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!

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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.