Global Warming Debate

After wasting a day watching Al Gor and Newt Gringrich argue about global warming on C-Span, I felt that the only thing that would give me some satsifaction about having done so would be to see each of them die from the very things they were arguing for. I decided a fitting end to Gor's endless rambling about the melting ice caps would be to be eaten by a polar bear and Gingrich's demise would have to be the result of choking on the fumes from industrial expansion. The face I drew in the sun is that of my doctor, who I've been promising to draw for quite some time. I told him this was just a warm-up for his drawing. His only comment was this was the best drawing I've done yet.

Drunk at the Job Fair

After quitting her job, a friend of mine told me she was going to a job fair to seek other employment opportunities. I suggested she go to the event drunk as a skunk, staggering from booth to booth and creating a scene. This drawing is pretty much what I envisioned, though sadly I learned later that she decided not to follow my advice and as a result her experience was not as entertaining as what I'd pictured.

Evening Rounds

In the wee hours of the night, drifting in and out of sleep on a tide of pain medication, I happened to spy a nurse quietly updating the computer. She used a flashlight to avoid turning on the overhead lights and waking me, taking care to tap softly at the keys while basking in the soft glow of the monitor. It wasn't the most dramatic image, but it stuck in my mind so I drew it the next morning. The smudges around the edges are blood from me unwittingly dislodging my IV while moving around to draw. IV placement is an important consideration for me when I go to the hospital and I often have arguments with the ER nurses about optimal locations that won't interfere with my drawing.

Artimation

Did I say 'back to drawing' in my last post? In case you hadn't guessed by now, I'm easily distracted and in this case it was by animation techniques. I've yet to acquire photoshop or flash, so I've been using a very good free graphics program to manipulate the images (paint.net), writing scripts to automate the image changes (autohotkey) and compiling them into gif animations (unfreeze). It's hardly professional or cutting edge but it's fun and relatively simple to do (and free). If you are interested in such things I hope the links provided are of some use. As for the image I used here, it was passed to me by a friend and I've no idea who created it or I'd give them credit for their efforts. Okay... NOW back to drawing :)

Flat Universe

So lately, scientists have been telling me that the universe is flat. No really, I'm serious, you can check and see what NASA has to say about this yourself. I found this amusing, interesting and confusing. The fact that we've gone from thinking the earth is flat to the universe is flat is humorous to me and will undoubtedly result in another drawing by me soon. Being a bit of a science buff, I was curious about this and after doing a bit of research vaguely followed their logic regarding the theory. However, the fact that the theory is largely based on things we have yet to really prove exist, such as dark matter and dark energy, I find it all slightly frustrating in addition to which I have trouble visualizing something exploding, as they believe the universe did, outwards in the shape of anything but a sphere. Well, enough of that, back to drawing... Cheers.

Kitty Revenge

This is actually a belated birthday drawing for EMMA the AQUA-GIRL! There, that should suitably irritate her. She's just turned twelve now, going on 35 of course, and remains one of the brightest children I've ever met. There are volumes I could relay about her, but she'd have her lawyers all over me if I did so I'll have to limit it to the drawing in question. Emma used to wrap Max's head, my friend's Russian Blue, in toilet paper and chase him around in her younger years and I thought turn-about would be fair play so I gave Max a chance for revenge here. By the way, kiddo, I got Max's attorneys to give me permission for printing this so don't even think about litigation.

Moveable Feast

This is another birthday drawing, this time for my brother-in-law who among many things is an avid gardener. In itself, it is not a complete product because my intent was to superimpose this over a photograph I took of him working diligently on his garden, constructing elaborate wired frame structures to keep the critters away from his plantings. As I was watching him work at this I noted quite a few said 'critters' observing him with amusement knowing that such man-made constructs were no match for the ingenuity of a hungry garden forager.

Not Going Out There

How many times have we had these moments where we sequestered ourselves in our imaginations while the abrasive bray of day to day reality raged on outside? I for one, have had them more times than I can count sometimes overlapping the two and gesturing to an imaginary friend within about what a jungle it was out there.

Religion Discovers Science

This is one of my older ideas, dating back to my high school days. A simple 'what if' concept that I found amusing. After all, what would God's reaction be to mankind's bold pronouncements about the nature of reality be other than laughter (or at least a snicker). I'd almost forgotten about it entirely until a friend asked me to think 'godly' thoughts. She wanted a photo of me to use for a drawing she doing that depicted me as a godlike being and wanted me to look the part. I found this hysterical but gave it a shot. Approaching it as an actor like Pacino might, I attempted discern my motivations and immediately hit a brick wall -- constructed, ironically from my innately scientific nature. I tried to picture myself as a being that created everything and logic forced me to ask that age old question of what existed before it was all created. Naturally, I was stymied because I'm just a human on a ball of dirt in an infinite universe. Incidentally, I knew even before I drew this that I'd end up making God look a bit like Santa Claus, but in retrospect the parallel seems somewhat fitting.

