August 15, 2009
Got home at 3:15 yesterday afternoon and turned in the rental (paid $338.45 for a week's rental and i put 1,400 miles on the Chevy van, between Kingman last Monday and New Mexico).

Woke up this morning itching to try some of the dramatic cloud scenes I saw both coming and going to Lincoln. I had my camera with me but couldn't find a Walgreen's or camera store (are they all gonners with the digital revolution?) to buy a new battery for it. So, instead of a hundred reference photos I tried to take snapshots with my eye and store them in what's left of my brain. I also forced myself to stop and do sketches at least three or four times. This is very difficult. In order to override and over rule the male impulse to "make time" one must actually take one's foot off the gas, get over losing the speed thing ("I passed that truck and I'm back to averaging 70 mph and at this rate I should be in Socorro fifteen point five minutes earlier than I projected."). This is not an easy thing to overcome. But, I forced myself.

It might have been a blessing not to have had the camera because it forced me to actually look and then quickly sketch what I was seeing. Snapping a photo is so easy, I often run across photos that I have never utilized because they stack up and I forget about them. On this point I have made the comment to Kathy that she could lock me in my studio and I would have enough art reference for ten years at least. One year, in the eighties, I spent an embarassing amount of moola with the local photography store. I know this because I went in to Foothills Photo one day and John Brinkman, the owner, said, "Well, hello number one customer. I just had my books done for the year and you have spent $10K on photo developing so far this year!"

Some might say that I'm just like a kid careening around the countryside, spending money and playing with childish things. Gee, I wonder what ol' Spock has to say about this?

"A child loves his play, not because it's easy, but because it's hard."
—Benjamin Spck

August 14, 2009
On my way home from Lincoln, New Mexico. Left at 5:30 this morning. Huge thunderstorm hit at about 4:30. Major lightning and heavy rain on the tin roof of Casa de Patron. It doesn't get any better than this. Is there a better sound than rain on a tin roof?

Spectacular clouds all the way to the Arizona line. Stopped at the Owl Cafe in San Antonio (N.M.) for breakfast ($15 cash, includes tip). The locals were talkng about the new effort to make the Pledge of Allegience optional in the local school. One woman said it's an insult to all of the soldiers who died fighting for this country. Another woman said it makes foreigners uncomfortable. A hispanic dude in a construction shirt sitting at the bar said, "If they don't like it, let them go back where they came from."

I always find this an odd comment to be making in America, of all places. Of course, the Apaches said the same thing in 1880, and a lot of good it did them.

Crossed the Arizona border at ten and pulled into Springerville (up on The Blue), stopping at a Java joint on the main drag. Had a muffin and fruit and decaf ($10 cash, includes tip). Really enjoying the open road. My kind of road trip.

"Never cut what you can untie."
—Old Vaquero Saying

August 12, 2009
I'm sitting in a little cafe in Quemado, New Mexico. Just had lunch, an iced tea and a club sandwich ($13 cash, includes tip). Hit rain at Red Hill, just east of the New Mexico line coming out of Springerville. Beautiful high desert thunder shower. Got a ticket on the Gila River Indian Res, trying to bypass Fountain Hills this morning. Usually cruise through there and save about fifteen minutes. Not only did I lose the time, but i'm going to make the tribe at least $150 richer (In-din copper got me doing 47 in a 30 zone).

Back on the road. Want to stop and sketch the graveyard here. Great old wooden crosses. Expecting to make it to Lincoln by sundown. Big day tomorrow.

I made it to Lincoln at 5:30. Hit rain all across the Malpais and Capitan. Very cool out. Feels great.

August 11, 2009
Up against it. Went home for lunch and tried to get some traction on the art issue cover. Ruined a couple boards, but finally got a bit of traction on this one:

Needs a bit of whispy clouds nipping at Billy's shoulders and waist, and a New Mexico adobe at the bottom with a wooden cross. Oh, and a cedar infested ridge out back of the house, like in this study:

which is from a sketch I did of one of the old adobe houses west of Lincoln when we were there last April. I'm on the road all day tomorrow (going right back by this same adobe), and if I go by your house, sorry, I can't stop, but I'll honk.

