendly smile and a wink is The Prince.”

Here’s how the worship of power seems to unfold.  Power seduces because we prefer “what is mine” to “what is right.”  The more personalized our moral code, the harder it is to do wrong.  Since we think highly of our personal virtue, we give our desires little scrutiny.  Soon, we focus our energies to acquire power so we can do what we want i.e. “good.”  In the end, our attempts at Utopia kill 6 million Jews, or 100 million dissenters, or we fly a plane full of innocents into a building full of innocents.  Such actions get the thumbs up from Machiavelli.  Wiker says, “Machiavelli convinces the reader that great evils, unspeakable crimes, foul deeds are not only excusable but praiseworthy if they are done in the service of some good.  Since this advice occurs in the context of atheism, then there are no limits on the kind of evil one can do if he thinks he is somehow benefitting humanity.”‘

Machiavelli is a devil because he repeats the old lie that the ends justify the means.  It’s not new.

Matt 4:8-9

“Again, the devil took him [Jesus] to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.  And he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’”

Here is Wiker’s succinct take on Machiavelli:

“His great classic The Prince is a monument of wicked counsel, meant for rulers who had shed all moral and religious scruples and were therefore daring enough to believe that evil–deep, dark, and almost unthinkable evil–is often more effective than good.”

In conclusion Mr. Wiker contends that Machiavelli lit the fuse that runs through Rousseau, and Marx, and Nietzsche, and that ultimately set off the powder keg of the 20th century.  He fathered the lie in political science that was first told by the father of lies: “It is best to exchange personal goodness for personal power.”  Thumbs down for Machiavelli.

Work in Progress shot:

More than one writer has compared Mustache Jones to Slappy Malloy.  In his 1998 book, Sam Force to GIJOE: Television in the Age of Reagan, Henry Sallow remarks, “For those aware of the players, the similarities between Stewart Malloy and Mustache Jones are manifold.”  Sallow goes on to suggest that the polemical argumentative nature of the show mirrors the interaction between Slappy and his Marxist roommate, Shelby Rodenburg.

Though initially quite good friends, the political divide became personal, and they pursued projects aimed at the other’s displeasure.  Sam Force promoted a Pro-Nuclear, “Peace through Strength” agenda with such ferocity that many networks feared a political backlash.  Had Malloy been less strident, Sam Force might have pre-empted the success of GIJOE.  Still without the training ground of Sam Force, GIJOE would have never found its voice.

While Slappy worked on his Sam Force proposal, Shelby Rodenburg found the perfect vehicle for his Marxist leanings in a Belgian comic called The Smurfs.  Released in 1981, The Smurf television show demonstrated a communal, currency-free society ruled by a benign, red-clad, Marx-bearded, Papa Smurf.  If that weren’t enough to annoy Slappy Malloy, Rodenburg emphasized Gargamel, a greedy capitalist villain who desperately wanted to commodify the Smurfs and turn them into gold.  It is possible that the audience for such a heavily Marxist allegory was not principally America’s children.  Rather, it is entirely feasible that Smurf preachiness was intended to provoke the free-market-loving, Milton-Friedman-worshipping, Slappy Malloy.

Not surprisingly the tension between the two roommates found its way into Slappy Malloy’s script.  Below is a page from the SamForce pilot where Mustache Jones (Malloy’s counterpart) dukes it out with Comrade Crimson (Rodenburg’s counterpart?).

One can only wonder what the show might have gone on to reveal had it been allowed to continue.  I think I can say without fear of contradiction that the show behind the show is far more interesting and had it been more widely known Sam Force might still be running today.

In 1978 during the height of the Cold War, Stewart (Slappy) Malloy devised a television series for kids that dramatized the fighting forces of the United States against those of the Soviet Union.  Motivated by a frustration toward the Carter administration’s apologetic posture and what he deemed a weak foreign policy, Slappy Malloy proposed a television show called “Sam Force” that would promote patriotism and restore pride in the armed forces.  Every week “Sam Force” was to fight “The Red Thumb” a proxy Soviet empire.  The show never made it beyond its pilot episode, and in 1979 Slappy Malloy was recruited by Hasbro to revitalize the wilting GIJOE franchise.

Above is the front of a proposed trading card.  It features Natasha Plotnikova, a Red Thumb villainess.  She is an agent skilled in the passive aggressive arts.  The back of the card lists her weapons as pouty lips and a sullen expression.  Furthermore, she makes her enemies feel guilty almost at will.  Plotnikova appeared briefly in an interrogation scene during the pilot episode.

Ah, what might have been.

In the words of the Sam Force Theme Song:

The Sam Force forever, hurrah, boys, hurrah!

Down with the traitor, and crush the red star.

Sketches, underpainting, and final cover.

Here’s something I started a while ago and just revisited.

I had a busy weekend and I uploaded some cover revisions and storyboards this morning.  So for the rest of the day I’m just doing some blog stuff and kicking back before I start on the underpainting for a cover tomorrow.