The Salesmen

This is a birthday drawing for my nephew, depicting him attempting to sell internet marketing services to the devil. I pictured him pointing out how Google rankings always had Heaven coming up before Hell to an unimpressed Satan and finally, seeing his pitch fail, pointing out to the devil that heaven and hell are just manmade constructs and didn't really exist anyway. That's me waiting for him to finish so we can go burn. Oh... and that's Bat playing with the mouse skeleton next to the sign post to our destination.

Bad Moments in Web Design

Well obviously this was inspired by recent personal experience. I'd almost forgotten what it was like to adjust creative efforts to comply with... well... anyone. As I recall, the last time I was in such a situation I threatened to do grievous bodily harm to the poor soul giving me his two cents about a project I was working on, which was sort of unheard of in a stuffy corporate environment. I was never much of a 'team' player.

Evil Genius

Well I guess you've been wondering what I've been up to since my last posting. I've been busy crafting a tiny device that will simultaneously increase and decrease the weight of everything in the universe by exactly one kilogram... and only I'll know if it's turned on or not. I won't really know if it's actually working but Mwa-hahahahaha! anyway.
(Inspired by a political conversation with a gnocchi expert about how useless government can be.)

Zeus

Yet another drawing that led me along piece by piece. I'd started with the bald man then merged the pegasus horse with his profile for reasons unknown other than some aspect of my mind processes visuals like three dimensional shapes in a puzzle box. Pegasus shifted me to the Mercury character on the right and made me label the bald guy as Zeus, staying with the mythology theme. The addition of the tiny man wearing a fedora and holding a drink with an umbrella in it was just... well your guess is as good as mine. As for the cat popping out of Zeus's pocket to chase a butterfly, Bat told me she'd gnaw the cables to my router unless I included a feline.

Yo-yo Cat

At the time I did this I'm sure I wasn't thinking about anything in particular but in retrospect it's possible I was making a statement about how silly cats think human introspection is. Bat just snickered as I wrote this. I rest my case.

Wing Chung Birthday Redigo

I actually liked the way this drawing looked before I used pencils to color it so I made a scan of it first. Something I've been thinking about doing is not just making scans before I color the drawing but to do series of scans throughout various stages of the piece particularly with drawings that I don't have any set idea about when I start. It would either be like snapshots of my creative process or a one way ticket to Bellevue.

Wing Chung Birthday

A birthday drawing featuring a friend's affinity for Wing Chung and Hell Girl with guest appearances by a couple of odd characters that he originally drew and I thought warranted an encore in this piece. As for the type-writer, while we were both taking Wing Chung at a certain school the teacher kept referring to the wooden dummy as a type-writer for some unfathomable reason and it became an inside joke between the two of us over the years. Until now.

Valley Turkey Day

During yet another holiday spent in the hospital I began to think of Thanksgiving from the persepctive of a turkey. Not some butterball but a real salty character, the kind that hangs around in seedy bars on the waterfront. In the original drawing I had a caption below the 'Happy Turkey Day' that read 'However, this particular Thanksgiving, Dead-eye Pete had taken as much guff from the pilgrams as he could stand.'

Under Construction

Let's just say this was a depiction of a bad day at the hospital and leave it at that.

The Future Channel

Another drawing that started with a line and became a concept. I began with just the hand holding the TV remote, possibly because it's such a common sight in a hospital room where patients are convalescing. I got to the television set itself and added the figure emerging with a cigar in his mouth. The tendrils of smoke just lent themselves to the skull and the theme emerged. At least it emerged to me, which was that the patient with the remote had just tuned into a channel that showed him what the future held in store for him if he kept smoking cigars.

Temple Battle

I have no idea what prompted this drawing. All I know is that I was on morphine at the time and I didn't have my supplies again. I don't care for it much, although I sort of like the demon-head pillars in the background.

Robo Nurse

I got pretty used to seeing nurses glued to those mobile computer workstations or COWs as they are referred to (computers on wheels). It seemed they often spent more time with them than they did with the patients and I thought it might be more efficient if they found a way to merge both nurse and COW (I know there's a really bad joke or two here, but I'm not going there). The result of my musings was Robo Nurse.