Oh, and I'm trying to work with shapes and avoid lines. When I entered the University of Arizona Art Department in 1965, my first drawing teacher, Mr. Dennison, said, "You do good lines." I said, "Thankyou." Then he said, "I don't want to see another line from you for the rest of this semester." Ouch! I felt totally stripped of my security blanket (which was the point) and it forced me to think in terms of shapes and forms. Gee, I wonder what Robert Henri has to say about this?

"I think I am safe in saying, until you became an art student, you never saw a line in nature—you never took the outline into consideration. You saw forms and these forms had character and motion. . .don't become a victim of line."
—Robert Henri

August 11, 2009
Great trip up to the old stomping grounds yesterday. Dan Harshberger and I met at Lowe's parking lot at Carefree Highway and Cave Creek Road at nine and walked into the defibrillator luncheon in the Kingman Regional Hospital Cafeteria Banquet Room at 12:05. Jamie from the hospital introduced everyone and presented the 15 defibrillators to various civic entities, who had representatives in the audience. Tom Erickson then premiered the Exits Exit video which he has been working on for the last three months. Great response, lots of old footage of the band and Kingman kids in the sixties. Anyone who grew up there in the old days is going to want the DVD of this. Tom did a great job.

From there Dan and I went over to Charlie Waters' sister's house on Hillcrest (right next to Crusher Hill which was one of my favorite necking spots in high school because it was so far out in the boonies. Ha.). We talked about cover images for the DVD. Noodled a couple concepts, traded insults and war stories, then Dan and I took off at about two and got home at 5:30. Long day, but fun.

Last Saturday Kathy and I drove into the Beast and picked up my big oil painting, Brothers In Arms, which Kenny Richardson had framed for me. He also shot a tranny (transparency) of it:

It's a big sucker, 36X45, or so, and I had to rent a van in order to haul it to New Mexico tomorrow.

Speaking of Billy, I am still wrestling with the cover painting for our big art issue and so yesterday I did nine sketches of Billy's Overbite:

We know Billy the Kid had a prominent overbite (a local wag joked he could "eat pumpkins through a picket fence."). Still, he was a Ladie's Man, so how do you portray those two disparities in the same painting? Not easily. Ha.

"When I was nine, the 'Buck Rogers' comics took me to the future, and I never came back."
—Ray Bradbury

August 10, 2009
Worked most of the weekend on a possible cover piece for our art issue. Did a bunch of sketches (at least 20) of Billy looming over New Mexico like a rock star cyclops playing air Winchester:

Yes, those are crosses in the foreground, a la Ansel Adams. Also cranked out a more realistic version:

Somewhere between the two is where I want to be.

Finally saw The Bicycle Thief (1948) last night. It's one of those classic films that everyone references. It's supposedly the first of the school of neo-realism. Quite strong storytelling. I totally get why it's referenced constantly.

On my way this morning with Dan the Man Harshberger to Kingman for a lunchean to honor the Exits Exit. We raised $20K from our March benefit concert to buy over a dozen defibrillators for Mohave County. Coming back tonight. Then off to New Mexico tomorrow to deliver the Brother In Arms Billy and Pat Garrett painting to the museum in Ruidoso.

Kind of afraid regarding the cover painting. Gee, I wonder what ol' onery Henri (pronounced Hon-Ray, or Hon-Rie) has to say about this:

"A person who has never been afraid has no imagination."
—Robert Henri

August 8, 2009
Yesterday we saw a movie that just opened this week. Kathy and I met Deena Bean and Frank the Tank down at Harkins 16. Don't want to give the title because I don't want to spoil some of the delicious plot twisting fun, but remember, not so long ago, when, if a woman smoked in a movie, it meant two things: she was evil, or she was loose? (and most likely both if it was film noir.) Then we went through a phase where if a female was promiscuous, she deserved to die (Jaws opening with pretty girl stripping off and running into the water to tease the guy on shore), then there was the iron clad law of screenwriting where the love interest (the girl who the hero wants but can't quite connect with) has to save herself for the main guy. Well, a couple recent movies are really messing with those old tropes. In Funny People, the "innocent" girl is shy and as you are watching you think to yourself, "Well, she's not having sex for the next two acts," but, no, there she is sleeping with the wrong guy in act two and she still gets Seth Rogen at the end, in spite of "sleeping around." Amazing. This is what you get when women run the studios. Actual non-cardboard cutouts. Ha.

