People with Animals on Their Heads (and an octopus)

I'm finally getting around to posting my drawings from First Thursday earlier this month. First up is my drawing of Jean Calomeni's "Bustle in Her Hedgerow" at the Basement Gallery:

 After that, I realized the Modern Hotel was having its annual Modern Art at the Modern Hotel, so I headed there. This is a sketch I did of a watercolor by Georgia Gelder. Only when I'd nearly finished did I realized I had a theme here: people with animals on their heads.

It was a fantastic theme while it lasted, but I realized I had to break it up when I saw Ben Brunn's delightful octopus painting. I love cephalopods.

Mike Flinn at the Basement Gallery

I did a rough sketch of Mike Flinn's "Conversation with an Extrovert" at the Basement Gallery on First Thursday and colored it in later. Flinn had a lot of fun pieces like this, and it was entertaining listening in on some of the conversations of people looking at them. One guy who was standing next to me said either to me or to no one in particular, "I'm never having dinner with Mike Flinn." My favorite overheard snippet was another man talking to his friend about a Flinn painting a few feet away from me: "I like the symbolism, whatever it is. Oscar Meyer Wienermobile ... and a horse on fire, expelling flaming gases."

Noble Hardesty at VAC

I drew this version of a painting by Noble Hardesty quite a while ago when I saw Head at the Visual Arts Collective and have just taken my sweet time coloring it. But I was at VAC for New Year's Eve and it was still up, so you may be able to catch it and Noble's other pictures. If I remember right, there were also some great ones with wolves, pigs, and some King Kong-inspired ones. Noble's large paintings are displayed along with his preliminary sketches on beer coasters from Gernika.

The Internet is for ██████████

Hi, loyal readers. I have to tell you something -- I'm a little worried.

I'm worried about the Internet.

Yes, I'm worried about this marvelous kingdom, this world where lolcats and keyboard cats and nyan cats reign supreme. You see, there's this bill called SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. It gives an enormous amount of control to major content providers, who would be able to have sites shut down without due process to determine if the Fair Use Act applies. It could institutionalize censorship and introduce security flaws to the World Wide Web. The original bill even mucks about in the DNS, requiring ISPs to redirect traffic from sites that are deemed piracy havens. It's been watered down a bit since then, but that's cold comfort. What's worse, really, is the example we'd be setting to the rest of the world -- that it's okay to censor the Internet based on business interests or political interests. China anyone? Iran? That's what we'd be reinforcing with this bill. We need a free Web.

SOPA must die so the Internet can live.

█████ ████ ████ for the ██████████,
and I ████'t █████ out ███████ I ████'t a █████████.

████ ████ ████ for the █████ █████████,
and I ████'t █████ out ███████ I ████'t a █████ ████████.

████ ████ ████ for the ████,
and I ████'t █████ out ███████ I ████'t a Jew.

████ ████ ████ for me
and █████ was no one ████ to █████ out for me.

Jacqueline Hurlbert and Erin Ruiz at the Basement

This statue, "Lighthearted" by Jacqueline Hurlbert, was a lot of fun to sketch, its limbs splayed out every which way and the great expression on its snout as it stares at its winged heart.


I'm sure I've said many times on this blog how much I love Erin Ruiz's work. In this sketch of her picture "Wolves in the Bed," I tried to capture the way she used red for outlines and highlights (and for the eyes of the wolves) to lend a sense of danger to the picture. I ran out of room before I could sketch the fourth wolf, which is tearing into a pillow.

Rick Walter at Visual Arts Collective

Last weekend I went to see Red Light Variety Show at Visual Arts Collective. It was pretty cool -- think Cirque du Soleil with pasties. While I was there, I sketched this piece by Rick Walter. Didn't see a title for the piece, but I thought it was interesting. Aw, it looks so forlorn for a horrifying bat-winged disembodied head thing.

Melissa Graves and Jerri Lisk

Apparently, I was into aspens last First Thursday. This is Elk Meadow by Melissa Graves at the Basement Gallery. These trees were actually very yellow, but you know, blue background ... pastels ... yellow and blue make green ... and I have limited patience with trying to fix these sketches sometimes.


This is Growth Chart by Jerri Lisk. I probably ought to have drawn one of hers for this blog before now, since they are quite nice, but I tend not to go to the Lisk Gallery very often because it's always the same stuff.