I get really frustrated with storyboards sometimes because I want to impress the client with a great vision of the script and really top notch drawings, but the working time always gets a little cramped, and panels that I want to render like this:

end up like this:

or this:

I’m actually pleased with some of the work, but I can’t put it on my blog because it’s for a video game that comes out in a billion years.  If I put up any of the work, the Play Station folks will actually get in a time machine, kill my parents, and I’ll never get born.  Seriously, they’re the mafia, but with time machines and lots of first person shooter experience.

The colors are a little bit gross, but I’m ready to move on.

Here’s an old weird incomprehensible drawing I did some time ago.  It accompanied an old post (below) on Portland’s blog.

Advocates of Western civilization increasingly suffer bewilderment.  It is the type of bewilderment described in a nightmare of Malcolm Muggerridge.  The setting is backstage in a theater.  As he waits in the wings for his cue, he hears the play bumbling along.  Suddenly he realizes that the play he hears is not the play to which he has a script.  “Panic seizes me; I wonder frenziedly what I should do.  Then I get my cue.  Stumbling, falling over the unfamiliar scenery, I make my way onto the stage, and there look for guidance to the prompter, whose head I can just see rising out of the floor boards.  Alas, he only signals helplessly to me, and I realise that of course his script is different from mine.  I begin to speak my lines, but they are incomprehensible to the other actors and abhorrent to the audience who begin to hiss and shout: ‘Get off the stage!’ ‘Let the play go on!’ ‘You’re interrupting!’   I am paralysed and can think of nothing to do but to go on standing there and speaking my lines that don’t fit.  The only lines I know.”

This happened to Mark Helprin when he clashed with an audience from a university town in Massachusetts.  “By some quirk which I hope never to see reproduced, and before I knew what was happening, I found myself debating my entire audience on the subjects of human sacrifice and cannibalism. These well-educated and polite people — only a few of whom would actually have murdered or eaten one another — who had sons and daughters, Ph.D.s, and BMWs, were defending the Mayan and Aztec practice of human sacrifice — that is, in the main, of children — and the South Sea custom of cannibalism.”  Helprin suggests that when faced with the option to defend Western Civilization or cannibalism, it is more fashionable to defend cannibalism.

The legendary American literary critic Leslie Fielder once wrote:

“We continue to insist that change is progress, self-indulgence is freedom and novelty is originality.  In these circumstances it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion  that Western man has decided to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brings the walls of his city crumbling down.”

Leslie Fielder wrote this well before Jesse Jackson led Stanford University students in the chant: “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Western Civ Has Got to Go.”  Fielder also wrote it before the University of Chicago ignored its student council, both of its student papers, it’s alumni (including Nobel Prize winning novelist Saul Bellow), the National Association of Scholars, and decided to phase out its popular and celebrated History of Western Civilization class.  University of Chicago president Don Randel seemed to believe that an appreciation for our culture was a 19th century phenomena that we’ve moved beyond.

Sometimes one can find a fellow cast member who possesses the same script.  I feel that Mark Helprin, the previously mentioned novelist, is such a fellow.  In a 2002 commencement speech, he expanded Clarence Darrow’s charge to the class of 1918.  Darrow commanded, “Get out of here, and go swimming.”  Helprin lengthened this by a third: “Get out of here, go swimming, and save Western Civilization.”

Here’s an excerpt from his beautiful speech:

If civilization can be attacked on many fronts, it can also be defended on many fronts, and to do so you need not necessarily drop into Afghanistan by parachute or found a political party. Last summer, in Venice, I was walking from room to room in the Accademia, which, unlike timid American museums, throws its windows wide open to the light and air of day. As if to bring even further alive the greatness and truth of the Bellinis and the Giorgiones on the walls, the galleries were flooded with music. As is most everything in Italy, it was unofficial. It came from a guitarist and a soprano on a side street. He played while she sang — gloriously — Bach, Handel, Mozart, and anonymous folk songs of the 18th Century. Because it was music, I cannot properly convey to you how beautiful it was, but it was accomplished, precise, and infused with the ineffable quality that lifts great art above that which merely aspires to or pretends to be great art. I could not see them from the windows, but when, several hours later, I went outside, they had neither ceased, nor skipped a beat, nor produced a single false note.

They were impoverished Poles, who appeared to be in their late twenties. She was thin, sharp-featured, and hauntingly beautiful. Most people simply passed them by, some dropped a few coins in a basket at her feet, and the visitors to the Accademia had no idea who they were, but she sang as if she were bathed in the footlights of La Scala, where she should have been, and where someday she may be. It did not matter that they were unrecognized, that they sang on the street, or that they were desperately poor, because that day in Venice they rose above everyone else, except perhaps the saints. In this they shared a brotherhood with the American soldier who made the first parachute jump, in the dark, into Afghanistan. For they and he were defending the civilization of the West, and they and he are inextricably linked. Without the soldier, they could not exist except in subjugation, and without them, he would not have enough to fight for.