Anyway, in the movie we saw yesterday, one of the female characters lights up a doobie and I automatically thought to myself, "Well, she's dead." But, as it turns out, another female character is on crank and she, along with her boyfriend, are the bad guys, or gal, in this case. Interesting evolution of storytelling, and, of course it mirrors the culture. In ten years perhaps we'll see a Sandra Bullock romance that opens with her mainlining Mexican Black Tar and having sex with the Glendale chapter of the Dirty Dozen and it will have a happy ending (she inherits a meth lab and nobody thinks she can run it but, Boy, does she show those sexist bikers!).

Like they say in Sun City, "Happy is relative: the less relatives you have close by, the happier you are going to be."

The other very clever development in movies is (and I realize this will probably give away the title) is the usage of inside screenwriting lingo that you never could have used 25 years ago, but today, with everyone writing a script, or knowing someone who has, there is an exchange about a "red snapper," and another character, says "No, I think that's a red herring." The beauty of the scene is that the character who uses the red snapper line is, in fact, a red herring. Get it? Too clever by half, you say? Well, maybe, but here we are.

Worked yesterday on more sketches:

Only got seven sketches done, but they are honest and I'm doing what I can with the time I have.

"A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil, that good may come of it."
—William Penn (not a screenwriter or a friend of Dick Cheney's)

August 7, 2009
The report of the heart attack death of filmmaker John Hughes (16 Candles) hit close to home this morning. We shared some history, we were close in age, both did work for National Lampoon and I admired his midwestern sensibilities regarding humor. The news report said he was out for a walk and dropped dead.

So, what does it feel like to die like that?

We arrived in Kingman on Friday night, March 21, 2008. Kathy and I met Charlie and Linda Waters at the Calico Cafe and chatted about the Exits Exit. We then drove up to Hilltop and had dinner with Wayne and Marylin Rutschman at the Dambar Steakhouse. The place was slammed so we ate in the bar and I had the salmon even though I wanted the steak (looking back, I might as well have had the steak!). We had fun catching up with the Rutschmans, trading Kingman kid stories. From there we checked into the Hampton Inn on Stockton Hill Road. When we got to our room I realized I hadn't done my six sketches for the day (a common predicament for me when I'm on the road). So I dutifully sat on the edge of the bed and whipped out the requisite six drawings:

In the morning I decided to get a jump on my sketches and at breakfast worked on an ambitious female figure holding her hand against her brow. I had so much to do, so many deadlines at the magazine and elsewhere and as I drove down to the old Elks Lodge in downtown Kingman for our band rehearsal I didn't realize this would be the last time I was looking at my hometown.

I had about four hours to live.

By three in the afternoon, I was ready for a nap. The rehearsal was going awful. I was agitated about how bad we sounded. The songs sucked, nobody could end at the same time, bridges were missed, more than one person was flat (besides me). I remember playing our proposed three-man Wipeout showstopper and getting kind of crazy, leaving my drum set and jumping around, doing the gator, rolling on the floor, showing off.

They tell me I went back to my drums, slumped forward and fell face first on the floor, breaking my glasses. That was it. Game over.

