STRONG

Are you STRONG enough to hold up a door?

Kids... don't try this at home! This should only be attempted by a highly trained, professional door holding monster with a good insurance plan.

Caution

One should exercise CAUTION when attempting to belch the alphabet underwater! Kids... don't try this at home...

Wrapped

If you go out walking your pet, make sure the leash is WRAPPED around your hand, or the critter might run off!

This picture was inspired by the Chicken Nugget Lemon Tooty blog. The idea is to find a drawing by one of the kids and then do it in your own style. The drawing that grabbed my attention first was great! There really wasn't much I had to do but draw it and WRAP my style around it. Cool monsters!

Here is what I worked from.

There is still time to participate in this fun challenge... if you are really FAST!

SHARKweek day5

pencil and Photoshop

Sometimes I see a flock of birds in a yard pecking around. They look like a little herd of cows out to pasture. And I wonder... what if birds were the size of cows?

Imagine walking along and having a cow sized bird land right in front of you. From out of nowhere. That sharp beak, those talons, the IMPATIENCE and jerky movements... I'd be scared. Really scared! The only thing worse than that would be flying sharks!

This is the last episode of SHARKweek for this year. Hope it was fun for all 12 of you who followed along for the week. I'm gonna take a nap now...keep an eye out for large birds or flying sharks for me, will you?...

SHARKweek day4

pencil and Photoshop (click to enlarge)

It's a struggle to keep SHARKweek going sometimes. Last night around 9 PM I was doodling up some ideas. Some were pretty good, but I just lacked the energy to do them. I was out of steam. (I am a steam-powered, steampunk artist) So I called it quits for the day.

This morning after a cup of java, I selected the easiest idea I had, and knocked this one out. Again, I am experimenting with Photoshop. I found a texture box to click on the brushes and also wet edges. I don't think any of that will actually show up on the screen, but I think it might if it was being printed.

Well, enough of this rambling. Only one more day of SHARKweek to go!

SHARKweek day3

pencil and Photoshop (click to enlarge)

SpongeBob Squarepants meets SpongeShark Mickeypants.

Around 8:30 last night I remembered that I needed another image for my ongoing SHARKweek here. So I started thinking about the name SpongeBob and playing around with it. I wanted to make it fit a shark somehow. I came up with SpongeShark and then tried to think of some other kind of pants to add to the name... and came up with Mickey pants. At 9:00 any idea is a good idea. : )

After I had drawn my shark, I thought the picture needed a little something else. Why not toss in SquareBob himself? I added him floating upside down and that was it. I had just started coloring it when a big thunderstorm blew into town and I had to shut down and unplug the computer.

This morning I finished it up and here you go! Dang... now I need another idea...

SHARKweek day2

Who I would MOST like to see eaten by a shark.

SHARKweek day1

Yes, once again it is SHARKweek here on Jonesapalooza! Taking my cue from the Discovery channel, I will try to bring you new and exciting sharky things each day this week.

Sometimes if you want to avoid being seen, you have to MODIFY your appearance. Like say, putting on a "happy face" mask. Then when your victim gets close enough, you say, "Have a nice day!" and gobble them up! Yes, nature is so cruel...

IDLE

an IDLE bunny? I think NOT!

Actually, there are NO idle little bunnies in my neighborhood. We have very LARGE rabbits that are not afraid of anything. They keep circling our garden looking at the buffet inside. They staged a break in by digging under the fence one day, so I had to place a few deterrent bricks to block their door. I may need to hire some border patrol police. Where ARE those garden gnomes when you need them? They are supposed to be watching the place.... goodgollybum...

Micron on Post-It note with Photoshop color.

HOLLOW

A floating cow? Sure, cows can float if they are HOLLOW... and full of methane gas. Or if they happen to be a Holy cow like this one.

This is a 24"x30" oil painting I did recently. It was a lot of fun to do. Now I'm wondering what do do with it. : )

Michael Jackson loves propane

I was going to title this post "Propane" but then thought that if I could tie it into the Michael Jackson mania, I might lure some unsuspecting Googlers to my blog. Anybody fall for it? ...Anybody?

