Cessna 152

You know what? I absolutely adore flying. The feeling when you take off, wheels off the runway, when you turn, and you just get that feeling in your body, or even when you hit turbulence. I love it.

I drew this little picture after I had my first flight lesson in a little Cessna 152.

It’s hardly a masterpiece, but it’s a great memory for me.

Everything about that day was pretty much perfect. I’m not a big fan of cold weather, but it was perfect, the first clear day after about 4 days of snowstorms, not a cloud in the blue sky, sun shining, ice and snow covering everything and that cold morning air that burns your nose when you breathe.

It didn’t hurt that my fly-boy was well fit, either.

I could drone on about it, but all I really need to say is that it was probably one of the best days I’ve had.

Eric Portrait

We had Eric a lot for portrait class as well as life drawing, which was fine with me, cause he had a pretty epic face. In addition he always brought crazy props in.

Like, bear claw necklaces, chain mail headdress things, and on one occasion he brought in this  little battle axe to pose with. Funny guy.

I’m not really terribly happy with this one, charcoal paper always seems to give me a hard time. You get used to news print or flat paper, or brown packing paper, then you switch, and the new paper just whoops your ass.

In other news, absolutely unrelated to art, Harry Potter has finally come to the Carpentras’ theater. I’m pretty excited to see it finally.

While I’m not a Harry Potter nut, I started to enjoy them after the 5th one, and so, just a little happy that the original language version has come.

My French is definitely not good enough for movie watching

YET.

Bird face?

So there’s just a little something today.

I went out to a vide grenier in Le Thor the other day, and picked up a couple .50 euro books from the sixties, with ridiculously awesome cover art, yelling out things like, “Espionnage!”

Got some plans for them, that definitely involve defacing. Sorry books, it hurts me a little bit, but that’s how it is.

Just having a little fun here with this bird-lady face thing.

I’ve been thinking about stuff, like paper mache. Hot glue guns, (I miss mine, it’s back in the states…), collage.

Really collage. So maybe I should get a glue stick, because all there is in the cabinet here is some crazy french gorilla glue or something.

What is it about the back?

 I have no idea what it is. Really, but I really think there is something about the back.

Okay, so it’s not like this is any grand example, but looking at it, I remember how awesome that little bend and overlap in her back was.

Ah the days of using those stupid brown packing paper rolls.

I could really use some practice with the whole black and white on toned paper. I left for France just when I it felt like I was getting a bit of a knack for it.

I was desperate to find some newsprint paper here and maybe convince people to sit for a couple brief portraits, but it seems that Avignon has never heard of newsprint.

It was a real task even finding some charcoal that wasn’t vine. I guess paint is more their thing here.

Portrait Study

Looking back at this study from my old portrait class, I would have done a lot of stuff differently.

I had the same teacher for both portrait, and life, both of which I took at a community college during the time when I was just messing around, not really doing anything at all.

I lucked out with Kathy as a teacher though, cause she knew her stuff.

We also had really good models, which was kind of impressive for the location of the school. So, you know, that was nice.

Big Dog Zola

When I was in Monaco I did a couple really quick contour drawings of Zola (who you can find at bigdogzola)

She’s such a ball of energy that it was really only when she was lying down that you could do anything. and even then she only stays in the same place for a second.

I enjoy it, though.

She and her human, Vikki, are pretty awesome.

Anyway, doing these little contours made me realize I kind of miss going out in public and doing contours of people, which I used to do all the time in the states.

Maybe I’ll venture out.

Aliens!

I was talking to my dad back in the good ol’ USA and I brought up the fond childhood memory of playing Doom, Doom II and Ultimate Doom with him and my sister when I was 6 or so.

Man, I can still rattle off the codes for that game, IDKFA anyone? IDBEHOLDL? Or the king of all codes, IDDQD?

Oh yeah, those were the days. Anyhow, I realized how much my childhood influenced the junk I’m interested.

I will always have a soft spot for space marines, alien/demon creatures, guns and some good old fashioned carnage.

H.P. Lovecraft, Doom, Heinlein, Niven.

Oh look.

Coincidence? I THINK NOT.

Oh that colour thing

I just don’t have the color mojo. Never have, but one day, I will actually learn.

Sometimes I enjoy colour pencils, because colour is fun, even if you suck at it.

oh look, it’s still bad photo quality. Probably I should do something about that.

Bosafur man

Well hello there, I need to get my camera out, and then some recent stuff can say hello.

Until then, I found this old picture in the bowels of my hard drive.

I was playing around with very simple perspective at the time, this is a couple years ago. and just filling stuff with designs. I love to do that.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry, you know, that’s why this is not an actual daily blog.

Cause I would never be able to do that in a million years.

Oh, Parsons a Paris, why you must be so expensive?