Price Check

I'm sure that most nurses have heard the price check quip with regards to the bar code scanning guns they use in most hospitals these days to read patient information from their wrist bands. I got to thinking about what a nurse might do if one of these things malfunctioned and fried a patient. Surely having such a dangerous device in their hands would tempt them to utilize it when attending to the more difficult patients. Yes, I know, my imagination is both fertile and twisted.

Patient Eject Button

If you've been to the hospital recently you may have noticed that they swab your nose with a cotton swab. I was curious about this procedure and was told it was to protect against M.R.S.A., which stands for something-resistant-staff-something. I asked what they did if somebody had this M.R.S.A. stuff and they said nothing much, just instituted isolation protocols -- which from what I've seen consists of nothing more than requiring anyone entering the room to put on a funny yellow plastic suit that doesn't even cover the head. This struck me as a bit silly and I decided I'd draw what a hospital should have to really protect against something dangerous.

Opposites Attract

Another drawing that originally had no theme in mind when I started it. I drew the man smoking a cigar first, then noted the ashes from the cigar looked a bit like snowflakes so I added a snowman in his palm and an ice crystal like pocket watch and medallion. Once I had this Mr. Frost character I felt compelled to add his opposite.

Missing Parts

The same folks that had removed my gall bladder wanted to run tests on me to see if there was anything wrong with it a month later. Needless to say, I was a bit surprised and amused. Also a bit alarmed when I thought about how such mistakes in a hostpital might have dire consequences.

Kitty Kung Fu

An accquaintance of my sister's was mentioning one day that she takes Tae Kwon Do to releive the stress induced by working in the corporate arena. Being somewhat short and the only female in her class she described continually facing off against much larger men who she took great relish in surprising with her speed and skill. Originally I was simply going to do a David and Goliath impression of her sparring in class but Bat intervened and this drawing was the result.

Word to my mother

At one point in my drawing commentaries I describe my mother looking at one of my pieces as being akin to Rembrandt studying a child's fingerpainting. My sister thought this was too self-deprecating but I maintain the analogy is quite accurate. I've only met a handful of such talented souls and the rest are long dead.

Kidney Man

One of my roommates was a good-natured gentleman who had just turned 82. To celebrate, they removed his kidney. Some birthday present. Despite the loss of the kidney and having tubes coming out of him left and right he managed to maintain a positive demeanor. I can only hope to do the same as age takes it's toll on me. As a side note, one of the doctor's was amused to see that I referenced Gray's Anatomy to ensure the kidney was relatively accurate.

IV Problems

One morning I looked over to see another patient's arm was grotesquely swollen because his IV had shifted and the solution was flowing into the tissue not the vein. His forearm reminded me of Pop-eye, hence the drawing. I showed this drawing to my mother (a real artist) who had done work on old cartoons like the original Pop-eye in her youth. Although her talent vastly exceeds mine (it was like having Rembrandt look over a kindergartner's fingerpainting) she liked the fact that I utilized Pop-eye. Oh, and naturally Bat liked the cat.

Hospital Supplies

I recall a nurse muttering under her breath that she couldn't get any chapstick for a patient and I thought it odd that a hospital with a pharmacy that has everything from aspirin to zoloft wouldn't have chapstick. It was obvious to Bat that a cat must have been hording all the chapstick. Whenever something's missing it's usually because a cat has absconded with it, particularly if it's something small that they can bat around and play with like a pen or... a tube of chapstick.

Holiday Sentimentality

I'm not given to maudlin expressions of my affinity for family or friends but Christmas brings out the worst sort of sappiness in me. I actually wrote, 'For my family who I love and cherish above all the gifts I've been given' on this drawing. I think I'm going to be sick.

Good Food

This woman was one of the staff that brought the meals around to the rooms. I don't do portraits but she was so persistent in requesting one and was such a sweet-heart that I finally relented and stylized a likeness of her. She was quite appreciative but I kind of expected an extra dessert or something with successive food deliveries that I never got.

Feeling Nauseous

In a series of drawings predominantly themed around the hospital something unpleasant was bound to crop up. This poor fellow had the worst nausea I'd ever seen and every time he'd have a bout of projectile vomiting a nurse would come in and ask, 'Are you feeling nauseous?'. The fact that there'd be residue spattered all over the room from his episodes never stopped them from asking this. Unfortunately, the patient was dumb and couldn't speak at all or I'm sure he'd of made a sarcastic reply to the insipid question.

Extra Wasabi

A quick sketch to let my sister know I wanted extra wasabi with a take-out sushi order. I've found that using drawings instead of text for reminders is more effective. I'm not sure if that's a positive statement about people or not.