I am easily entertained.

The propane tank on my grill was empty so I went to Home Depot to swap it out for a full one. I usually go inside, hunt down a helpful worker, pay for it, and then we go outside and do the exchange. This time as I was lugging my tank to the door I noticed that there was now a sign that said PROPANE SELF SERVE CENTER by the tanks. I touched the screen to begin, swiped my card, and indicated that I wanted to exchange my tank.

After a short pause... one of the doors on a long bank of bins popped open. I walked down to the empty bin, put my tank into it and shut the door. Then I walked back to the screen and waited a few seconds. I was just starting to think that with my luck, nothing will happen and I will have to go get an employee and try to convince them that I actually DID put in a tank, and didn't get one in return (being the optimist that I am) when all of a sudden another door popped open down the line. I walked down to it, pulled out the full tank, and closed the door. COOL!

I walked back to the screen, took my receipt and was off! It was so much fun I wanted to do it again! The only suggestion I would have is that it would be great to have Vanna White there to walk back and forth in front of the wall of bins and open up the right door for you. I can't wait till my tank is empty again and I can go back!

I am easily entertained.

SHAKY

I am drawing lots of monsters for a project right now. This morning I thought I would make a quick SHAKY coffee monster. This would fit in with the Illustration Friday word of the week and let me warm up drawing a monster. I was just going to add a bit of quick tone to my pencil sketch with Photoshop... but then I added a touch of color. I had to hold myself back... I wanted to keep on adding color! It's so much fun! But alas, I had to restrain myself (duct tape works well for this) so I can get on with making more monsters.

Thanks for stopping by!

WORN

SocMo has not WORN his orange "Back to the Future" vest in a long time.

I am about WORN out from drawing stuff this week. Why is it that you are seldom asked to draw the things that are fun for you... but you are always asked to draw the things that you struggle with? Oh, well... :0)

cat sketch

I got lots of encouraging comments on the cat painting I posted yesterday... SOooooo I thought I would post the doodle in my sketchbook that I made the painting from.

(un)FOLD

If you want to levitate, first you have to FOLD your legs. Then sit peacefully and meditate on something really fantastic... like say, Blue Bell Banana Pudding ice cream. You will notice that all your cares and worries just melt away, and you will be hovering gently above the ground. OMmmm.....

This is a little 9"X12" oil painting that I just finished. I like reducing animals to basic shapes and making a painting of them. This is the latest... wonder if something like this would sell somewhere?

(edit)
OOPS! I just noticed that the Illustration Friday word is UNfold... well that is what you have to do after you come back down. Unfold your legs... and go scoop out a bowl of ice cream.

CRAVING

I watched the CBS Sunday Morning program and saw a report about Tim Hortons. I had never heard of Tim Hortons. It seems he was an all star Toronto Maple Leaf hockey player that started making donuts in 1964, and now 45 years later has over 3,000 stores in Canada. They are thinking about expanding to the states now. As I watched the report, I had a CRAVING flung on me! Those donuts looked SO good!

If you are curious, you can see the website here. Feel free to send me a dozen if you want, I won't complain... and a cup of Tim Hortons coffee would be nice too... thanks! : )

SocMo likes to juggle donuts and eat them as they go by. Such a wackadoodle!

ADAPT

Sometimes you have to adapt something for a new purpose. For example, I made this little 8"x16" painting last week, and decided I wanted to share it with my Illustration Friday friends. All I had to do was adapt it to this weeks IF word, by writing something clever to go along with it. ...and Presto, here you go!

I had fun painting this. My original thought was to keep it mostly in the blue hues to make the orange dog pop out. But now I am thinking that the checkerboard ground area might be better in red and yellow... something bright to give it a little more pizazz. Too bad this is a painting and not a Photoshop piece were I could make the change with the click of a button.

