Sketches

Some recent sketches (note my scanner at work picks up inks much better then pencils):

Queequeg

A pirate

Wolverine

A robotic squid

Looking Forward in Time and Westward in Space

Our road trip is getting closer (now only 2 weeks away) and I am getting excited. I am leaving the activities in Colorado to the MacLennan clan. My job is to get us there. This is our proposed route: (the blue is the going and the red is the coming)



Things I hope to see along the way (in no particular order):

Vertical Geology (mountains, cliffs, precipices, large boulders, etc.)
VLA
Lava Beds
Caverns
My Family
Rocket the Incorrigible Corrugated Courageous Corgi
Desert
A pretty impressive arch
Chaco Canyon
Large, vast expanses of no one else
Volcanoes
Georgia O’Keefe
Santa Fe
Forests
Snow
Giant Windmills
Sand Dunes

If anyone knows any good road trip games or music suggestions I would love to hear them. We are going to be in the car a while. Forty something hours of a while.

Table for Five (or six, or seven)

This is from Brian’s blog:
“I was talking to some of my fellow grad students a couple days ago, and to pass the time, we thought we'd have a fun conversation. We all responded to this question: If you could have any five people (living or dead) over to your home for dinner and conversation, who would you pick, and why?”

So this turned out to be an extremely difficult exercise in editing. Out of a list of about thirty here are my seven for the moment:

Sambo Mockbee
He was an architecture professor at Auburn University and created the Rural studio program. His holistic approach to architecture, poverty, and education puts many in the American church to shame. He would bring a great secular approach to the table and provide good discussion and great insight.

Bill Waterson
His completely counter cultural approach to success reinforces the greatness of the man who created Calvin and Hobbes. I would love to talk with him about life, art, and culture.

George MacDonald
Who wouldn’t pass up the story telling capacity from this big bearded Scot?

St. Francis of Assisi
I don’t know many saints but the couple that I do know (Augustine and Francis) are truly awesome examples of Christian men. I chose Francis because of his passion for life and his commitment to the poor. It would be interesting to hear the conversation between him and Mockbee.

Isaac McCaslin
Faulkner’s main character in Go Down Moses instantly resonated with me. His respect and understanding of the land and of his family drew me to him. Once again, I imagine the conversations between him and Mockbee and Waterson to be of extreme value.

Andrew Wyeth
Definitely my favorite recently discovered artist. I don’t know what he would be like in conversation but his ties to the land and his observational skills couldn’t hurt in this group.

John the Baptist
John is someone who my imagination loves. He is passionate, wild, and in general seems like someone who would keep you on your toes. He also seems like he could be pretty funny and has some good stories to tell.

I would like to add in Sam Beam and Darren Arronofsky to the mix just because I would love the artistic results but I am already stretching the predetermined capacity.

Clay

For Valentines Day my mom sent Laura and me a box of Crayola clay. So we had fun with it today and thought we'd share.

Laura's creation: a sinister cloaked figure somewhere between a ring wraith and Emperor Palpatine...and Voldemort...and the figure in Munch's "The Scream". Watch Out! He's going to get you!

My creation: a dragon skull, with the muscles, eye, and scales being applied to half of it.






And the ball made with the left over clay.

Love is...Bookmaking?

This Valentines Day Laura and I helped make a book for Neal to give to his girlfriend, Jenny. Its kindof a cheesy kid’s book, but it was fun, and the end product turned out quite beautiful. Neal wrote it, I illustrated it, another friend Becky (who is a fantastic artist) made the book, and Laura coordinated all of us, helped edit, and in general gave everyone a helpful set of hands. We all found the process to be quite fun and were completely in awe of Becky’s bookmaking process. There is quite a lot that goes into a book. Neal gives it to Jenny tonight with much laughing and crying forecasted.

Here is a slideshow of the pages of the book.

The Autopsy of a Piano

I heard this really cool story on NPR this morning about this team of musicians who play the piano in a very interesting way. Ten musician crowd around a piano that has been opened up and play it using strings and hammers and tongue depressors to get a full range of orchestra sounds.

Here is the NPR link:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18666248

Here is a video of one of their performances:

From highways to byways, oceans to creeks

This weekend held beautiful weather for those of us in the Dallas area so Laura and I took advantage of it. On Saturday we went to the Fort Worth Japanese Gardens and on Sunday we took a walk around our apartment and found some abandoned train tracks and a water tower, which isn’t the most spectacular scenery but we had fun.

Oh, and I remembered that I told my mom that I would put up pictures of the dragon drawings that are hanging on our wall.