The Virtual Two-Way Looking Glass: Marketing 101

Posted on December 6, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

Got a long way to go in so many ways, especially technique wise! Fortunately, it’s all practice…and, as others have pointed out, there are marketing opportunities all along the way, a new concept for me. I’d been so focused on getting, renting, somehow finding a work space, a studio if you will, in which to sculpt, carve, or otherwise get muddy, that I was never getting around to doing or making anything! That’s a conundrum and a half! A wise acquaintance came along and suggested that I simply start drawing, illustrating in the meantime. Then, Ann turned me on to Fifty Three Paper, and I haven’t been the same since, literally. As I slowly move forward toward a studio and back to plastic or three-dimensional art, I’m learning new and related things thanks to this iPad drawing app.

There has been a fascinating, transformative, and genuinely ontological learning progression along this trajectory through the zone of proximal development (any Vygotsky fans out there?). As my focus morphed from finding the external space to locating and activating the internal space in which to express myself, I’ve noticed the beginnings of a parallel but counter shift from an internal to an external orientation that is opening me up to questions along the lines of ‘what might be of interest or usefulness to others?’ I’m calling this Marketing 101 for the time being. I’m starting to raise my periscope enough to consider who might be interested in what.

It’s a parallel and reflexive path, and it challenges my ethnographic vocation in more ways than one. You have a role to play. Check back for further details.

Princess 1396 No. 2 by Eberhard Faber

Posted on December 4, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

(Pardon the interruption, but since I posted this long ago, I’ve added a gallery on the right-hand side of this blog dedicated to the Princess No. 2 School Pencil. Please read on, oh, and welcome.)
In a short video posted today by the New York Times, 72-yr. old Count Anton-Wolfgang von Faber-Castell says, “If you put the pencil into a drawer, and you will leave the room, and you will not come back, but your great grandchild will come back and find the pencil, the first stroke he writes, it doesn’t dry out, it lasts virtually forever.”

Such is the uniqueness of this instrument, especially the Princess No. 2, which has tickled my fancy for decades. Across the top of my home page is a photo of larger-than-life-sized Princess No. 2, which I carved out of poplar, engraved, painted, stained, and sealed back in the mid 1980s.

2014

I look forward to doing more sculpting and carving once I get my studio back up and running; stay tuned…

I’ve added a few thematically related drawings from that era, but first, check out that short video:

http://www.nytimes.com/video/business/international/100000002562643/penciling-in-the-future.html?emc=eta1

Unfortunately, here’s what’s left of the Eberhard-Faber Princess No. 2 School Pencil.

Hey Stella

Posted on December 4, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

In a recent conversation I was reminded of the Stanley and Stella Shouting Contest, a special event of the annual Tennessee Williams Festival held in Jackson Square in New Orleans, LA.

This drawing is roughly based on my memory, my imagination, and the YouTube video that follows.

I posted this short video while living in New Orleans in 2009. I invite you to take a look; you just may get a kick out of it.

Termites

Posted on December 2, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

Why, after all these years, am I thinking of termites? Doesn’t matter, at least now I can laugh about’em! The idea came to me this morning at Office Depot in Chicago, and when we got to our room in Milwaukee, I cranked it out in fewer than 5 minutes, maybe 10 with the coloring and advertising. I’m trying to run with ideas like this, even when I leave my back pack with my iPad in it at our cousin’s house!?! Thanks Ann, for letting me use your iPad.

Table for One

Posted on December 2, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

Last night we had 2 large and 1 small pizzas from Pequod’s Pizza. The large pizzas came with “pizza spacers” (see below). Maybe it was because there were little kids; who knows, but the spacers reminded me of little tables.

One thing’s clear, it’s easier for me to make pizza from scratch than it is for me to draw pizza. I had no photos to refer to this time; although, I found this photo after doing the drawing:

Pizza is hard to draw, I say.

Take back our commode

Posted on November 30, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

It may be time to take back our commode.

[The toilet is my signature symbol, according to my wife. I’d like to thank my little cousins for inspiring me to add the little stick figures.]

Black Friday and Green Tea at the Coffee Shop

Posted on November 30, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

While Ann was getting a massage, I parked myself at a nearby coffee shop and started outlining some of the features in my temporary view shed. After a couple of days of heavy holiday meals, it felt good to sip on something simple and only slightly sweetened. Ah, green tea at the coffee shop on Black Friday with almost an hour to spare.

Time flew. Suddenly, Ann appeared in front of me. We were both energized.

What follows is the same drawing de-colorized by My Sketch, an iPad photo editing app.

So that’s an outline of the outline?

Tilting at Insectoturbines

Posted on November 28, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

We’re staying with relatives in Chicago, and last night, when I woke up in a strange bed in the wee hours but without a stylus handy, I whipped out my finger and rendered this one. I’m a huge Don Quijote fan. I’ve read it in Spanish with professorial guidance at three different universities. One professor admitted that he viewed his own life in two simple stages, before reading Don Quijote and after. I agree; and I’d add that it’s true each time I reread it.

At any rate, one of Cervantes many universal themes hinges on the relationship between the ways in which things seem to be and the way they actually are…and everything in between.

Smoke and Mirrors

Posted on November 26, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

Hold on to the smoke for a moment, and consider how mirrors are revolving doors between complementary sides. A professor of biblical spirituality once parenthetically stated in a class I was taking that we’d all be much better off approaching sacred texts not so much like answer-providing crystal balls but rather as question-provoking mirrors. Rumi asked: “If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”

OK, you can exhale now. I toy with mirrors from time to time. This morning I decided to play around with this artifact in Fifty Three Paper.

It’s all practice. I’m not sure what it means if it means anything at all, but it was a study in a new technique and an opportunity to play with the familiar image even though I usually have two mirrors facing one another partially. The colored outlines on the mirror frame were my attempt to loosen it up after the fact; I find the drawing tighter than necessary, and I hope to relax over time. I started with the cigarette because it was the first related image that came to mind. I was searching for an image that could stick out the same way it would stick “in,” you know, kinda’ like a two-handed saw. I went with a cigarette instead. I tried to capitalize on the notion of inside vs outside smoke. Then the ashtray happened; and here’s where I tried something new with the lighting and reflection and variegated coloring, something unusual for me and my black & white, stick-figure imagination.

I’ve done some mirrors in the past. In the above drawing, because of the iPad drawing app and the corresponding techniques at my disposal, I deviated from what had almost become an irreversible pattern, as depicted in these examples:

Check out, https://portfoliolongo.com/2018/06/16/the-bible-crystal-ball-or-mirror/ on this illustroblog, please.

You exhaled, right?

Extraordinary Carts and The Holy Spigot

Posted on November 25, 2013 by portfoliolongo.com

This evening the image of an ordinary spigot came to mind, and I thought It woulld be fun to try drawing one. I searched Google images and found a blue-handled one. I changed the color of the wheel handle from blue to red to correspond to the spigot that I had initially imagined. There is nothing extraordinary about a spigot, except the name, which I’ve always liked for some reason, even before I watched the nervous and newly ordained Fr. Gerald, played by Rowan Atkinson, aka Mr. Bean, in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), utter a blessing in the “Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spigot.” Still, in the end, there is nothing extraordinary about a spigot no matter what color its handle is.

I’m drawn to ordinary things. Recently, I drew the cart used by residents of Whiteline Lofts in Des Moines, Iowa. That there is only this one cart makes it extraordinary in some ways, ways that call my attention; and if I’m not entranced by, let’s say, a spigot or something, then, I offer my undivided attention.