I ask you to join this brotherhood, and, in your own way, whatever that may be, to defend and champion the sanctity of the individual, free and objective inquiry, government by consent of the governed, freedom of conscience, and the pursuit — rather than the degradation and denial — of truth and of beauty.

This is a recent job.  Below are screen caps of the quick idea sketch in Photoshop followed by a progress shot and a final.  I started to draw the girl with her hands up on her head.  I realized that I’d need to change the face to look more angry/frustrated and less tired, but I liked the tired expression more, so I changed her posture to match her face.  Not the most direct route, but I think it turned out okay.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been watching the Senate Debate this week instead of shopping for Christmas presents.  I get a kick out of those Democratic Senators who whine that Republicans won’t let them vote early and spend Christmas with their families.  The Republicans of course shrug their shoulders and ask for unanimous consent to adjourn the 2009 session and postpone the vote until they reconvene in 2010.  Of course everyone objects to everything.

This is Harry Reid as Scrooge who apparently hates Christmas and he won’t let any Senators or Staffers on capital hill go Christmas shopping because he has to ram something through in time for Obama to claim credit for it in his State of the Union address (and he doesn’t want his Senators to rub shoulders with their constituents before they vote).  It’s the first time the Senate has been held 25 consecutive days since WWI, and the first vote on Christmas Eve since the 19th century.  I started this piece for fun this week and I’ve worked on it amidst Christmas obligations.  I figured I’d put up a screen capture of the piece unfinished (before it becomes untopical).  I think I’ll finish it after Christmas and file it as a portfolio piece.

A friend from college commissioned me to do a Christmas card for her family that featured her two angelic boys.  She wanted it to look like a vintage fruit crate label.  Here’s what she got.

Here’s an oil sketch on paper.

The Senior Senator from Kentucky looks like a middle school librarian (so does Harry Reid for that matter–actually Harry Reid strikes me as more of a piano teacher), but Mitch McConnell is the Senate Minority leader and the most powerful hand to oppose the Obama administration’s hopes at Nationalized Health Care.  He’s a sharp fella.  His opposition to Harry Reid’s motion to proceed is a fascinating bit of political maneuvering.  It drives a wedge between the Democrats and spreads confusion.  The weakness of the Democratic party is it’s loose and warring conglomeration of special interests, and prolonging the debate amongst Democrats about what to include in the Senate bill will cause the disparate groups to fight amongst themselves.  Furthermore, it illustrates to the American people the absurdity of the government’s promise to satisfy infinite desires with finite means.  Still, Harry Reid is pretty savvy, and Team Obama has proven itself ready to kneecap some folks Chicago-style to force its way.  In my lifetime, politics has never been this interesting.

The other day my girlfriend and I went to the symphony.  I pointed out a girl seated in a box who had an old-school collar sprouting up out of her jacket.  My girlfriend said that earlier in the lobby while waiting for me to return from the restroom, this girl gave her a dirty look.

“Really?” I asked.  ”Why?”

“I don’t know.  I think she was just in conversation and had a scrutinizing look on her face.  When I caught her eyes she looked away.”

“Her collar looks weird,” I said.

We saw collar girl again when we left, and I decided that she was haughty, unpleasant, and a showoff.

Monday I called my girlfriend.

“I’m doing a drawing of the girl that gave you a dirty look.”

“Who?”

“The girl with the collar at the symphony.  I’m going to make her look dumb.”

“Go team!”

“Right.  I’m going to have her drinking the tears of orphans out of a champagne glass.”

“Don’t do that.”

“I’m just going to put a label and an arrow pointing to the champagne glass that says ‘Tears of Orphans.’”

“I don’t like that.”

“Why not?  It’s funny.  I’ll talk about how this girl was a snob at the–”

“Don’t do that.  At least don’t use my name.”

“Alissa!”

“I don’t like how you guys always talk about drinking the tears of orphans.”

“We’re not actually encouraging people to–I don’t even know how one would proceed to drink the tears of–It’s not like something anyone’s actually in danger of doing.  It’s just a description of a diabolical person.”

Since I had completed so much of the drawing.  I decided to just go ahead and finish it.  Alissa said she liked the drawing, but that the real girl had more of a squarish collar not points.  Also she expressed some concern.

“What if she sees it?”

“So.  Who cares?  She was a jerk.”

“She wasn’t a jerk.”

“She gave you a dirty look.”

“She just had a disdainful expression.  I think it was one of those things where she was staring absent-mindedly and didn’t know it.”

“I kind of feel like you’re backing down, and I don’t like how you won’t let me say ‘tears of orphans.’”

“Do what you want.  It’s your blog.”

So anyway.  Here’s the drawing and the piece colored in Photoshop.  This girl may or may not be the girl we saw at the symphony and she is definitely NOT drinking the tears of orphans … or is she?

