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...