Any thoughts about the colors, out there?

Hierarchy

In the HIERARCHY of things that prevent the Swine Flu, eating a pound of bacon each day is at the top of the list.

Impossibility

For most people, putting a square peg in a round hole is an IMPOSSIBILITY... but not for SocMo!

Once again, I am experimenting with Photoshop color while doing something for Illustration Friday. This time I scanned a pencil sketch and colored it with my old Wacom tablet. My first attempt at color didn't turn out very good, so I made another layer and tried again. No attempt was made to make this a finished, slick piece. It's pretty rough, but I got to mess around with some settings on brushes and tried a texture or two... which didn't make the cut. I think I kinda miss my usual heavy black line...

FLEETING

My patience is FLEETING when trying to learn a new trick on Photoshop. I was doing some character sketches to submit for approval and decided to try out a looser style in both line work and color. I found a tutorial online that showed how to add texture to the image. This is supposed to have a watercolor paper texture in it. I don't know that it will show up here. And not sure how it would show up in printing. I also experimented with brushes a bit, making the color less opaque so it builds up like watercolor. Anyway... it's all an experiment and kind of fun and different while it lasted... but time is FLEETING and I gotta run...

Subtract

SUBTRACT the ears and what have you got? A llama named Van Gogh...

I thought of this last night. I was watching the news and there was a story about a llama that has been running loose around here for a couple of years. Llama rhymes with Obama! Sounded like a good title for a children's book. So here you go... or Gogh.

Legendary

Well, I didn't think I would get an entry in to Illustration Friday this time... but today I woke up to find that it is St. Patrick's Day. I decided that leprechauns were LEGENDARY, the word of the week, so I dashed off this little fellow.

When I was a freshman in college, I lived in a dorm at an engineering school. Would you believe I was going to be an electrical engineer at that time in my life? What was I thinking?! Anyway, St. Patrick's Day was a big deal there. As a freshman, I was required (by my dorm association) to grow a beard and carry around a shillalah for a week or so, can't really remember how long we had to carry them now. They defined a shillalah as part of a tree that included some sort of root system. You saw guys hauling around everything from sticks to pretty big logs... all with some kind of root part on them. Some were painted, others were natural. I don't think they could go into the classrooms, had to park them outside. It's all pretty fuzzy now in my memory... since I went to school back in the Transistor Age. :0)

OOPS... didn't mean to get carried away strolling down memory lane here, I had forgotten all about these things until I started typing... gotta get back to work...

Top 'o the mornin' to ya!

Dancing G'pa

I have just wrapped up the illos for a little educational book. I worked through many spring-like days to meet the deadline. Now that it's done, it has turned cold and rainy... funny how that works...

INTRICATE

Doug Jones is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma... on a sesame seed bun... with a pickle.

How INTRICATE is that? :0)

BREEZY

SocMo likes to wear his beanie on BREEZY days!

***************************
SocMo has not been around lately. I thought I would dash out this quick idea for Illustration Friday before the week gets by me again.

INSTINCT

"My wife told me to pick up some milk... and I got a little something for me too!"

Several months ago, I entered a Costco cartoon contest. The rules were simple. Do something funny that is obviously taking place in a Costco store. I go to Costco all the time... and I draw cartoons... so I thought I would take a shot at it. My wife has a true story about seeing a friend of ours walking out of Costco one day with a gallon of milk and a huge flat screen TV. We thought this was a funny contrast, so I turned it into this cartoon. As is my habit, I put this off till the night before the contest ended. But I whipped this out and I think I sent it to the proper email address. I hope I did anyway. My INSTINCT told me that I was going to be the winner of a cool Costco gift card. But my instinct was wrong... very wrong... sigh...