The work I’ve had lately requires a lot of painting in photoshop and very little drawing.  I’m making an effort to doodle more throughout the day so that I don’t regress.  Here is a picture of Don Quixote that I did while on the phone with my girlfriend (that stays between us.  She doesn’t need to know).  I’ll color it later, perhaps while I listen to Man of La Mancha.

October 31st marks Reformation Day.  In honor, I did this quick piece of Martin Luther in photoshop.  It’s based on a painting of him I found on the internet, done by some famous and superior painter.  I made him fatter and his head a little squarer, and finished it in about 2 hours.  I intended for it to be very exaggerated, but when I finished, it seemed less caricatured than I expected.

Below is a step by step.

Some time ago I was reading George MacDonald’s book At the Back of the North Wind.  I was struck by the sensitivity of the book, and I started this picture.  My progress was interrupted by some client work.  Today I took a break from my regular work and endeavored to put enough finish on this piece to post it on my blog.  I still have some work left on it, and I’ll try to present a finished version in time.

Sometimes I drive late at night and listen to Coast to Coast AM on the radio.  The host of the show is the least critical guy in the universe.  Recently I mentioned the host of that show to someone, and asked if they knew who I meant.  I knew we meant the same person when my friend said, “The guy who’s always fascinated?”

No matter how dull the caller, the host always seems on the edge of his seat.  So I did this quick sketch of what I imagined he might look like.

This weekend the air felt Fall-ish.  It’s my favorite season and it’s on its way.  Here’s an old piece, but one I don’t think I’ve yet put up here.  Let’s hear it for Fall.

I’ve been busy working on stuff that wouldn’t be that interesting to post here.  Also, some of the things have non-disclosure agreements attached.  Here’s something I did a little while ago.  I’ll post again soon.  Hopefully, something so cool it will knock your socks off.  But until then, here’s this.

Here was the idea the client liked.

She suggested a few changes, and because time was tight I just incorporated them into the final.

A note about the color.  Originally I planned to do my foundation piece in sepia tones with oil paint, but the deadline was tight, so I had to do it in watercolor.  I had a bottle of magenta watercolor meant for use in an airbrush.  The pigments are really saturated.  Anyway, I took a look at the bottle and thought, “I haven’t touched this bottle since I got it in 1996.  I should use some of it.”  So I used the magenta to do a value watercolor painting.  Clearly a mistake.  I thought it would be easy to change the hue digitally to something nice, but for some reason the darks in the painting burned out completely when I adjusted the slider.  At any rate, I now have a super saturated princess color watercolor ready to burn the eyes out of any one that dares dig through my production art stack.

Despite the fact that the painting looks like it belongs in the purse of an 8 year old strawberry shortcake fanatic,  I somehow subconsciously painted in what look like monster’s eyes in the tree.  The client pointed it out, and I corrected it in the final.

Here’s the final.  The client liked it, but I fear I spent most of my creative energies trying to pull the thing from the brink rather than pushing it to some place really great.

I’ll try to post again real soon.

I’m working on a painting that’s giving me trouble, and it’s not yet good enough to post, so I did this for the blog today.

I wish the likeness were a little more dead on, but it’s Jimmy Stewart from the greatest movie ever made: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

You think I’m licked!  You all think I’m licked.  Well I’m not licked!

It’s a festival of Lincoln!

Here’s my underpainting for Lincoln.  I pasted my drawing to a masonite panel, and painted over the feet, because I felt the little boxy body was sort of silly.  I think I might try some color glazes tomorrow.  I will most certainly mess it up beyond recovery so I captured a shot before I began.

Here’s the deal after it dried enough to scan:

I did this drawing today, and erased out some quick highlights from a photoshop layer.  I love the asymmetrical nature of Lincoln’s face.  His face seems to bare the burdens of a man that, according to William Herndon, “God rolled through his fiery furnace.”

Edwin Markham penned these words for the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922:

The color of the ground was in him, the red earth,

The smack and tang of elemental things.

Sprung from the West,

He drank the valorous youth of a new world,

The strength of virgin forest braced his mind,

The hush of spacious prairies still his soul.

His words were oaks in acorns;

And his thoughts

Were roots that firmly gripped the granite truth.

This pic attempts to illustrate Stigma beating Dogma in the political realm.  It’s not a very successful experiment.  First of all, I found that writing “Stigma” and “Dogma” on the boxing gloves drew inadequate attention to the point.  The texts were super small, and I eventually got rid of them.  Overall, I intended to do an underpainting that I could then color in photoshop.  I was too eager to begin painting and I left some drawing mistakes that came back later to haunt me.  But it’s an open disclosure blog.  So welcome to my problem pieces.

Nancy Pelosi is in the headlines again for demonizing opponents to national healthcare.  She says that the events seem manufactured.  As evidence she charges that the people are bringing swastikas to the town meetings.

