02/28/11--MOON SHINE...

...kind of literal, no?

02/27/11--Desperado Tribute (and another flyer)...

As I am a massive fan of Robert Rodriquez films, and 'Desperado' in particular, this is a little sketch of guitarist Moondog assuring an audience that he is not carrying a guitar case full of guns...

...and here is the flyer for the LA MOVIDA event coming up Friday...
Carnival, Mardi Gras, and the True/False film festival all rolled up in one night...

02/26/11--POPEYE'S COUSIN...PEPE...???

iF impossibly robust forearms are a genetic trait...what if Popeye has cousins??
Maybe a Puerto Rican cousin....Pepe el Marinero....???

02/25/11--A GOOD IDEA IS A WONDERFUL THING...

...sometimes a good idea can be the flashpoint that begins to turn things around quickly for the better...!!!...

02/24/11--LIGHTNING STRIKING...

....why I believe that honesty tends to be the best policy...

02/23/11--PIRATE FLAG SKULL CONCEPTs..

...cartoon skulls need some attention too every now and then...

02/22/11--MARTIAL ART SCRIBBLE DUDE

...this seems a bit like an angry sort of scribble...

02/21/11--TODAVIA BUSCANDO...

When I had the incredible experience of spending six months in Granada, Spain, ostensibly I went to study abroad...I got all 'sobresaliente' (or "A") marks in my University of Granada classes, and I never missed a single one, but I spent virtually all of my evenings in bars, tertulias, gypsy caves, and wandering among the ancient Moorish castles and streets of Granada looking to seek and define the mystery of what is commonly referred to in Andalucía as "duende"...
I filled ten huge sketchbooks with drawings and notes...soaked in (and sometimes played) hours upon hours of flamenco guitar music...and essentially didn't sleep for the duration...
The result I found is that 'duende' cannot be truly defined, but rather must be experienced...or perhaps pursued in a lifelong and unreachable journey...
...this sketch is an attempt to remind myself of that profound creative and inspirational time in my life...
...and help remind me not to get completely lost and buried in the avalanche of the day to day...

02/20/11--BOOSE FAIRIES...CHAPTER 1...

Good people of the internet that I might not ever meet, you might have heard of the famous "green fairy" associated with the taboo drink absinthe.
Well, absinthe is illegal in the United States and most European countries for it's supposed (and historically exaggerated) hallucinogenic properties.
Perhaps the next best and entirely legal thing is a liquor known by the name 'Chartreuse', made by French Carthusian monks, which is believed to contain the herb artemisia absinthium (or wormwood), which is the primary ingredient (and namesake) of absinthe...
Since Chartreuse is the signature drink of the Blue Fugue, now and again I have wondered what a 'chartreuse fairy' might look like, if it were to exist...
Whether or not absinthe actually reveals green fairies or not, alcohol has certainly through the ages been known to reveal all sorts of hallucinations...be they green fairies, pink elephants, or possibly some sort of greenish/yellow chartreuse-ish creature...
This, then led me to wonder what sort of fairies would appear after drinking different types of boose....
So, another Fugue-inspired project I shall now undertake is to explore what sort of fairies might appear after one might drink various types of alcohol...
A Chartreuse fairy illustration is the eventual goal, but seems daunting. In this task, I thought I might start with a more humble, more blue-collar, working man's boose..
Ladies and Gentlemen, I now present to you...
THE WELL-WHISKEY FAIRY....

02/19/11--DENIZENS OF THE BLUE FUGUE...1.0

I present to you now THE FIRST in a series that I would like to begin of sketches at one of my favorite places...the legendary and venerable Blue Fugue bar.
Since I now have begun a weekly latin dance gig there, I once again have an opportunity to attempt to capture and celebrate some of the great characters that can be found there. Kind of like capturing the good people of the bohemian underworld in a Toulouse-Latrec or Degas style...(only completely absent of quality or artistic merit)...
My first such victim is Big O, whose heart is bigger than his impressive stature (but don't tell him I said so), and wit keener than his beard or long head of Thor-like hair...
To you Big O, a toast sir!

02/18/11--DILEMA OF STRANDED SURFERS IN MISSOURI...

How could I have a nickname like "Moondog" and not relate to the Great Cosmic Surfer of the Spaceways?

And how could I not long for the call of the Sea...
...and some tasty waves, dude?

...painful that I am on vaction this week but time, space, and diminishing resources do not allow me near a scenic tropical seaside vista...

bogus, dude...

...however, perhaps the next best tropical thing is playing latin music with my band LA MOVIDA to a hot room of people salsa dancing....despite the winter weather outside...
...and here is the flyer I've put together to celebrate doing that very thing...

02/17/11--MEMPHIS...FIRE BREATHING DRAGON MASTER

Memphis Chris!!!!...continued visual development of the Desterrado Dream of Reason Producing Fantastic Monsters...(did I just come up with that?) (what?) (Goya?)(Drat!!! Foiled again!!!)

Note that if Memphis has the ability to breath dragon fire, he might be able to do some really cool smoke signals...(like baloon animals perhaps? Maybe smoke-centerfolds--woo! woo!)...heh!

02/16/11--A BIG, BIG, SCAREY DARK CLOUD...