So... what do you think? Is this cartoon funny? Is my Funny-O-Meter out of whack? Tell me what you think. One lucky comment, selected at random, will win a free Snugglie, a set of Ginsu steak knives and one of the failing US automakers (your choice)

TIME

So... did you hear about the TIME the preacher went to visit a man in the hospital? At one point the man scribbled a note and handed it to the preacher, who folded it up and stuck it in his pocket without reading it. Later at the man's funeral, the preacher thought it would be dramatic to read the man's last words he had written on the note. He pulled the note out of his pocket and read... "GET OFF MY OXYGEN HOSE!"

CLIMBING

SocMo bought himself some new threads so he can do some social CLIMBING.

For the last two years the New Yorker magazine has had a contest where people can create their version of Eustace Tilley, the iconic dandy of the magazine. I have never participated in the contest, but have wanted to do a SocMo version. This week's IF word gave me the perfect opportunity to try this.

For many years I have gone to a newstand and flipped throug the New Yorker to read the cartoons. They are very topical and usually reflect our culture. If you are curious... you can see the original Eustace Tilley and view all the entries in the contest by CLICKING HERE.

Wha?

Q. What do you get when you cross a frog and a cocout?
A. a croakanut

absolutely hi-larious... right?

hot diggity dog

Since I am a lazy bum, I usually ink my drawings with enclosed shapes so I can use the paint bucket on them and just drop in flat color. On this experimental piece, I decided to ink more like the way I used to... before I was seduced by the digital dark side. So instead of quickly dropping in color, I had to use my old Wacom tablet and "paint" the color on. I do like the way this looks, but doing a large complicated illustration would take me twice as long (or more) to color if I used this method. And the one thing I don't usually have is extra time.

So, what is the mistake in this picture? Well, one should roast a hot dog over glowing coals, not a blazing fire. But blazing fires are SO much more fun to draw... so sue me :0)

Tinman

Well, I worked way too hard on this sketch and it shows it... not as loose as I had wanted. Maybe next time I will get the loosey goosey drawing muse to assist me...

turtle story

There was this like, turtle... ya know? And he was all like, "Dood! I wish I could go South for the winter, cuz it's like all cozy and warm and stuff down there... fer shure."

So he like, talked these two geese into holding a stick in their beaks as they like, flew... and he held on to the middle with his mouth. Ya know? But there were these like, hunters who saw them? And they went, "Dood, what smart geese, flying with that turtle!" And the turtle couldn't resist going like, "Dood! it was MY ideaaaaaaaa..." as he fell to the earth.

Like there is some kind of lesson here, fer sure... but I like, don't remember what it is...

bye bye Peyton

It's the end of the season for the Colts...

low riders

I was in downtown Nashville early Saturday morning and saw this fellow shuffling along the sidewalk. His odd walk first caught my attention. Then I noticed... is that his pants around his ankles? As I passed him (in my car) I realized that yes, his pants are around his ankles. He had lots of layers on and I was happy to see that he did have on some kind of fleece wear like shorts under the various layers. He stopped to pick up something from the sidewalk and I thought... "OK, now he will realize his pants are down and pull them up while he is down there. Nope. He continued on his way... and stopped once again to pick up something that had fallen out of the pants (around his ankles) but he still did not pull them up.

If wearing your pants low so your underwear is showing makes you cool... then this guy is the ultimate in cool.

Go figure...

Birthday!

Happy Birthday to meeeeee.... Yep, today is my birthday. If you sawed me in half, there would be so many rings to count that you wouldn't even attempt it.

Life is guuuud....

RESOLVE

I resolve to draw more and post more things this year. So far I have posted every day this entire year! That would be two days... heh... How long will this streak last? If you want to follow along, there is a place you can click to "follow this blog" somewhere on the sidebar. If you are smart enough to find it and click on it, then you will join the most awesome, intelligent, beautiful people on the planet who have done the same.

All the best in the new year to you all!

What happened to the goldfish?

So, I was sitting here and realized that there is only an hour and a half left in the first day of the new year. The thought struck me that I should probably post something today for good luck in 2009. Fifteen minutes later... here it is. I'm feeling really lucky now...

newspapers

Q. What is black and white and red(read) all over?
A. A newspaper.

I remember first hearing this joke as a little kid. It rocked my small mind when I realized that the word I thought was red was actually read. The old switcheroo. This was probably the first joke I had heard that worked like this.