Not surprisingly, Jonah Goldberg questions such a tactic.

“How does that work? What public relations genius says: ‘OK, we need these protests to seem like an authentic backlash of real Americans. Make sure everyone has enough Nazi paraphernalia!’”

(If you like you can read his full editorial here).

Thank you Ms. Pelosi, you’ve made the news fun again!  Anyway, this is a sketch I did tonight, with highlights in photoshop.

Time Magazine held a poll on their website.  The question was, “Now that Walter Cronkite has passed on, who is America’s most trusted newscaster?”

The options were Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, Jon Stewart, and Brian Williams.  Jon Stewart won by a landslide.

Jon Stewart

Okay, granted.  The poll is stupid.  Jon Stewart isn’t technically in competition with the other mainstream networks.  The other networks are likely to cannibalize each other’s votes and push Stewart ahead.  Also, it’s an online poll and therefore skewed to the Daily Show’s younger audience, in contrast to the 60-year-old median audiences of the mainstream networks’ Nightly News shows.

Still, it’s a bit frightening to be reminded that there are people who regard Jon Stewart as the King of the News.  The biggest problem with The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report for that matter, is that they serve as news for people who don’t like news.  That’s not an exaggeration is it?  The fact that the shows are slanted towards the liberal side is not in itself problematic.  The problem is that people watch the shows and take their political stance with an eye to fashion, not good policy.  Colbert’s entire show is dedicated to the stigmatization of conservatism.  A thinking person can appreciate Colbert’s humor and still be independent of the stigma.  Unfortunately, non-thinking college students eager to sit at the political equivalent of the “cool kids table” advance the stigma without analyzing the issues.  By acting like the counterpoints are too ridiculous to consider, people never consider the counterpoints.

Stewart’s show is particularly troublesome, not because it’s an irreverent editorial show.  It’s troublesome because people treat it with authority.  Jon Stewart has managed to import middle-school popularity dynamics into a discussion of national politics.  He sometimes dismisses an entire issue by merely rolling his eyes.  The audience guffaws and then moves on without having to think.  Again, if you can pour contempt on an opposing viewpoint, you don’t have to refute it.  To see a sycophantic audience in action, take a look at this interview of Jonah Goldberg.  Stewart says in the interview, both that he doesn’t understand what Jonah talks about, and that Jonah is misrepresenting progressive causes.  The audience cheers for both sentiments–Jon Stewart doesn’t understand (cue audience), and yet Stewart does and Jonah doesn’t (cue audience).  Dismissal is an effective technique for people who desire an approved stance rather than an informed stance.  What’s more annoying is that the Daily Show viewers, who have never considered the issues, are confident in their criticism or praise of an idea.

Though Jon Stewart enjoys the benefits of his authority, he denies its legitimacy.  He’s sort of like Jerry Springer in that he shrugs his shoulders and says, my show’s ridiculous.  It’s a disarming way to distance himself from his show’s haughty proclamations.  He used to say that he came on after a show where puppets made crank calls.  The inference was that anyone who takes his show seriously need not themselves be taken seriously. Yet he seems equivalent to a man who “satirically” sits on a street corner with a cup, but still expects money.  After the hit piece Stewart ran on CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Stewart’s “I don’t take myself too seriously” shrug, seems a little less convincing.

In the style-over-substance-age of television politics, someone as likeable as Jon Stewart is here to stay.  So I did this picture of him.

I read an article about Deepak Chopra last night.  What a smug, self righteous, frustrating man.

He promotes Ayurveda, which is the ancient traditional medicine that can cure anything, as long as you believe in it.

Chopra is a multimillionaire celebrity doctor that provokes oohs and ahs over his remedies and Pop Hindu lectures.  Many pay him money to hear him say that they’re god–mostly middle aged women who watch Oprah.  In addition to his best selling books, he also occasionally writes anti-american screeds on the Huffington post.

He’s a shrewd business man who equips the “Me Generation” with the tools for self worship, and he’s managed to convince Americans that in order to fulfill our health and wealth desires, we need to tap into the traditional folk medicine of India.  That’s right.  INDIA!

Seems odd, right?  Because if you want to buy magical Ayurvedic rocks and things from a stall in Bombay, you have to step over diseased, impoverished folks in the streets.  Despite India’s pervasive Ayurvedic remedies, it still struggles with poverty and health problems.   In 1999 during the peak of Chopra’s fame, the World Health Organization estimated that 700,000 Indians died of diarrhea.  That’s 1,600 deaths a day.  In addition, this year CNN reported that a gene mutation among non-smoking, vegetarian, Indians has caused a radical increase in heart disease.  That’s right, Chopra is importing the secrets to health and wealth that work so well for the folks in India.