I've sinced learned that for every minute your brain doesn't get oxygen, you lose 10% of your brain. In ten minutes, you are history, and, although I love history, I need all the brain I can get. Fortunately for me, two band members knew CPR (what are the odds of ex-rock 'n' rollers even caring about this?). Wayne Rutschman, assisted by his son Cody, and Terry Mitchell immediately began CPR, with Wayne and Cody doing mouth to mouth and Terry doing compressions. When I asperated two tacos, Cody looked at his dad and said, "He's your friend, Dad." Incredibly, Wayne wiped away the debris and continued the mouth to mouth.

As a post script, a mere week later the Red Cross came out and said mouth to mouth was not necessary anymore and Wayne cried out into the darkness, "Oh, great! Now you tell us."

I don't remember any of this. I woke up three days later in Kingman Regional Hospital with a tube in my throat and several more in my arm. I couldn't talk, so Kathy brought me my sketchbook. Here is what I wrote:

At the top it says, "What day is today?" and then under that it says something about "one stint (sic) or two stints?" Actually, there were four stents. The girl with her hand to her forehead which I had rendered the morning of the attack suddenly looked quite ominous. Did she know? Hindsight is twenty twenty. Of course she knew.

Later I tried to sketch a few things, but I had lost my touch:

This was drawn from my bed looking up at a big intensive care style mirror over my head. The note at the bottom says, "ICU (intensive care), room 306: in Kingman Regional Hospital, 6 day lapse from heart attack."

I finally went home the following Thursday and resumed my daily sketches on April 1. Those first drawings were especially tentative and weak:

Slowly, I climbed back and got stronger and stronger. Here are my sketches from yesterday:

With these drawings I have completed 9,700 with 300 to go. What a thrill it is to still be on this planet and to be on this quest.

"Death is never at a loss for an occasion."
—Old Vaquero Saying

July 6, 2009
Last night at eight, when Kathy got home, I had only two sketches done for the day. I was kind of stressed about it (a big no no with my cardio condition). Didn't feel like doing any, but felt pressure because of the commitment to do 12 a day, in order to finish the 10,000 quest before our trip to Argentina next month.

Anyway, Kathy completely supported me and told me to forget that, and advised me to let go (she is a trained therapist, after all), saying, "Sometimes you only do two."

Well, this totally freed me and after she went to bed, I sat up and finished 10 sketches! Ha.:

And, as you can see, I completed a hitlist of sketch problems: horse's hooves (check), hands (check), damaged saguaro (check), scene composition (check) cultural mash-up (check), Kingman clown (check), bling (check), Spanish dagger (check), hemp (check), obstinance (check) and even a semi-nude (check). All in all, a very successful sketchfest, that I pulled out at the last possible minute.

I hate to admit this but this is pretty much the theme of my life. And it would make sense that it is manifested in the quest to do 10,000 bad drawings. Like in my life, I have squandered many, many opportunities, spending long stretches of time pretending to work, but really coasting and doing jack spit, and then as the finish line looms (312 to go, these have to BE GOOD!), I suddenly get all hyper and super-focused. Or, is it really just obsessive compulsive?

As I mentioned yesterday, I love to work on faces. Here's an example from last January of a page of Pat Garrett's:

Actually very strong, and, although I have been doing black and whites most of this week, I have, in the past, captured a sepia, or amber glow, effect that I like:

And, I have made progress on storm effects, as this July 4th page illustrates:

As for the dialogue balloons, and my quest to find something better, I'm not sure I have made much headway since I did The Doper-roper, back in the seventies:

Ouch!

And, although some of the pen and inks are close, nothing approaches the effects I can get with scratchboard:

Which I have totally neglected since this quest went into high gear.

Sigh.

But, and this is a big But, I am still alive to be doing any of this. Wait until you see the sketches for March 22, 2008. It goes from a living line to a flatline. Tomorrow.

