I stumbled across an old sketch book today. I am not an artist by any stretch. I have failed miserably at stick figures, but I once fell victim to a computer drawing class that ended involving absolutely no computers.
Anyways, the following are a few of the sketches I found surprisingly decent considering I was involved.
These were a daily class exercise. We were supposed to put pencil to paper for 10 mins and draw freely without making established forms. I struggled greatly with this, because I have long been a doodler and established things were my favorite to draw. My mind crafted words, not images. First is the closest I ever got to a free form drawing but even there, it looks like I drew a ghost. On the bottom is a later page when I had just succumb to doodling. There are a couple of attempts at Max from Sam and Max, a little sonic the hedgehog, and my old reliable the spaceship Euch from the Green Jello records.
The first one here is Strong Bad on some kind of pedestal, with what I can only assume is a mounted skull of Yoshi from the Mario games. The one adjacent isn't really all that easy on the eyes, but the taco briefcase and the slogan, "The best lawyer soft tacos can buy," just make me giggle. I don't know the exact episode, but the soft taco lawyer thing was born in a Strong Bad email somewhere, and hence the pairing.
These cute cuddly bastards are Spooky, that thing what squeeks, and Carnage, respectively. Spooky is a little squeaky toy from the comic series I Feel Sick by Jhonen Vasquez. Here he seems to be joined by a few disembodied spirits. Carnage is from the cover of the Green Jellö album 333.
On top here we have Tycho Brahe from the Penny Arcade web comic. I am quite proud of this one, as it looks fairly close to the original. Next we have an odd TV head guy from a Tank Girl comic. I thought he was fairly interesting and turned out well.
The two here are both John Gabriel, Gabe, from Penny Arcade. The first one is modeled after an earlier iteration of Gabe. The second is the modern day Gabe. Obviously I am quite fond of Penny Arcade. It is a great comic series that is available online for free. Gabe is the character I identify with most in the strip.
These two are meant to illustrate how my mind works to some extent. On the top, I have depicted a scenario where the associates of two competing banks battle with water balloons. This is based on a real life street that has these two banks across from each other. I just had to imagine there was at least a prank war on the scale of an 80's comedy. Then on the bottom we have a crude drawing of a woman giving birth two a baby whose head is immediately severed. This was meant as a literal depiction of the song "Born to be Beheaded," by Mindless Self Indulgence. I am aware that this concept is offensive, but I believe strongly that its good to be offensive some times.
Finally we have the back-flipping hot dog from the concession stand ads they play at the drive in. I love the drive in, and these cartoons really add an amazing nostalgia to the experience. Finally I have drawn myself into the Ponder Cloud, Seth's creation that ultimately spawned this blog.
There you have it. My art is not great, but hopefully not gut-wrenchingly bad. Thank you for taking the time to read my narcissistic little article.
