newyorkette

I’m off to the beach! Back later!

This is all I have to show for my 4th of July weekend! It’s marker on newsprint (my muji book again), so there’s a bit of show-through happening. Click on the images for larger versions!

The path up the hill:

The little island in the muskrat pond (sorry no muskrats—they’ve been very discreet lately):

A less detailed study of above:

Five bucks if you can guess what this is (would really benefit from some color or shading! It’s actually the babbling brook seen from above, with bushes on the left, and rocks on either side of the rushing water as it goes into the pond in the above part of the drawing.):

Moire is some kind of something-poo type mix:

And Gypsy is another hybrid like a lassapoo or something like that:

Here’s a little montage of Gypsy and Moire I did with Photoshop and two sketches.

More Moire and Gypsy:

Yet more:

There were thousands of minnows in the muskrat pond:

My weed cartoon:

The dock on the other pond:

Crawford inspecting the pond:

More minnows:

The swimming was great:

Sam the black lab has only one thing on his mind:

And I let him know it! I put this sign on the front door for him this weekend. After all, it’s been months! He told me I was the only one in the building who wanted him, which explains the…. er, BUGS!!

As for the mousie that’s been in my housie of late, I spent all weekend discovering and patching holes I never dreamed existed, infusing steel wool with expanding polyurethane foam (when I told the exterminator about this tactic, he smirked, looked at me with the now-familiar look I get from everyone that says: “only an insanely determined nut like you would think of that” and declared: “yep, that should work!”).

Then, probably feeling like I’d never judge him for having a crazy idea, he said I wouldn’t believe it but mice like to eat cement powder mixed with rat poison and rice, in case I locked the mouse in, instead of out after all my work.

Cement powder? What is he, crazy?
But that would explain why the mouse hasn’t been into my fresh fruit on the windowsill. He obviously only likes junk food and comes here on the off chance I’ve brought home some McDonald’s, or cement powder laced with DeCon.

This is the cartoon I gave to the exterminator for Christmas last year.

(Click on the birdy to get to the auction.)

I donated a “doodle” to National Doodle Day and it’s on eBay right now, if anyone’s interested in either the doodle and/or charitable causes (in this case, the cause is neurofibromatosis, and Gahan Wilson also has a doodle in the auction)!

In other news, Leo Cullum told me the other day that he and his wife were watching the movie, “27 Dresses,” and saw one of my cartoons appear during the credits! If anyone has seen it, tell me which one it was!

UPDATE: I was on a plane to Phoenix last week, and the in-flight movie was, as fate would have it: “27 Dresses”. I waited patiently for the credits, and sure enough, there it was! My wedding dress cartoon!

Just experimenting with my kraft paper again. This is me, in my all-purpose, food-catching, ink-barrier apron.

(click on the image for larger version)

I took my allergy pill, my allergy eye drops, and my nose spray and went to the park, darn it! Can’t be at the mercy of every passing seasonal discomfort, after all. (There are so many of them! As far as I’m concerned, the world is usually uninhabitable already without global warming! So, recycle already! Ha ha.)

Got to the Great Lawn, and drew my buddy, Crawford (yes, the great cartoonist!) while he was doing watercolors (much nicer than mine). I used my color pencils and my kraft sketchbook for the first time since buying them last year. I found the white and greys hard to use when trying to represent the milky, streaky grey-white-blue sky. Couldn’t finish the sketch due to having to part ways, but got this much done. Which is better than nothing! And I even had a couple of caption ideas for a new cartoon on my way back across the park. More on that TK.

This is part of a little project I’ve been experimenting with in watercolor. Particularly appropriate for today’s weather!

I try to make it to Jason Polan’s quite famous Taco Bell Drawing Club whenever I can, but it’s not often enough!
Here are a couple of my very silly ball-point pen doodles from the last meet-up. My inspiration was New York’s vermin, which I assume to be possessed of rather degenerate character traits to match their lifestyles. And if you object to my classifying squirrels as vermin, just call up the ASPCA, who I called once when I caught a vandalous squirrel that I wanted them to pick up and book. They said they did not take care of “vermin.”

