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And to all a good night!

PS - if you still have gifts to buy and don’t know what to do, get a goat or a cow or a sheep for someone in the name of the person who already has everything, at Heifer International! You get a free e-card, too.

(Brighton Beach, August 2007)

There’s a reason for this repeat image above. I just read Norah Ephron’s “I feel bad about my neck,” and this is all I have to say: I will never feel bad about my neck. Not even if it one day hangs down to my knees. I want to be just like these ladies above. Notice, they are not only wearing bikinis—one is even wearing a tanga bottom! I think they’re beautiful, and I don’t think they feel bad about anything, except, possibly, their husbands’ necks.

In fact, if Norah were ever to hear about this comment of mine, I’ll be happy to make a gift to her of my Coney Island Venus, in honor of glorious, ageing womankind. It’s my favorite, but for a good cause, I’d part with her.

(That was my public service announcement to womankind. )

UPDATE: For some correspondence regarding this post (with name removed to protect the privacy of the correspondent) click here: Read the rest of this entry »

Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery, in “Marnie.”

Here is the B & W version:

Home sick, watching DVD’s, I always liked this scene from Hitchcock’s “Marnie,” when she’s got the safe open but can’t get her hand to steal the money in the safe and Sean Connery looms up behind her and says, “Go ahead and take it! It’s not stealing! What’s mine is yours!”

One thing I always noticed about the movie (besides Sean Connery’s overly plucked eyebrows) is all the beige’s and browns and yellows. If you look carefully, you’ll notice an uncanny, bright yellow theme going from the yellow getaway handbag, to the yellow fridge in Marnie’s mom’s house, to the yellow leather vest on Sean Connery’s father.

(I’d provide reference photos, but I simply paused the DVD and worked from the TV screen.)

I was on the radio this morning with Diffee, discussing a couple of rejected cartoons! More specifically, on NPR’s Bryant Park Project, which is direct from the web!

Here is their blog post with our cartoons on it.
And here is the show, of you care to listen!

Be forewarned, that is definitely my morning voice. Cheerful, but not quite fully of this world yet.

For more of Diffee, see Emily Gordon’s interview for Print, here!

Well, I had already done my fun drawings from Trouble in Paradise, but had not figured out how to color them in. So here’s my second try at inking with layers.

Here’s what it looked like before inking and a little repositioning, just india ink on paper, then scanned:

I’m not sure which I prefer. I had thought the B&W one was too rough looking, and quite liked adding in grays with the layering. They I got into coloring the rest in, probably inspired by DIVYA SRINIVASAN’s illo last week.

See my previous Trouble in Paradise attempts (of Miriam Hopkins), a few posts down.

These are the reference photos besides the actual movie that I used to guide me. For the Miriam Hopkins, in my previous post, I drew directly from the screen. (On pause, of course!):

1- for her body
2- for her face
3- for his pose

(Lemmy Caution keeping an eye on the assassin next door. Later, he asks: “Et Dick Tracy? Il est mort, aussi?”)

More practice in layers and colors. This is Eddie Constantine, in Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville.

For the black and white version, see a previous post, here.

Eddie has a face that’s interestingly bloated and wrinkled at the same time. He’s got that redheaded complexion, which shows in the eyes mostly. Sometimes he looks like a burn victim, his face is so distressed. And when he wants to, he can turn to the side or three quarter profile and make his eye look like the eye of a whale, like in the moment before he kills the guy in the telephone booth next to him (as in my illo). I drew him from the television screen, but here’s a photo of the moment just before he turns, realizing he has a neighbor.

Here’s two more images of Eddie, which show what he looks like, here, and here.

And I love this one, from Alphaville.

Well, thanks to Dave James’ benevolent kibbitzing (via email, now that I have closed comments in order to enjoy a respite from deleting the constant flow of incoming spam), I now know how to do layers! Thank you Dave James!
This is my very first attempt/romp in layers, with Cary. I like the idea of romping with Cary Grant! Indeed!

Just playing around with the Wacom Tablet. Still haven’t figured out how to use my Adobe CS3!

WOOPS!
For anyone who saw the other post and wonders why this is a double, I accidentally deleted it! Here he is again.

Just taking a break after a grueling deadline. Grueling few deadlines, that is. Back later!

(An old drawing for a French July, or “juillet,”calendar submission).

That means “Long live the strike!” The French will have to find other ways to get to work!

It wouldn’t be France if people weren’t in the streets objecting to something, and not suffering alone. While I’m overwhelmed with work, and still underpaid, I am in total solidarity with them, whatever the cause! I enormously enjoyed their last transit strike. The cameraderie was what got us all to work on foot, feeling rather invigorated. At least, that was the case for those of us who are constitutionally capable of cameraderie.

Basically, the question is this: What’s the point in being French and in France if you’re going to have to live under American working conditions?

France on strike: AFP

(Click on the image to go to Maria’s photoblog.)

Here’s a polar bear, snapped in a photo by my friend Maria Winter, medievalist and photographer extraordinaire. Maria was a classmate at the EHESS, and underwent 9am latin theme courses with me. She was one of the only other students who actually laughed during a latin reading now and then, and so I guess we were meant to be friends.

(A view from the 20th floor of the Conde Nast building).

(click on the image for a larger version on flickr)

A friend asked me to do this from a photo of his family back in Mexico. I kept it pretty conventional, because I didn’t think I needed to get clever with someone’s family. I did it in pencil, because it would have had to be quite a lot bigger for me to use the ink and brush. The bottom is missing because my scanner is small, and I didn’t want to risk smudging the drawing with another scan. My signature is at the bottom of the long strand of hair in the middle.

Toilet, pros:
quick, easy expediation of the offense
Toilet, cons:
requires kneeling on the floor, also eventually requires wondering at an inopportune moment when it was last cleaned.

Sink, pros:
closer to the entrance than toilet, thus less running; higher up, less bending over
Sink, cons:
requires offending my just-cleaned sink!

Need I say more? Except maybe to add: Pret A Manger on 7th ave and 38th street.

I did not do my “batch” this week, mainly because I couldn’t even find a place to sit and draw in my apartment since last batch. Without going into details (the emotional ones are all documented in my “status” on facebook), a two-day paint job offered by our building manager turned into a two-week ordeal. My sofa will be wondering where I am tonight. My bed will be saying, “Where ya been, baby?”

Anyway, here’s a reject from last week’s call for “reverse caption contest” cartoons. Someone had suggested the caption, “For a number of reasons, this probably won’t work.” So I came up with this. Since Bob didn’t take it, the proud owner will be Emily Gordon from Emdashes, who is partial to cat cartoons.

And on the subject of cats, let’s hear from Minor Tweaks.

No, this isn’t a repeat! I submitted my “Outspoken bass” as a t-shirt submission on Threadless, and it’s in the running! People will vote on it, and so I’d love your vote! Have a look, and please vote! Here! Thanks!

I love neon drawings.

Talk like Yoda Carolita lately likes to do when she sells a cartoon. (Ask don’t.) Happy I am.
Rejected cartoon from same batch here is, to celebrate. Bumper crop two sales in two weeks that is.

The brush is beginning to do what it’s supposed ‘ta. Basically, it needs to be a little roughed up.

Did a double feature with a buddy last night, “Design for Living” and “Trouble in Paradise.” Miriam Hopkins and Edward Everett Horton, above, are favorites of Lubitsch, and favorites of mine. Gary Cooper and Frederic March used to be the attraction, but I gradually began to appreciate these two as the real soul of the films.

Hopkins and Horton are experts of the double-take. This one below is from Trouble in Paradise:

All these images are done by ink and brush, scanned, and then retouched digitally.