November 30, 2007 Bonus Blog
Well, it took me 5,264 attempts, but last night at about 7:30 I finally got Remington's style of pen and ink nailed to my satisfaction, without copying an actual work of art or sketch. Here are six images from the Mexico sojourn part of our story that I can see Freddy sketching on location:



Old Times At New Times
Once the group Women Take Back The Night had me in their sights, they became obsessed with my "sexist" and "demeaning" cartoons. Here's an illustration I did for New Times' Annual Best of Phoenix ad campaign that featured the slogan, "We Settle All The Arguments." I did a series of illustrations showing various professions fighting, chefs choking each other, Mexican food restaurant owners choking each other ("We have The Best Salsa!" No, We Do!"), and for the billboard campaign I created a pen and ink illustration of Phoenix mayoral candidates, Terry Goddard and Margaret Hance, choking each other. Seemed rather harmless to me. Publisher Jim Larkin bought several dozen billboards across the Valley to promote the Best of Phoenix issue. As soon as they went up, Women Take Back The Night began picketing the boards. They claimed Terry Goddard had a "superior chokehold" on Ms. Hance, and therefor the illustration and the paper were promoting "violence against women":



Raving Ray Red
Among other things, Robert Ray is a Mac snob. In many ways, our production manager is the spitting image of John Hodgeman in those Mac commercials—condescendingly witty—only Mr. Ray takes the opposite position from the talented Mr. Hodgeman. Robert has little patience for anything or anybody who uses a computer not made by Apple. I say this, to illustrate his demeaner, which is prickly and quite funny. And to help you understand why he and his wife Bea (also a graphic artist and Mac snob), painted their house like this:



The Rays live in an old neighborhood with setback homes from the thirties. So far, according to Robert, everyone is digging the color scheme. People have even stopped and walked up to rave about the color, which is "Rave Red" by the way.



Gee, I wonder what my main bro has to say about all this?

"Many people are inventive, sometimes cleverly so. But real creativity begins with the drive to work on and on and on."
—Margueritte Harmon Bro