Midwife to the Machine

Leaf and I ordered some Mayan books and we're waiting for those to do some Mayan warriors. In the meantime, I doodled this. My main goal was doodling a Tesla coil. I keep going back-n-forth on a kid's book in this style. The problem is, I have a hard time writing kids-book text. Leaf made his own version below. He thought the babies were pretty funny. He also added a plug at the bottom of his with sparks coming out of it.

Galactic Gospelist

Spreading the gospel across the galaxy has inherent problems, but it also seems wonderfully nutty. I'm surprised nobody is doing it. In other news, I gave up on the kid's book for now. I just don't have my heart in it. I may try a short story in the meantime. Here is Leaf's. He says, "Two people are singing on both sides of the tower. The man hanging from the moon spelled his name on the moon. There was a girl who closed her ears because the song was too loud, but she made a big smiley face. One guy was sitting over by the tower and playing his drums. There is a lot of sound in the world"

Space Junk Squatter

This one started with a question about what an environmentalist would look like in space. And then I thought of putting Thoreau in space, doing an Occupy Orbit kind of thing, which sounded funny to me. The poem is a few half-baked thoughts based on John Donne's mediation 17 (don't ask). I'll fix it later, when the thoughts coalesce. Or not. (Monet thinks my poems are mainly duds anyway). Hope I got the perspective right on the space junk. In other news, we are going to Mexico for xmas. Also, I am drawing a cover for my Twitch book, which I will try to self-publish. And Leaf and I are starting a picture book, which we've decided will be about bears. I will post our progress, whatever it may be, but the opus nebula doodles may become more intermittent.

Below is Leaf's. He says, "There is a space person up in space. He lives in a rocket ship and there is a lot of junk on it. He has been up there awhile. He has an air tube. He has a little place where he eats his food. His satellite dish was broken. He has a pretend fishing pole with a magnet on the end that helps pick up trash in outer space. That's all."

Astronomer

This one started from our trip to Lowell Observatory, which was pretty cool. Victorian technology, nut-ball astronomers working in the cold, dying for some mad pursuit, looking for Pluto and what-not. . . Also, there's nothing better than knobs and pulleys. . but dammit, this one took a while. I scrapped half the drawing. Also Monet got me thinking about doing a children's book in this style, so I'm trying to take the doodles a bit more seriously. . . still need to work on the star field. . . eh, it's evolving. The turtle, btw, was Leaf's idea. He included a turtle on a chain in his drawing, and I thought it was curious, so I added it in mine. He also took a more realistic line, drawing the tires on the Clark Telescope, which impressed him big-time. The kid loves mechanical stuff.

Star Snuffers

This drawing started from the topic of fireman and moved to super heroes and then I added my own opus-nebula spin. Also for Halloween, Monet and I were Bonnie and Clyde. The drawing process is getting more intense, with the clipping in Photoshop and the coloring. Last week we were in San Francisco and then we came back and most of our artistic energy was used carving pumpkins. Here is Leaf's. He was working from an early version of my drawing. He was proud of his drawing of a mustache.

Exterior Designer

This one I sort of got that 70's funk going. No idea why.

Here is Leaf's.

Asteroid Monk

I know it's riffing off a well-known zen story, but I thought that adding the whole gravity, movement, relativity thing was interesting. The background stars are done with a simple gradient dissolve in photoshop. . . which is sort of a hack. Maybe one day I'll make my own star field in my own style. One problem with throwing a gradient behind the drawing is I lose some of the detail of smaller objects. In this one, I really liked the ringed planet. It's spitting out random chunks of rocks or energy or just emoting in some weird way, but you can't see it with the backdrop.

Colony Installer

I always wanted to work on highly-detailed illustrations, ones that would require studying mechanical diagrams and stuff, sort of like the work by Geof Darrow, but I never thought I had the patience. Maybe this is the best I can do. . .

Leaf drew the following. He calls the man, Leggy. He says, "A monkey is climbing the tree. A plane is going through the clouds. The snake is heading towards the tree. The bird is flying in between the hot air balloons. The sun brightened up the castle so you can see the door of the castle."

Tow Ship Operator

This summer, I'm finishing up some writing projects and trying to run in the mornings, so this is a good way to channel my creative zaniness. I'm leveraging a lot of the stuff I learned while doing political cartoons (the pens, the style, the font, the Photoshop techniques, etc.). Below is Leaf's attempt at the same picture. His name is on there, inside the window of the tow ship.