Just in time for the advent of potential new car payments, we have the arrival of:
YAY...Student Loan Armageddon....
Relax everybody, apparently the world is not coming to an end in 2012--the Mayans were just predicting my Absolute and Total Financial Ruin...I see now that it is so bad that it only appeared to have been the End of Days for the entire world...(those crazy Mayans just got it a few months early)

02/15/11--THE VALLEY OF BAD VIBES...

From the Good Book..Revised Standard Moondog Version , "and Yea tho I walk through the Valley of Bad Vibes...I know that Thou art With Me..."

If a feeling of diminishing existence and dizziness due to spinning is not a sign of discomfort, I'm not sure what is...not that I recognize that I feel this way...
...the drawings just kind of do themselves...
...study me psychology people...
...wait, forget I said that..I can't pay you...

02/14/11--A DAY OF LOVE...

ST. VALENTINE'S DAY---A day of love around the world...
here in our little world Aubrey has an ongoing love affair...
WITH CANDY...

02/13/11--13 Years Ago I Took A Pretty Lady On A Date to the Blue Note...

...Nothing like having things be a bit harder to get by in the day to day to make you appreciate how blessed you are at having the people you love most in your life...
...and to make you wonder how some of them have stood by you through so many things...
...I love you Cindy...
...and our wonderful, beautiful little girls...
...thank you for so much more than I could ever articulate in words...

02/12/11-- INSTANT COSMIC SPACE DUDES (that kind of suck)

...TINY $3 SKETCHBOOK IDEA..BRILLIANT...
...but the drawback is that just because I can draw something in 30 seconds or so doesn't mean that it won't suck...
...drawing cosmic space dudes is awesome...
...but it is sometimes hard to summon a drawing mood or glimmer of creativity in 30 seconds...
...this inertia is the battle I must overcome...
...onward to future cosmic space dudes...
...that will suck less...

02/11/11--A NEW REVELATION!!!

.......,,,,,,,,.....OKAY.....,,,,,,,.....so maybe I am getting a bit overwhelmed in the day to day and letting an entire week or so get by me without keeping up in my daily sketch/mind blog...,,,,

...but, I now realize that if I carry around a little sketchbook in my pocket, I can at least fire off something every time I have a spare moment...(or even 30 seconds)....
...let's see how well this concept helps as I get back on schedule...

02/10/11--POUTY AND HAPPY...

Here in vivid techno-color is a study of two of my beloved girls...while we were seated waiting.
Little Aubrey got tired of waiting and decided to pout. Here was my best attempt at chasing away the pout-monster by drawing her 1."pouty" (which made her pout more)...and then 2. happy.
Then her mom suggested I draw her pouting so Aubrey could see how silly it looked...which I did to the best of my ability...
...Aubrey cheered up almost as much as the 'happy' sketch...close enough...
...mission accomplished...

02/09/11--...AND RUNNING SOME MORE...

...And still running...
...Maybe that is all we will ever really do...
...and the meaning is in how you run it...
...in a race that has no end...

...for some reason drawing people running feels good right now...
(perhaps since my car situation is telling me I need to learn to run everywhere)...

02/08/11--....AND RUNNING....

....And running...

02/07/11--RUNNING THE RACE...

...Sometimes it feels like you are running in a race but you aren't going anywhere...
...but you still have to keep running...

02/06/11 UNCHARTED TERRITORY...

WELCOME to the Mysterious Land of Being Rear-Ended by a Negligent Taxi Driver That Totals Your Car, And Then Lies Shamelessly By All Stretches of the Imagination to Somehow Blame You--While There Is No Accident Report Taken Despite Your Request For One--And There Is No Means to Replace the Destroyed Vehicle to Drive Your Children Safely to Day Care--While You Work Three Jobs and Now Have to Mooch Rides Off of Friends to Multiple Places--Until Insurance Works Things Out in "A Week or So"--and the Apparent Value of Your Total Loss Car Comes Nowhere Near Close to the Cost of Actually Replacing the Car You Totally Lost...
...Welcome to Questioning Your Faith in People, to Questioning Faith in Justice Under the Law...
welcome to your own city and community that you work hard to protect and serve the people of failing you...while you continue to be unable to support and protect your own family from harm...while you are constantly gone long hours working to try to support them...and failing because apparently three jobs or more isn't enough to pay the bills to support them...
THANK YOU [un-named taxi company]!!! Name withheld to protect the shameless, deceitful, and wealthier than myself. Congratulations! and please enjoy your prosperity at the expense of my family...

02/05/11--EYES STUDY

In a drawing, eyes seem to be among the more challenging things to try to capture...
...and among the more compelling things to view if done well...
...I realize I should practice and study eyes more...

02/04/11--SALSA DANCERS STUDY

...Playing music in front of a super-caliente dance floor of salsa dancers can kind of leave an impression on you...
...I highly recommend it...

02/03/11--Sixty-Two Hour Bad-Weather Work Stretch....

after 48 fire truck hours, then an additional 14 on an ambulance...


...a person could really want to leap up in the air and attack something...

02/02/11--SNOW-POCALYPSE 2011!!!!!!!!!!!!!

iN the spirit of Bill Watterson's snow-man gags and the Snow-pocalyptic weather this week...

02/01/11--BEHOLD THE FEARSOM TRIPI TRI!!!!

Yet another attempt at capturing the spirit of Fearsome Spaniard Desterrado Pirate Rocker and Electrical Engineering Professor, Luis, "El Tripi Tri" Vicente...
It seems he is beginning to take shape and form on the page...
...Be--WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaRRre.........!