"To live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong."
—Joseph Chilton Pearce

August 5, 2009
Still copying and learning from the pen and ink masters and combining these lessons with the search for a decent word balloon style:

This is from the Black & White Images: Fourth Annual Collection series, after J. Allen St. John. And I'm still noodling the shape and heft of word balloons:

Studying the artists Katherine Sturges Dodge, Will Crawford (the great guy in the muttonchops!) and Heinrich Kley. These sketches culminate at 9,678 bad drawings, with 322 to go. As I close in on the last 300 I wanted to take stock of what I feel are the weakest and strongest aspects of the drawings I've completed. For starters, I seem to have a decent skill at rendering faces:

This is from April 3, 2009. According to the excellent book The E-Myth Revisited, one of the problems of small business owners is doing the things they love to do (bake cakes for example) to the detriment of the things they need to do, but don't want to do (learn how to market the baking biz). So drawing faces is my baking problem. I love to do it and could do it all day long, but I need to study hands and feet, for example. Although I have made a couple half-hearted attempts at studying hands on this quest:

I still don't feel like I've done due diligence on hands so I want to spend some quality time on the last 300 concentrating on hands. Another area I'm weak in is horse legs:

The key to good horse hooves is to know where they go in the middle of a run. Notice that I drew some decent horse hooves in the middle of a run, then went back to doing a big face. Ha! Ed Borein was an expert at this as were the horse knowers—Remington and Russell. Need to spend some quality time getting this right.

And, of course, this all needs to be Free Hand. A photo projector is the devil's tool. It is so tempting to use but it ruins more illustrations than it has ever helped:

And in addition to century plants and saguaros and a sympatico word balloon style, I want to concentrate on sharp, clean corners with strong scene composition:

Now, this is difficult work. Why? Because I don't want to do it. I want to draw faces all day (and bake cakes!). Gee, I wonder if ol' Publius has anything to say about this?

"There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly."
—Publius Terentius Afer

August 4, 2009
Brad Radina came out this morning and got our AC working again. Nice to have someone handy in the family.

Last night I got some goodies at the post office. I ordered The 200 Drawings of Heinrich Kley from Amazon last week and also The Fourth Annual Collection: Black & White Images from the James Vadeboncoeur Collection. And a third title: Gustav Klimt: 100 Drawings (as a bonus because Kathy needed another book to qualify for some shipping deal). And, by the way, are we spoiled on turnaround, or what? Unlike some entities that warn of six week waits when you buy something, Amazon has revolutionized shipping turnaround and it does one thing very successfully: it makes me want to order more!

Meanwhile, I finished my 12 sketches of the day last night by poaching from a few of the giants from "The Golden Era of Pen & Ink Illustration 1890-1922":

This is a mash of the cover of Black & White Images, which features a William R. Leigh illustration:

But the real star of the trio was the Heinrich Kley book. A German painter and commercial artist with a modest reputation in the 1890s, who suddenly re-appeared out of nowhere in 1908 as a savage cartoonist. Last night I had fun learning from his very liberal linework:

Talk about loose as a goose! This guy could really render with a fluidity that is breathtaking.

These are sketches 9,654 thru 9,666, with 334 to go on my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings.

Meanwhile, got an interesting photo of a gunfighter from Roy Flachs who wonders if it is in fact Wild Bill Hickok. He says, "I figure it to be an 1870s image as it is a CDV photograph which pre-dates tin types. I'm an antique dealer and it came from a local estate at auction. along with a photo of Shoshone chief Washakie."

What do you think? Is it Hickok?

"A successful tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of by its author."
—S. C. Johnson

August 3, 2009
Went home for lunch. AC still not fixed. Brad is coming back tomorrow.

Worked some more on word balloon issues. I have problems with spacing and type placement, but as I've said before, as soon as I start drawing, characters start talking to me. Take Nearly Nude Dude here:

The Adventures of Nearly Nude Dude

Maybe I'm in the wrong profession. Gee, I wonder what ol' Cartmill has to say about this?

"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
—M. Cartmill

August 3, 2009
AC went out on Friday night. Went up on the roof Saturday morning and changed the fuses, but it conked out again Saturday night. Limped through with ceiling fans until this morning when Brad Radina came out to fix it. Looks like a fan motor malfunction.