Is it important for Ayurvedic medicine to actually work, or is it cool enough for it be pagan, foreign, alternative, and old?  A scientific study in the Journal of the America Medical Association (Saper et al., JAMA (2004)292:2868-2873) found:

“One of 5 Ayurvedic HMPs [herbal medicine products] produced in South Asia and available in Boston South Asian grocery stores contains potentially harmful levels of lead, mercury, and/or arsenic.  Users of Ayurvedic medicine may be at risk for heavy metal toxicity, and testing of Ayurvedic HMPs for toxic heavy metals should be mandatory.”

Thomas Wheeler, Ph.D., reported on an Ayurvedic AIDS clinic in San Francisco.  Apparently, the physicians told patients to stop taking their regular medicine and instead take the herbal remedies they sold the patients for $500 a month.  Laboratory analyses revealed that some “herbal preparations were composed of plant material, fungus, feces, and bacteria, which may have caused the gastrointestinal problems reported by the patient.  At least one patient died.

The claims of alternative medicine, particularly Ayurveda, are so radical, that they beg to be tested.  I mean, if washing your eyes in your own saliva can cure cataracts, why not test and promote such a remedy?  Ten years ago, the government began testing herbal and alternative health remedies.  It has cost taxpayers 2.5 billion dollars.  Which remedies work?  According to an AP story last month “… the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do.  Echinacea for colds, Gikgo biloba for memory.  Glucosamine and chondroitin for arthritis.  Black cohosh for menopausal hot flashes.  Saw palmetto for prostate problems.  Shark cartilage for cancer.  All proved no better than dummy pills in big studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.  The lone exception: ginger capsules may help chemotherapy nausea.”

What interests me is how Deepak Chopra knows which Ayurvedic secrets to uncover to his American audiences and which to leave covered?

Matt Labash writes that in ancient Ayurveda “Most diseases were originally attributed to demons; often they were cured with the wearing of gems and the use of fragrances….  Poor digestion was treated with goat feces prepared by washing with urine.  Got constipation?  Drink milk — with urine.  Male potency was supposedly enhanced by 216 different kinds of enemas, including the testicles of peacocks, swans, and turtles.  If that didn’t work, one was supposed to follow up with an enema of urine.  Hemorrhaging was a nice break from the regimen, since it was treated with an enema of the fresh blood of a rabbit, dear, cock, or any one of numerous other beasts.  Epilepsy was treated with ass urine.”

American New Agers already believe that demons find certain fragrances and gems revolting, but what they need to understand is that demons really really hate urine.  Unfortunately, American audiences are kept from the less sexy Ayurvedic treatments.  Think of all the healing that could occur.

.

NEW AGE DOCTOR:

What seems to be the problem?

HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITY:

I’m having nosebleeds.

NEW AGE DOCTOR:

Interesting.  How long has this occurred?

HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITY:

About a week.  I think it might be the change in the weather or–

NEW AGE DOCTOR:

Demons in your nose?

HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITY:

Or demons in my nose.

NEW AGE DOCTOR:

Normally, I would suggest that you rinse your nose with urine to repel the demons, but I think your case is more severe.

HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITY:

What do you suggest?

NEW AGE DOCTOR:

I’m … writing out a prescription for …

HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITY:

A chicken blood enema?

NEW AGE DOCTOR:

Yes, you will need to acquire a chicken, and then drain it’s blood into a bag…

HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITY:

Can’t I just close my eyes, and fix myself?  Go within?

NEW AGE DOCTOR:

Like I said, I think your case is pretty severe.  Chicken blood enemas are the product of ancient wisdom.

HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITY:

There’s no pagan spirit mantra?  No herbs to brew?  I thought I was god.  Can’t I just align myself with the universal consciousness and believe in myself.

NEW AGE DOCTOR:

Nope.  Chicken blood enema.

HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITY:

I don’t know.

NEW AGE DOCTOR:

Oprah swears by it.

HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITY:

Why didn’t you say so!

I just returned from my Grandmother’s funeral.  She was 87.  This is a quick drawing I did in my sketchbook of my grandpa (89) when he fell asleep in his chair.  He and my Grandmother were married for 67 years.

Here’s an old piece.

I was cleaning off the desktop of my computer, and I came across a photo.  I’m not sure what it was from or for, but the girl in it was looking over her shoulder.  I liked the girl’s pose and took an hour to do a sketch of the thing in photoshop.  I’m finding that I like working loose in photoshop with 2 layers: a background layer and a foreground layer.  It feels really liberating.

Last week, President Obama and others at the G8 Summit agreed not to allow the Earth’s temperature to rise more than 3.6 degrees Farenheit.  The President is also in a constant battle to stop smoking.  I guess some carbon emissions are easier to control than others.

This is a color sketch with a layer of texture over it.  It’s based on a pencil sketch that I recently found on the back of a sheet of paper.

This is an old picture I did for the Portland Blog.  We painted a bunch of pictures in tea.  This is one of them.  It felt summery and appropriate for July.

Here’s another one just for kicks.

