taking a break

An early Buster Keaton feature on TCM

I'm very busy on the HP tablet at the moment and took a break just now as there's this mystery film with (I think) Gilbert Roland and some wonderfully marcelled actress on. This has got to be circa 1930 or '31 but no later.

EDITED TO ADD: Aha! The sudden appearance of Buster Keaton in the mix tells me it's "The Passionate Plumber"--with the marceled dark girl and a blonde I don't know. Here's my doodle of the blonde:


Poor Buster was probably drunk for the filming of this turkey...he's not up to form but who would be paired with Durante. Gawd!

Santa Paws

It's him again

dux

My friend Paul showed me a scene he did today. There was a great duck in it. Ducks just always slay me.
When I was a kid my family's dearest friends had a duck; they also always had about seven beautiful cats, a horse, an airedale named Wilbur and for a long time this white duck, Sunny, who was a unusually personable character. Anyway, this is just an excuse to post more doodles of something tonight-I'm really on a posting jag.

playing with my Disneykins in the dirt

One of those memories from four or so.

advert

dollface

Note

warming up on the cintiq (again)

my 2 dogs

laptop again

I was fooling around last week(and I mean real, desultory, aimless doodling), browsing the internet and looking at some photos online simultaneously. I spied a friend's photo of his wife, which was a very nice snap, and grabbing some printer paper, drew her in a sort of reverse-tablet scenario. Pretty crummy--so I flipped the paper over and, not looking at the photo but instead at the faint bleed through of the Copic marker, drew a flopped one. Not much better, but I still think it has personality(and that's not a compliment to me, but to the original photograph and of course, the original person).

Then I got annoyed as yet another Copic marker was fizzling out on me...so as it lay dying I drew this other thing with both barely-there ends.
I sure do love these markers, but I make a mess of refilling them so they don't last long for me.


Here's another tablet/alias doodle of the same girl-my impression of her,that is.

Alias sketchbook thing on an HP tablet

When I was five

I too was a child, once. Here's proof.
Everyone in the class had to contribute to a book the teacher mimeographed. One girl was an especially gifted artist--her drawing was as developed as a 12 year old's--a good twelve year old. She was a big inspiration to me. She certainly would have been an artist, I think(she took it very seriously--not surprising given her talent), but she died shortly after this in a swimming accident.

This is but the top half of the page; the bottom picture that accompanies the lower "story" (of the girl who believes her family consists of sky, flowers and clouds--including my almost-perfect spelling of colors on a lot of large house paint cans)was too messed up to post--even worse than what's here.

Um, busted!

This was taken when I wasn't looking yesterday in life drawing...damn cel phones! I'll get him back when he least expects it, wait and see.

This was not the model, btw...

Alias doodles

Believe it or not, this is a life drawing of a doll. A japanese doll.

..and these are just doodles, drawn nearly flat in my back at 1 am, using this HP tablet sketchbook. They aren't the greatest, but it's late and they reflect my mood...also I haven't posted anything much in a while. ; )

After Dedini

I always liked the lushness of this guy's drawings(and his women--you really can't call them "girls" are neat, simple designs). This is a quick study/copy/call it what you will I did the other day on the cintiq. Not finished--but then how many of these doodles are?

I love this guy's watercolor technique...you really should look him up or get the new book devoted to him that Fantagraphics has put out.

slip of a girl.

blue

casting

1918-ish

This is just a semi-absent-minded doodle.

1970

d&c

From my hotel window in Paris...

Not a sketch, obviously. But this is the blog where I can post things of a less strictly animation-related nature, and so to go with my earlier drawn observations here's a brief moving one.

This was my last morning in Paris, an hour before the taxi took us back to the airport. 7am. Across from the French senate(the building on the right)and the Jardin de Luxembourg.

It's not much of a movie, but it was taken with my friend's borrowed SLR digital still camera, and I had no idea what I was doing so I'm happy it's this good. It's a shame, really, that I didn't realize until the last morning and almost the last minute that I could do any sort of videoing with the camera.

What I like about this, and the reason I'm shooting the buildings, is of course for my own posterity, and also to record the fantastic morning light as it fell on the stone. I've never seen light in my life before that looked like the light in Paris.

Paris sketchbook 3

Switching pens...


Switching back again:

These were all drawn in and around what may have been my favorite spot in all Paris, the Jardin de Luxembourg. Our hotel was on this magnificent park, and it offered endless scenes of interest and beauty.

The last night we watched this kid and three adults playing doubles. As my note says, the kid shouted "Ah! Magnifique!" every time the guy opposite got a good shot. He was much cuter than this.






Sketchbook pages, especially ones from Paris, shouldn't have disclaimers, but I do have a tip for sketchcrawlers: I bought this little book in a stationary shop. I liked the paper texture, and it was small enough and light enough that I thought I'd have an easier time of it packing it in my bag. That was true, but in retrospect I think the one I bought was too small--4x8". It's hard to get free and easy with the pen on such a small page--at least I found it that way. So buy or bring a bigger book!

As it happened I had not much time to draw anyway, so perhaps it worked out fine. It definitely is a notebook sort of collection. Posted here to share with my friends and for posterity, brief as it may be.

scribbling as fast as you can when you're not supposed to be in the office but are on vacation instead

Another page

There was a "festival of bread" going on in front of Notre Dame when we got there; tented pavilions, some with kids trying baking baguettes, some with samples of different kinds of sucre(sugar). Once place gave out little pennants with "sucre" emblazoned on them for the kids--every toddler had one, it seemed. Only in France would a marketing show smell that good or be that kid-friendly.

Paris when it sizzles...

La-la-la-la...guess where I'll be in a month?

Paris. Where I have never ever been yet. Ye gods!

And so, since I have the City of Light on the brain pan, I was doodling my memory of Chantal Goya(who I was watching in a darling Youtube interview over the weekend). Naw, she doesn't look just like this--it's just "inspired by".
She was in Godard's "Masculin Feminin", a great film. And of course she was a great yeye singer, a pop star of France in the 60s.

Anyone have a place of thing they want to recommend in Paris? Seems everyone's been there but me!
I suspect I'll be drawing a lot of Eiffel towers.
Or more yeye girls.