One of the major themes on my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings has been the development of a color scheme I call Amber Glow. Emulating old photos and lithos, I first hit upon it in the very first sketchbook. Here's the page from December 29, 2005:

I've played with this effect for quite a while now. Here's a page from last week with the same type of glow:

This page also points out another aspect of the quest and that is the word balloon at bottom left. "Why?" as it applies to, well, as it applies to this:

Yes, I do have some angst around this subject:

And then some:

These drawings culminate with sketch number 9,654, with 346 to go. On schedule to finish at the end of this month.

Our cover boy, Joey Dillon, called me last week on his way back from Hollywood. He drove over with his guns to redo a scene with Megan Fox on a sound stage. Tough work for the gun spinner. Joey also told me he got to see the trailer for the new Western Jonah Hex, starring Josh Brolin which is scheduled for a spring, 2010 release. Joey said it is quite explosive and funny. Lots of shooting, tomahawk throwing, explosions and funny one-liners.

"If we had done as the kings told us five hundred years ago, we should all have been slaves. If we had done as the priests told us, we should all have been idiots. If we had done as the doctors told us, we should all have been dead. We have been saved by disobedience. We have been saved by the splendid thing called independence, and I want to see more of it. I want to see children raised so that they will have it."
—Robert Ingersoll

July 31, 2009
Last night I finished another sketchbook (the 17th) on the quest to do 10,000 bad drawings. Shifted gears and began a series of studies for a big oil painting I'm planning for our October 15 art show at Overland Gallery in Scottsdale: the theme of the show is Capturing Billy the Kid Country.

Did 12 studies. Here's another page:

Ed Mell, Gary Ernest Smith and myself will be showing artwork gleaned from our plein air painting trip last April. One of the themes I keep coming back to is of Billy, bigger than life, looming over the mountains of eastern New Mexico. I did a couple oils of this theme in 1991-92 (Saint Billy being the most successful, with a zia illuminating the back of his head).

In this new attack I want to show a typical Land of Enchantment landscape and graveyard, with Billy looming over the entire scene, laughing at us:

I call it Biggy Billy because the model for this pose was Bill Glenn and, one of his best friends, my son, Thomas, calls him Biggy Bill.

Meanwhile, thanks to KD Younger (on this site), I ordered a book yesterday on the master inker Heinrich Kley. While looking for the book online I found this description:

"The answer to 'what is art?' is a very personal one. Paintings and artists fall into many categories and, as people, no two are alike. Yet the main function of any artist, in any art form, is to communicate. And when it comes, artistically, to the technical form of graphic art, the artist is at his best as a draftsman. The greater the draftsman, the more the artist can suggest with the least number of pen strokes. He knows beforehand where each line will touch the paper and why. Each line and dot will convey large areas of figure or scene, and the true artist/draftsman can relate his imagination to the viewer. Add to this one other quality the rare attribute of satirical humor and you have one of the greatest draftsman of this century: Heinrich Kley."

—Donald Weeks

This kind of rhetoric always has a confounding effect on me. It tends to inspire me, and yet, it makes me feel kind of small. Gee, I wonder what ol' Hanna has to say about this?

"One kernel is felt in a hogshead; one drop of water helps to swell the ocean; a spark of fire helps to give light to the world. None are too small, too feeble, too poor to be of service. Think of this and act."
—Hannah More

July 30, 2009
As a kid I always dug Western movie star Tim McCoy. He had a steely gaze, mostly wore black and had the biggest hats in the biz. In the 1970s I met his son Terry McCoy who grew up in Nogales, Arizona on a ranch his father had in his last years.

We met several times at Durant's in downtown Phoenix where Terry held court with others in Phoenix who loved the old Westerns (I think there were five of us). I asked Terry what it was like growing up with a famous father, and he told me the quote below.

Yesterday, in the mail I got a DVD of Col. Tim McCoy's The Silent Language of The Plains, directed by Terry McCoy and shot in 1973. A pamphlet inside gives a short history of Tim McCoy complete with photos of Tim and his beautiful second wife Inga. All of this played into yesterday's sketches:

That's Tim and Inga across the bottom, the others are poached from an 1896 Illustrator's Journal, including the nude.