I’m going out of town this weekend and so I won’t be able to post until I get back on Monday.  Also, I’m sad to say that it appears yesterday’s post did not penetrate the Russian demographic as much as I would have hoped.

As you may know, I am desperately trying to get Russian readers for my blog, and I possess every confidence, that despite their infamous blog caution, they will attend my blog regularly, provided I post enough Russian-friendly-posts.  Then I’ll have them.  I’ve already posted a picture of Vlad Putin holding a chess piece.  I’m sure you’re wondering, what more could they want?  Some time ago I started reading The Brothers Karamazov, but I got distracted and put it down.  I’m back at it, and I recently reread a scene that moves me deeply.  I’m doing some rough sketches trying to capture something from the book.

I read that Dostoyevsky considered human dignity a treasure worth guarding.  This whole scene, from which I’m writing only a moment, confirms Dostoyevsky’s high regard for the dignity of man.

In the book, Dimitry humiliates a poor man in front of the man’s son.  Aloysha, his brother, is entrusted with some money from Katherine, Dimitry’s fiance.  She intends Aloysha (also called Aleksy) to give it to the man, and the man responds, “Listen, sir, my dear fellow, listen, sir, I mean, if I accept it, shan’t I be a scoundrel, eh?  In your eyes, I mean, Aleksey Fyodorovich, shan’t I be a scoundrel?  No, Aleksey Fyodorovich, sir, you must hear me to the end, sir, hear me to the end,’ he said hurriedly, touching Aloysha with both hands.  ’Look, here you are trying to make me accept it on the grounds that a “sister” has sent it, yet inwardly, privately to yourself, sir — won’t you feel contempt for me if I accept it, sir, won’t you, eh?”

Below is a sketch that I drew while listening to “Kalinka” over and over.

The composition is weak, and I’m not pleased enough with it to take it to final, but never fear Russian people, more drawings of this man (from a classic Russian novel) are yet to come!  Tell your (Russian) friends.

I figured this picture of George Washington might be appropriate for the occasion.  Below are two great quotes from the great man.

“It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.”

“The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.”

George Washington, First President of the United States and All Around Nice Guy.

Decided to do a post today for Illustration Friday.  The topic is “Worn.”  After I finished this piece, I looked at a number of the submissions and I fear my idea my be a little “worn.”  It’s stuffed animal city over there.  Or perhaps it’s Stuffed Animal City.  Not sure of the capitalization rules.

I’ve been moving stuff out of the office and into my home.  I came across two ink drawings on copy paper.  Initially they were part of a series of letters.  I started to write a friend of mine a fairy tale.  I thought that I would very much like to receive in the mail a story in sequence with illustrations, therefore, I reasoned, my friend would too.  I sent the first installment.  I heard vague remarks.  I started on the second, and here are two of the illustrations accompanying that installment.  I got the feeling that my friend did not like receiving the installments enough to justify the effort, so I never sent the second part.  The drawings found their way to a folder, and I found them as I started to go through old files.  So there you have it!  Now they’re here.

This weekend I cleaned out my car.  I found a CD that had some pictures on it from some years ago.  These are some murals that I did when I was starving and trying to make money.  I wish I could say it was easy to find work.  It wasn’t.  Here’s a shot of the middle stages of a mural for a Bookstore in Birmingham AL.

I don’t really know anything about the mechanics of murals and I just used student grade oil paint and glazes.  They’ll be such a hassle to remove whenever they decide to do that.

Here are some from Lake Murray Elementary School in Columbia SC.

The cool part about murals in an elementary school is that the kids treat you like a rock star.  That not-cool part is the finger prints in the paint after lunch.

I was going through a lot of papers on my desk today and came across this drawing on the back of a sheet of paper.

I did it back when we were working on the Presidential Prize Fight game last year.  I’d like to take this sketch to completion sometime in the near future.  We’ll see if that happens.  I kind of like the energy of the sketch, and it might be better just to leave it as it is.

Although I’m right handed, I’ve noticed that I draw with a bias toward left handed folks. I’m going to try to be a little more even handed in my drawings in the future. The three identically shaped rectangular pieces were done on 4×6 cards.

Wait!  Found one.

This could use some more finish, but I’m sick of working on it.  It looks terrible small.  If you click on the Title, or “Archives” up top you can look at the pictures bigger.  I’m trying to figure out how to get bigger images on without cutting them off in the display.  I know it’s annoying to have to click on the post in order to see the images bigger, but I haven’t yet found a way to fix it.  Also, I’m apparently endeavoring to subliminally promote left handed people everywhere.

Here’s a sketch of Eve, that I did a while back.  I think I’m going to paint it up in Photoshop.  Justin told me not to post progress before I’ve completed a piece.  That way if it goes off the tracks I won’t look stupid, but I’m trying to post once a day (excepting Sundays) for the rest of the month.  I’m putting my dignity at risk and telling you to come back for the finished piece.  Nothing is finished!  Clearly, I’m a masterful self-promoter.  The suspense is like crack!  It will keep you coming back again and again, I know it!