My classification of vermin mostly extends to critters who savagely violate my window boxes. Like that squirrel I caught two years ago. Boy, was he pissed! (It was a humane trap, don’t worry! And he learned his lesson, becoming much more respectful of my window boxes after his release!) (The lesson was reinforced from time to time by the aid of a garden hose I hooked up to my kitchen sink, near the window. You don’t want to mess with a cartoonist.)

Here is the Taco Bell Drawing Club’s blog: drawingattacobell.blogspot.com

Go vote! Make history! This is a big one!

If you’re not sure where to vote, check this link, here.

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

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.

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!

The person who tried to persuade me that mice are known to have a predeliction for getting into cupboard drawers in order to lick one’s clean cutlery, and who even claims to have witnessed said perversions being committed upon his own clean cutlery, knows who he is.

(Green onions, by Carolita Johnson.)

Last June I was given an assignment by a nice lady who wants to be my literary agent. I was to come up with a couple sample chapters (with illos) by the end of the summer. What time is it? Oh! It’s the end of the summer!

I’ve been writing sample chapters for two projects. One is for what I suppose would be called an autobiographical account, a memoir, of sorts? With illustrations. I want it to look a bit like a Nancy Drew book, or basically the way books looked just before we all graduated to books with no pictures at all in them. I’ve always missed those books!

The other is a kids’ book. The story has already been written, and has been sent to my most accessible English-speaking father and small child (in Paris), for a test run and appraisal. (Most of my stateside friends got busy reproducing a good 20 years ago. Thank goodness for later bloomers like Juan.)

Why the green onions, you may well ask? Well, dredging up stories from my past without just turning them into flat “hilarious anecdotes” devoid of any actual human empathy, or only just hinting at their real significance in a life, well, it’s just a little unnerving. It means I have to feel something. I’m used to just mining for laughs. (What have I got in my pocket that I can use to make you laugh? Oh, look! Here’s a very sad story that I can turn on its head.) Making funny is a good distillation process. But if all you do is laugh, and forget to collect the distilled product, well? It collects. It overflows. Gets on people’s nerves.

So the idea is, you write a book (or do something) and put some meaning back into it all, but without turning it into a huge tearful blob of pathetic sadness or self-pity either. Yuck! You all have permission to put on a nice, big boot and insert it ungraciously in the appropriate place if I do.

But I digress! Green onions! Read the rest of this entry »

My telescope is in Canada, vacationing at a lake. Not me! I’m here, working.
I hope my telescope is having a good time.

Gothamist: Pet Mug Shots Coming to a Bus Stop Near You.

I kind of have trouble feeling bad for these two, though:

(image: carolita johnson)

Rest assured, if you don’t have a Valentine this year, there’s really nothing to worry about—even idiots, creeps and xenophobes have valentines, and you’re actually half-decent, aren’t you? Love is in the hearts of even the most horrible people, and lavished on even the most manifestly undeserving. Love is totally blind and random, and thank goodness for that!

This is a drawing I did in 1998, when I was working 9 to 5, deeply depressed and in debt. It’s part of a series of stickers that I distributed to friends to stick on street signs and restaurant bathrooms from Berlin, Paris, Minneapolis to Little Neck, NY. It was just one of those things I did to keep from killing my boss. (He had a great printer! And we became great friends once I quit!)

Happy Valentine’s Day to all!
xox

That’s me above, drawing a pretty little girl named Georgia. I had to give her my candy cane to make her sit still, then draw her mouth from memory!

Managed to snap a couple of pics of Crawford doing his thing between sittings.

Here he is getting carried away with freckles on an imaginary kid he was drawing. People see this kind of thing and then cry with relief when their kid’s portrait comes out flattering! (I think this is one of his tricks!) (And of course, we only do flattering portraits!)

I’d love to know how many portraits we did today! It seemed like we must have done a good fifty altogether. We had to do a few drawings of ourselves and innocent bystanders to get things started, but once we started doing portraits it was nonstop till 5pm! And all for a good cause!

I’m working today, for the Children’s Aid Society at an event called “Miracle Sunday,” with fellow cartoonist Michael Crawford. We’ll be drawing in the “Kids’ Entertainment Tent” on Madison Avenue at 68th street. Read the rest of this entry »