The 12 sketches a day regimen is exhausting. Worked last night until nine on these twelve.

"They paid me to make 'em, not watch 'em."
—Terry McCoy quoting his father, about invariably being asked to name his favorite Western

July 29, 2009
Yesterday one of my favorite writers came out to Cave Creek and took me to lunch at Tonto Bar & Grill. Afterwards we drove out to my art studio (I apologized for the mess and he said, "If an art studio isn't cluttered, it isn't an art studio."). We spent a good deal of time looking through the 17 sketchbooks I have compiled on my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings. It was quite interesting to hear his take on the progression, or lack thereof of the drawings. He is working up a feature story and I'll keep you posted on the progress.

Meanwhile, here is the first sketches of the first day I started the quest, November 12, 2005:

I had forgotten that barely a month into the quest I had a detached retina eye operation on my birthday (novocaine needle in the eye!) and had to draw with only one eye:

See note at bottom: "Still [drawn] with one eye." Ha. This lasted for about a week. While the consistency is erratic in the early efforts (a point the writer made) I did have some pretty sweet breakthroughs, like this colorful departure, done with felt-tip pens, from the day after Christmas, 2005:

And perhaps the best page of all is from January 7, in the very first sketchbook:

I love the blurred out image of the calf ropers juxtapositioned with the hip hop dude. It's this kind of mash-up I need to embrace more, not less. At the bottom, the note says "accusations of motion." Ha.

"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies."
—Old Vaquero Saying

July 28, 2009
Woke up to an anniversary. Kathy and I have been married for 30 years. Doesn't even seem possible. As she put it on the way into the kitchen, "It seems like about six years." Yes, if you don't count the teenage years (both Deena's and Tommy's and mine, which is ongoing).

Do Or Die
Harold Roberts asked about The Engine 2 Diet by Rip Esselstyn. He is a Texas firefighter (and the son of a famous heart surgeon) who developed a 28-Day-Save-Your-Life plan that lowers cholesterol and allegedly burns away the pounds. We started the diet at the end of June. The first week you give up dairy, the second week you cut out oil and fat and basically you avoid anything with a face (this includes fish and poultry). My cholesterol was as high as 260 before my heart attack, so needless to say, this is a big deal trial for me. I'm on several statins so I'm down to below 200 now (I want to say 150), but I have a hunch this diet will lower that number as well. I feel good.

Still banging away on my sketches. Looked up in my daytimer archives yesterday and it appears I started this quest on November 21, 2005:

On my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings, these are bad drawings 9,566 to 9,572, with 428 to go.

Best Name For A New TV Show
Jesse James Is A Dead Man

A couple clarifications on the sneak of Julie & Julia last week. Kathy tells me that the real reason we got in was because two people left (I was over at the door trying to leave and missed this part). Kathy was there to witness this, and confronted the media guy: "Give us the two media seats and we'll take the two seats of the people who just left." The media guy relented. This is even more amazing than the way I told it, because the media guy had offered us the two media seats but we had four people. I was ready to leave, but Kathy hung in there. So the moral is: don't give up just because an event is sold out or full. People often leave at the last minute or get called away. Don't panic, stay present and when you see an opening, ask for the order.

On another front, I realized after I posted that I was describing a contradiction regarding the front row. I was bemoaning that the front row moved in the case of the Coliseum show with Dennis Miller, but I was complaining about being in the front row at the movie theatre. Say what? I didn't explain that this is one of those new stadium seating theatres with the raised balcony and then a group of less desirable floor seats that run right up under the screen, in the front. The undesirable seats were in the first row, but we ended up in the front row of the media seats which is in the middle of the theatre and up about six feet. Hope that makes sense. Most theatres in our area have gone to this mode of seating, but not sure it is universal, yet.

