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.

Blue Tooth Guy

After experimenting with Bluetooth for a day I came up with this one. I have a friend that uses it for everything. Reduces cable clutter but tends to raise the blood pressure alot.

Pen Problems

After slicing my thumb I thought adopt, adapt and improve... isn't that what the Romans said? Well, I'm still stuck on adapting to the damaged thumb but Bat thinks it's improved the quality of my work. What does she know? She's a cat. Maybe I'll put her up for adoption so I cover the Roman creed on all three points.

Piano Problems

I already had a dead left hand when it came to the piano. Now I've got a dead right thumb to go with it thanks to one of those mandolin vegetable slicer thingies. Naturally I disregarded my own advice about using the safety guard when using these things. I've come to realize that a major factor in us being the dominant species on this ball of dirt was opposable thumbs.

Ode to a Cat

What can I say, I like cats. So did the Egyptians. Alot. I read about some of that here.