July 26, 2004
Woke up at 5:30, had a cup of coffee in bed, got up at six, came out and honed in copy from weekend “Insurgent” steal-a-thon. Also did a quick lightning storm a al scratchboard last night, whipped out another one at lunch (came home and had leftover tacos). Got the reference from a book I bought in Bisbee called “1,000 Photo Icons: George Eastman House”. In it are classic images going back to the early 1800s, including a series of lightning images by William N. Jennings, taken in 1882! Incredible. So I like the crackled primitive nature of these older prints, as opposed to the slick, pushed, long-exposured-purple-photographs you see in Arizona Highways. Of course I added subtle skeletons and skulls in the sky (I’m getting this scraperboard deal down). This afternoon I did a very ambitious bartender image for the Classic Gunfights, Volume II book. Working hard with Robert Ray and Gus to maximize the effects of scratchboard. Not easy as the tiny scratches mush out at about 40% reduction and this presents a problem, although Robert Ray assures me he can handle anything. He’s scanning them as half-tones then converting them to bit-maps to recreate the line-shot effect of the original. I simply have to let go, trust him and let him do it.

This morning we had a very productive t-shirt pow wow. We are designing a whole new batch of shirts for our fall line (2 women designs and 3 men) and we went over all the designs that Abby and Gus produced last week. Lots of good feedback. Two were unanimous choices, everything else fell between “needs work” and “I don’t get it.” Paul from the Cowboy Company came over at lunchtime to borrow our xerox machine and I corralled him into looking at the designs. He made several choices and rejected a couple, and he gave us several retail secrets: black always outsells white, people will not buy the last shirt. If it’s on a rack all by itself, people will avoid it. Must be something wrong with it. Nobody likes it, I kind of like it, but I’ll never take the risk of getting it and having people laugh at me. Never mind that people will scarf up a pile of 30 rejects and fight over the pile down to the last one. Think about it people: isn’t 30 shirts on a liquidation rack more of an indication of failure and loser-dom than one shirt? Evidently it’s on our DNA (“Whatever you do in life, don’t buy the last shirt!”

We’ll be posting the finalist t-shirt designs up here on the website in the next day or so.

Got a massage from Christie at four ($50 house account), came home, swam laps with Buddy Boze Hatkiller. Peaches kept hitting me up to drive Kathy’s car again. I checked her doggy-prozac bottle and she hasn’t been hitting that. Maybe it’s the new haircut. Women can get so touchy and odd after a bad haircut.

Big monsoon blowing in right now (6:44 p.m.) One of my framed pictures fell off the wall and the glass shattered all over the studio floor.

“Let art alone—she’s already got enough guys sleeping with her.”
—Sherwood Anderson?