IF: Golden

Here's my submission for this week's Illustration Friday.  I had a different idea I wanted to do but this week has been quite busy so I dug up this bad boy I had done a while ago and had never posted.  I can't wait 'til I'm retired and pretending to be senile so I can do weird stuff like this.  See how happy he is?  Who would want to deny an old man this level of joy?  The "golden" can either be his shirt or the representation of the "golden years."  Either way this looks like fun to me.

Why I don't take baths

Here's a little piece I did for fun in my sketchbook.  This was one of those amazing times where I was able to create almost exactly what was in my mind.  I pictured this giant Lucha Libre type gorilla cyborg thing exploding out of something and I had been reading some of my Hellboy comics lately (I love Mike Mignola's art).  I made a quick judgement call to make him exploding out of a bathtub to add to the oddness of the image and put some kid in front to really show the scale of this thing.  My son suggested I name it Gordon because "Gordon seems like a good name for a gorilla doesn't it?"  Yes.  Yes it does.  I might add a background in Photoshop later but for now I'm quite pleased.

He's just pissed 'cause he got soap in his eyes.

IF: Creature

Artist's revised concept sketch

Whoooaa dang!  I've been waiting for the right time to post this one.  I did this about 7 years ago and it comes with a great story.  I'll try to keep it brief but it really is one of those things where "you just had to be there to believe it".  Ok...

I was working for an insulation company in Arizona at the time and it was our job to install the different types of fiberglass in the new homes being built.  It was the job of another individual, let's call him Jimmy (since I really don't remember the kid's name), to load up a moving truck with the material and bring it to us at the different sites.  The loading site was in a dirt lot in the middle of the desert.  All Jimmy had to do was drive the truck to the load site, load the truck, and drive it over to wherever I was.  That was his job.  And since my job depended on the material that Jimmy brought me, I was concerned when one day Jimmy didn't show up.  He had showed up at the office that morning so I knew he was in but he didn't arrive at the house we were working on and wasn't answering his cell phone.  So after waiting long enough we decided to go to the load site ourselves and load up what we could. 

When we got to the load site we saw Jimmy's truck there, but no sign of Jimmy.  The back door of the truck (it was like a U-Haul) was closed and there wasn't anyone in the front seat.  No one in the outhouse.  No one wandering around the desert.  No Jimmy answering to the call of his name.  Then I noticed that the back door wasn't completely shut.  I rolled it open only to find a deranged Jimmy poking a makeshift spear at me and shouting at us to get away and "Get off the ground".  The whole thing felt very much like the movie "Tremors" which I was beginning to think that Jimmy had recently seen and thought was a documentary instead of one of Kevin Bacon's finer cinematic achievements in the science fiction genre.  After a minute we were able to calm Jimmy down.  Not talk him out of the truck mind you, and we weren't about to hop in the back of a truck only to get locked in with crazy Jimmy, but we did get him to stop waving the stick with a nail tied to the end of it at us.

We asked Jimmy what happened and he proceeded to tell us about this ferocious creature that came at him and tried to bite his leg.  After we went through the list of possible drugs he could have taken and he still insisted he was sober (not convincingly though) he described what it looked like with great difficulty.  The closest thing we could figure that it looked like was a horned lizard which he angrily told us it wasn't.  He said it was bright red with hard scales on it's back and eyes that poked out and a long tail.  A desert lobster perhaps?  Apparently not.  I asked him if it was smaller that his shoe and he said yes to which I further inquired why he hadn't just squashed the f'ing thing.  He said that was impossible for some reason.  After the amusement wore off and frustration as to the time and money we had lost because of this issue increased, I asked if he could just draw what it looked like.  This is his exact sketch which I have kept all these years.  It kinda looks like something from The Little Prince.

Victim's original sketch

  

He insisted that the thing looked entirely more deadly than what he had drawn but that general idea had been captured. 

I took his sketch home and later that evening drew the more detailed concept you see up top.  I took it to work the next day and asked if this is what it looked like.  "Yes!  Oh my God!  That's it! That's what attacked me!" he screamed at the office.  Everyone had a good laugh and teased him about it until he was fired for failing a drug test a week later.  We still laughed about it after, he just wasn't around to tease.  And that's exactly how it took place.  Too good not to tell in my opinion.  If you do have an idea on what Jimmy might have seen, please let me know.  Otherwise we'll continue to assume it was the drugs and the Arizona heat that attacked poor Jimmy that day.

I.F.: Onomatopoeia

Hee hee.  Ian Holm's fluids look like milk.

Here's my submission for this week's Illustration Friday.  I hadn't done one in a while and I felt really guilty about it so I chose to use a tribute to one of my favorite movies.  Sorry about the spoiler with the severed android head but the movie is old enough I thought it would be ok.

That Thing Took His Boat

Here's a small piece I did a few months ago on a little 4x6 canvas with acrylic (which it had been a long, long time since I had used last).  I needed to do something creative but had no idea what to do so this is what came out.  See what happens when you don't have a plan?!  My daughter loved it so I gave it her.  It's HER "meow meow" and she points that out on occasion. 

What Happened to His Face?

Here's another piece I did last year but never got around to posting it.  It's one of my favorites (probably because it turned out better than I had expected).  I want to animate it at some point, even if he's only just popping out of the hole and nodding his head or something.  Something was missing to me so I added the Band-Aid (yes, it is that brand) across his beak.  That seemed to fill the void for me.  Kind of a conversation starter like in "Bottle Rocket", which you should rent if you haven't seen it yet.

It's a Lady

I drew this last year and never posted it (not sure why) but I liked it.  It's just some old lady floatin' on a chunk of earth while she knits a little something or other.  I'll assume it's a sweater for her concerned feline.  I'm not really a cat person but I do enjoy drawing old people.  And a lot of old people have cats, or tiny dogs that would be better categorized as cats.  I like drawing more grouchy faced people so it was a bit of a break to make this lady smile.  My Pop pop had a giant nose like this one and all the grandchildren would always grab at it and honk it like a bicycle horn.  My grandma Rose was always very sweet and kind.  So this is sort of a mash up of the two of them despite the fact they never owned a cat.  I miss them both dearly but I'm sure they're floating around somewhere too right now feeling just as happy as this old broad.