I have illustrated this joke several times for joke pages in kid magazines over the years... and the answer is never "a newspaper" anymore. It is always something like "an embarrassed zebra"... "a penguin holding its breath"... "a sunburned polar bear" or such. I had been thinking that since EVERYONE knows the old newspaper joke, this is just another switcheroo! You think the answer is "a newspaper" but then they trick you by saying it's something else.

But now I am not so sure.

Newspapers are disappearing off the American landscape like the mighty buffalo did many years ago. Now there are even more newspapers in financial trouble. Do kids even see a newspaper these days? Probably not. Maybe they wouldn't understand the original joke. "A newspaper? ...what's that?" Maybe the joke has to be retooled just so kids can understand it now.

I wonder how many newspapers will bite the dust in 2009? And just WHO will do the investigative reporting like Woodward and Bernstein then? Some news blogger sitting at his laptop in his pajamas?

I think not.

Merry Christmas!

...and the VOICES said, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men"...

Wow... long time since the last post! I have been really busy for the last few weeks. After I got my deadlines met, I jumped into Christmas card mode and made this. Then, we all jumped into the car and drove to Missouri for an early family Christmas. Now I am back and regretting all the snacks I consumed during the last three days. (burp)

So... I would like to wish everyone who has stumbled by JONESAPALOOZA this year the best of the Holiday Season and a great new year in 2009!

SIMILAR

I think Socmo has some friends who are kiddos. So for all the kids out there, here is a puzzle for you. All of the SocMos here are identical to each other except for one. One SocMo is only SIMILAR to all the rest. Can you find it?

As you are looking you might sing to yourself... "One of these things is not like the others"... I watched way TOO much Sesame Street years ago...

*Remember... You can click on the image to see it in JUMBO size*

Balloon

I have been busy busy lately and didn't think I would get anything done for Ilustration Friday again this week. But I managed to come up with a drawing at the end of the day yesterday thanks to TV reruns.

In 1982 Larry Walters tied 42 helium weather balloons to his lawn chair and took a trip. He wanted to go up a bit and hover over his neighborhood for a while. Instead he shot up to 16,000 feet (three miles) ... where it is pretty cold. A couple of airline pilots reported seeing a man in a lawn chair holding a gun as they flew by him. He had planned on shooting out some balloons to come back down. When he did descend, he tangled in some power lines and blacked out a Long Beach neighborhood for 20 minutes. The stunt got him a $1,500 fine from the FAA, and appearances on the Tonight Show and David Letterman.

Pixar's next movie is UP and looks like it may have been inspired by Larry. CLICK HERE to see the trailer. I can't wait!

PRETEND

When I was a wee lad, I had a stick horse that I rode all the time. I probably put thousands of miles on it. He was a broomstick with a head made out of a sock. This stick horse is well known among my family members because I named it after my most favorite thing in the world... Gravy. Yes, my stick horse was named Gravy. Gravy and I covered a lot of ground in the backyard. He was reliable transportation, and a good companion. I wonder if any one rides stick horses anymore. My guess is that kids today are all plugged into computers or playing electronic games. Too bad.

Jiffy Lube

So... I had a little time to kill at the dentist office and did this sketch of the Jiffy Lube across the street. I don't do this very often so I am a bit rusty. There is a new sketch blog that is very interesting... take a look at it here.

WISE

He who holds his tongue is WISE. ~Proverbs 10:19 NIV

OBUMMER!

The SocMo for President Campaign headquarters are now VACANT... but for one poor soul...

VACANT

I have been very busy lately, totally focused on meeting deadlines. This weekend was so beautiful, that I spent a lot of time outside. So... once again I have a week of deadlines facing me and no time for Illustration Friday... but I did manage to scratch out a quickie last night before bed.