General
July 7th, 2007 | Posted in General
My youngest daughter The Effervescent Gabrielle pointed out to me last night that today’s date is 07-07-07, which is a ‘lucky day’. Since she’s already a lucky person, she thought I should take her up to the convenience store at 7:00 am today and have her buy a lottery ticket. She’s thirteen, this is summer and none of my kids have seen the awake side of about 10:00 am in a month. Somehow I think she’d have reconsidered how lucky today is if I really had woken her up at 7:00. Personally I’m not feeling real lucky. I’m paying the price for being a business… READ MORE
July 6th, 2007 | Posted in General
I did the above image as part of a new collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s Sherlock Holmes stories on audiobook, performed by the incomparable David Ian Davies. The new collection will feature David’s unabridged readings of the entire Conan Doyle “canon” of 56 short stories and 4 novels. I’m a big fan of David’s work and am delighted to both participate with a little artwork and for playing a small part in the collection’s origins. As I have said many times here, I listen to a lot of audiobooks when I am working in the studio. As I have also said before, I need… READ MORE
July 3rd, 2007 | Posted in General
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June 28th, 2007 | Posted in General
It’s been a while since The Dreaded Deadline Demon darkened the door. I am paying the price for working 4 of the last 5 days doing live caricatures at Valleyfair and daring to take a full day off on the one day I did not work to attend a neighborhood get together. I now have five full blown projects in the works, and things are going to get interesting the next few days. The good news is that some of the jobs I’ll be able to post in stages, so I can share some of the process over the next few days. READ MORE
June 26th, 2007 | Posted in General
We laughed, we cried… mostly we yawned. Yes, today is the one year anniversary of the MAD blog. They said it wouldn’t last. I visit a number of blogs regularly, but few every day. I always hate visiting a blog to find it hasn’t had an update in weeks. I promised myself on the outset of doing this blog that I would try and write something every day unless a serious deadline of some kind made that impossible, and on those days I would at least acknowledge readers with some kind of apology or excuse. I wanted the blog to be part entertainment, part educational,… READ MORE
June 25th, 2007 | Posted in General
Here’s a few from yesterday at Valleyfair: READ MORE
June 20th, 2007 | Posted in General
I have been traveling a lot this spring to my different theme park operations, working with new artists far more than I have in the past few years due to a set of unusual circumstances. I both enjoy it and find it exhausting and frustrating, but always rewarding. I never fail to learn something myself, if nothing more than a better way of explaining some concept for new artists to grasp. Live caricaturing is a unique and challenging art form. Part cartooning, part illustration, part performance and part gestural drawing, it can seem complex and intimating to the rookie artist. In fact there are two… READ MORE
June 18th, 2007 | Posted in General
Alice and Roger Armstrong in 2000 On Thursday, June the 9th, the world of cartooning lost a talented and well loved artist named Roger Armstrong at the age of 89 to natural causes. Roger was so accomplished in so many areas it’s hard to make a list. He worked on comic books for Warner Brothers, Disney and others, did animation and illustration for Walter Lantz, worked on many syndicated comic strips including Little Lulu and Disney’s Scamp, and many other cartooning endeavors. That list in no way actually describes Roger’s body of work. He was also a world class watercolorist and art teacher, who’s work… READ MORE