Exorcism

Just your typical mystic/ monk type and his guardian cat spirit expelling the evil snake spirit from a guy. I'm sure events like this are a dime a dozen but I figured someone had to draw it. Once again, Bat was satisfied to see that I included a cat in the drawing no matter how mundane the subject matter was.

Door One

Sometimes I start a drawing with no concept, just a line. This was one of those. I find that in these states I just typically gravitate to the human form and take it from there.

Door Two

This was a somewhat compulsive response to extend the story behind Door One that got terribly sidetracked. The addition of the potted flower thinking 'Not again.' was taken from Douglas Adams' Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. Bat liked this one, but thought I should have drawn the cat biting the head off the guy.

Voo-doo Chat

I realize this scenario is quite prevalent offline as well but chat compresses both time and population density to the point where you encounter this almost every five minutes. I've often thought of writing a book about the dynamics of chat as a medium however I was always too busy chatting to do so. Incidentally, the impetus for this cartoon was an offline situation which prompted a friend to ask me how I dealt with being slighted in a relationship mentioning that she had considered a voo-doo doll or a roll in the hay with someone else. Since I avoid relationships like the plague, I was hard pressed to respond although I did remember punching a piano over one a long time ago and added that to her list of remedies.

Don't Feed The Nurses

I'm sure nurses and technicians are quite used to being referred to as vampires and might think the reference unjustified. Personally, I've seen the way they drool when they see a good set of veins to tap and think the allusion is quite accurate.

Christmas Night Shift

I was feeling a little depressed about spending Christmas in the hospital, then I realized that the nurses were stuck there too and they had to work whereas I was lying in a bed getting pumped full of morphine. This one goes out to any nurse that's had to work the night-shift on Christmas Eve. In case you can't read it due to image reduction, the nurse is thinking, 'Doesn't he know by now that nurses don't sleep...' and Santa is thinking, 'Haven't these nurses figured out by now that they're the cutest when they're dead tired...'

Cat Sharks

Anyone who has cats, pets in general, or children for that matter, can probably identify with the predicament this guy is in. I frequently think of the movie Jaws when I head downstairs in the morning and find my cats circling the kitchen waiting for food.

Choices

I still don't like this drawing but because it was part of a collection I felt compelled to include it. The intent was to convey the cowboy's moral dilema about shooting someone but all I think I conveyed was that he had a terrible sense of fashion. When I drew this in the hospital I'd left my art supplies at home and I was working with whatever pens and pencils the staff donated to my cause, hence the cowboy looking very err... village-people-like. I do kind of like the irritated angel on the left.

Do the Dew

I was given a type of IV at one point that had additional nutritional supplements in it like follic acid. The supplements made the color of the IV a vibrant green and reminded me of Mountain Dew. Being a properly programmed human the Mountain Dew commercials immediately flickered through my mind and I imagined what would happen if they substituted the soda for the normal IV solutions.

Cat Scan

I can't believe that after all the cat scans I've had, the idea for this drawing didn't occur to me sooner.

Bookmark

I'd been meaning to make a bookmark for awhile and was trying to decide what subject would be good for one. Need collided with my innate sense of the absurd and I ended up rendering a book reading a guy.

Banana Clip

A friend of mine has a Russian Blue and is an avid collector of firearms. Fate conspired to bring Max (his cat), a banana clip and me together one day and this was the result.

Aussie meets Viking

An Australian friend of mine is constantly touting the toughness of those that live in the land down under, referring to anymone complaining about an injury or ailment as a 'girl'. One day I asked her what an Australian would do if someone chopped off one of their arms, quipping that they'd probably just say 'Oi' and take another sip of Fosters. She corrected me by stating that they'd say 'Oi', take the sip of Fosters and then beat the person who cut off their arm over the head with the severed limb. I actually need to do this in a two panel cartoon but in the meantime I did a quick sketch along similar lines.

Angry Cherry

I’d left a fresh bag of cherries on the kitchen counter one day and returned to find them missing. This was a quick sketch to express my irritation about it to my family. The original drawing actually has a short note written on it that says, “Where are my cherries punk?” which gives it a Dirty Harry like feel.

Bad Food

No, this was not a commentary on hospital food. I had just finished another drawing, ‘Good Food’, a stylized cartoon portrait of a woman that brings the meals to the patients which I thought was a bit too saccharine for my modus operandi and I needed to balance it out. Hence, Spike here.

Catnip O.D.

I met one of the sweetest dogs I've ever encountered during one of my hospital stays. The hospital had two dogs they would bring around to the patient's rooms to cheer them up occasionally and Pixie, a beautiful Chow, was one of them. Usually they only visited the children in the pediatrics ward but I guess they figured I was child-like enough.