I sometimes leave the office late, and when I go home I often catch a little of Coast to Coast AM on the radio.  Some days ago they had a man on talking about Russia and the KGB and Vladimir Putin.  I think Putin is spooky.  Not only because he’s pressing a nuclear advantage while our President is trying to dismantle our nuclear capabilities, not only because he shares a first name with Vladimir Lenin, and Vlad the Impaler, but also and perhaps most importantly because he looks like a high school chemistry teacher.  People with heavy lidded eyes are always a little scary (Consider Ethan on Season One of Lost).  They disarm you with their sleepy look, and then when you’re not looking they nuke/and or strangle you and steal your baby.

Anyway, I did this picture of Mr. Putin today, and although I could spend some more time on it, I decided that it’s time to call it a day, get in my car, turn on the radio, and listen to people talk about conspiracy theories and ghosts.

EDIT: I also thought it might be worthwhile to appropriate this post for Illustration Friday’s “Shaky” topic, because I feel Putin makes the prospect of nuclear peace shaky.

I’ve never been a history buff, but I am beginning to enjoy it more and more.  I’m reading a biography of Napoleon by Felix Markham and I encountered something fascinating.  Apparently, as a schoolboy in Brienne France, Napoleon enthusiastically organized mock battles.  In the unusually cold winter of 1797 Napoleon designed snow fortifications to  serve as the battleground for snowball fights amongst the students.  During his exile on the Island of Saint Helena, he said, “I have fought sixty battles, and I have learnt nothing which I did not know in the beginning.”

I’m amazed to ponder the poor students that had to exchange snowballs with a military genius who conquered practically all of Europe.  After reading that bit, my mind wandered for the next ten pages.  In my imagination, I constructed some middling student who marshaled the best of his resources to lead his gang of boys against Napoleon’s snow fortress, and years later as the London Times spat imprecatory statements against the “Thief of Europe” this man–this moderate man, this shoe salesman, reminisced about his day of glory when he and his fellows defeated Napoleon on the field of snow.

Perhaps, no such thing happened.  Possibly Napoleon, stranded on Saint Helena, fallen from grace–”but yesterday a King!/ And armed with Kings to strive,” prone toward introspection–possibly he began to rehearse his greatest battles in his mind: The Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, the Battle of Austerlitz, the Battle of Lodi, and possibly amongst these great battles he remembered some bit of tactical genius he displayed during the winter of 1797 in the battles that raged between the schoolboys at Brienne.

Here is a modest tribute to the Great Emperor as a young man persisting to victory at the end of a long day.

Here’s a cleaner sketch for the piece that I’m excited to work on.

If this piece gets better and better, I’ll post more and more as it develops.  If this is the last you see of this piece, you’ll know it got worse and worse.

This is a sketch for a piece I’m excited to work on.

About 2 years ago I wrote a bit of a radio play about an adventurer named Spank Williamson.  I thought it might be fun to do a bit of a piece of him punching a man in the face.  The drawing is below.

Dinner Table Yarns and Fables

This project had a tight deadline.  I really like the idea of this book.  The goal is to have historical stories that are interesting enough and short enough to read at the dinner table.  The book is small in size.  After fretting about the cover image, I was told basically, not to worry about it, because it will be very small.  I’m not sure, but the whole book might have the cover dimensions of a mass market paperback.  Still, I hope that John Adams and Bill Potter will write a number of them.  To my understanding, that’s the plan.  Mark Bauerlein wrote the forward to this one.  He’s the author of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30).  Long title, right?  [Review from the LA Times if you're interested.]  In his forward to Dinner Time Yarns and Fables he lists history scores that trumpet the failure of American education to transmit priorities from American History.  Bauerlein writes “Anybody who thinks that the poor scores signify merely an academic matter doesn’t understand the importance of history in a free republic.  For, one essential element in a vibrant democracy is precisely, the historical memory of citizens.  Their remembrance of principles of representation and liberty, of great heroes and villains, and of crucial events and transitions sustains civic life.”  So I guess the mission of this book is to provide an easy way for families to interact, and to imbed themselves in the soil of our history.

Here’s the Cover Sketch inside the frame they approved.  The cover is a little bit lush, and I struggled to fit all the characters they wanted in the frame.  I actually failed to squeeze in General Patton (sorry General), but I feel the meal still has a good turnout.

Here’s the final sketch.

I felt because the frame was so warm they might want a cooler palette.  I was wrong.

I warmed up the palette and gave Jackie Robinson some size.  I was glad to show his uniform.  Here’s the final cover image.

I also got to illustrate the inside content.  Below are a few of those.

Winston Churchill

Booker T Washington

Dolly Madison

Look for the book to come out in July.

I’m a big Neil Postman Fan.  He’s so dang quotable.  So here’s a quote of his on a painting I did.