"The period of greatest gain in knowledge and experience is the most difficult period of one's life."
—Old Vaquero Saying

July 27, 2009
Stayed close to home most of the weekend, although on Saturday night we drove down to the new Marriott at Desert Ridge for a surprise graduation party for Frank the Tank. Deena put it all together and some 25 of us had a side room where we yelled out "Surprise!" at about seven.

The restaurant served $17 pizzas and fried calomari (sp?) and I didn't have one bite. I have been on the Engine Two diet for 27 days (they recommend 28 days avoiding anything with a face) and I wasn't going to blow it on the last night. I was tempted though. Man, that melting cheese looked good! Full confession: I did have two La La's flour tortillas on Sunday with a bowl of homemade pinto beans. White flour is a no-no.

Spent most of Saturday, before the party, working on a bad drawing of Curly, the bad Apache scout who is the villain of our piece:

Our Curly had Mojave blood as he was well over six feet tall (Mojave males are prone to be very tall). The soldiers called him Curly because he wasn't, the Mexicans called him "Tall Tree" because of his favored head gear (turkey feathers that made him look look like a tall tree) and Mickey called him "Mangas, Jr." because he felt Curly wanted to be like Mangas Coloradas (Red Sleeves).

Also whipped out some interesting landscapes, framed within a frame:

Finished twelve sketches each day and the current bad drawings quest is at 9,560, with 440 to go.

"Most of the failures in this world are from riders reining in their horses in the middle of a jump."
—Old Vaquero Saying

July 25, 2009
Got an email from The Old Bison earlier this week. He is moving to Scottsdale and selling his spectacular home north of Austin, Texas.

As he put it, "We designed it for two working historians, with more built-in book shelves than most people want. It’s all on one floor and (the big selling point) overlooks Lake Georgetown and the adjacent park greenbelt. In normal economic times, we could have got more than $700,000 for it. Now, we are about to bring it down to $599,000. We can’t go much lower without losing our financial backup.

"I’m attaching a link that may or may not work that Harlan Hague is hanging on his web site.

A Fantastic Historian's Home

"Our realtor, Prudential, also has a virtual tour online. We would value your opinion."

—The Old Bison

Of course, the Old Bison is Robert Utley. This is a historian's dream home with amazing provinance, as they say in the biz. Talk about owning a piece of history. Spread the word. Let's keep this one in the family, if we can. Thanks.

July 24, 2009
Big rain last night. Very cool and wet out this morning. In the old days, before air conditioning, a morning like this must have seemed like heaven sent.

Got a comment on yesterday's blog regarding my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings:

"If you slip up and do a good sketch, do you count it or not?"
—Hugh Howard

I've done so many bad ones, when I slip and do a good one, I give myself the benefit of the doubt and count it as a bad one. Unfortunately, I did six really good ones last night. Probably the best I've ever done. They are really pushing the boundaries of my bad art experiment, but then, maybe that is the point of the entire experience:

Actually, I feel somewhat goofy talking about how good they are ("He thinks those chicken scratchings are good?!"), but remember, the main purpose for my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings was to find out how much I would improve over the course of the experiment. And my holy grail of rendering is the classic drawings of the masters I admire most: Rembrandt, Ludvig Holwein, Freddy Remington, Louis Moeller, Burne Hogarth and Charles Dana Gibson. These are The Guys, in my opinion, who really had it going on.

So, in that vein, these six bad drawings capture the style I most admire. Full disclosure: I sent a query letter to the New York Times and although it was merely an email that probably never made it beyond their firewall, I found myself repeating this mantra yesterday: draw as if the New York Times is watching. So, I worked on this page from the time I got home last night at six until nine P.M. Ha.

Speaking of overproducing, a photographer friend, Chet Provorse, sent me the following anecdote:

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Pots And Pans?
A photographer is invited to a friends dinner party. He brings along some new images to show his host. The host looks at the photos and exclaims, "These are wonderful! You must have a very good camera." The photographer says thank you and the evening continues. After dinner, the photographer turns to his host and remarks, "The food was wonderful, you must own some very good pots and pans."

"First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
—Epictetus