Sunday, January 14, 2018

I Need to Step Up My Game!

January 14, 2018
   After a mammoth project like the one I just finished, I usually take a day, or two, to veg out. So I read ("Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine, by Joe Hagan) , took a walk, puttered around, cleaned off my Olive Oatman desk. Wandered around Facebook and found this on Red Shuttleworth's website, where he is promoting his latest project, Americana West:





An Abandoned Farm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936
Photo by Arthur Rothstein, Library of Congress, Public Domain

   Red is a poet, but don't know it, but his legs show it, they're longfellows. Old joke. Here's his website:


   I don't quite know why, but pictures like this really speak to me. Is it the loss of a way of life? Is it the haunting, impending, wreck of all human effort and existence? Or is it just cool to see old wagon wheels?

   And speaking of wagon wheels, I made a note to study prairie schooners a bit more. I feel like the wagons I drew for the Continuous Picnic portion of the Olive Oatman feature could have had a bit more authentic accuracy:


Authentic pioneer wagons pulled by oxen

   I'll be honest: depicting those front and rear wheels with accuracy is a bitch. 

   Got a cool picture from one of my favorite Kid Krazy Compadres, Shelly Buffalo Calf:


San Juan Church, Lincoln, New Mexico


  I also wandered around online, looking for artistic inspiration, and found this site:


   Found some very cool cartoon art there.

Art by the Brussels cartoonist Francois Schuiten

   Dang! I need to step up my game.
For everything you need to know about The Obscure Cities, head to Altaplana.
These are the original albums:
The Great Walls of Samaris
Fever in Urbican
The Tower
The Road to Armilia
Brüsel
The leaning Girl
The Shadow of a Man
The Invisible Frontier (Volumes 1 and 2)
The Theory of the Grain of Sand
Memories of the Eternal Present
You can catch up on all The Obscure Citiesavailable on Amazon.
    Nice couple of days, recharging and planning. I'll leave the last word to one of the funniest guys on the planet:

"You all need to step up your game. Everything at Timmy's house works."
—Dave Chappelle to his parents after his first sleepover at a white kid's house

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for the plug for Americana West, my century of short plays and monologues.

    ReplyDelete

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