New Sketches

On May 4th, I participated in a Dr. Sketchy's event. I use the sketches I make during these events as bases for watercolors that I frame and sell. I go over my sketches with permanent marker, erase my pencil lines, and then paint them with watercolors. This time it occurred to me that before I do that, I should preserve the sketches in their original form. So I scanned them into my computer and uploaded them to my Flickr. You can see them here.

Today Is A Good Day To Talk About Decepticons

I cannot be called a Transformers geek. I have enjoyed the new movies, the old movie, and a few of the G1 episodes, but I don't have vast amounts of knowledge on the canon of the show. So my understanding of what makes Decepticons Decepticons is that Autobots were the default mode of mechanical alien beings and then a group of evil-minded mechanical alien beings broke away from the Autobots and became the Decepticons because their unifying purpose is to be anti-Autobot. I could be wrong. Please don't hurt me.

Decepticins have these characteristics:

1. They enjoy destruction/don't care about the consequences of their actions, and
2. They have cooler vehicle (and often even robot) modes than the Autobots

I am not making this up. Soundwave - way cooler than Blaster. Devastator - way cooler than Ultra-Magnus. Even Starscream - much as I hate to admit this considering what an annoying character he is - is cooler than Blurr. And Unicron just beats all.

This said, there are a few pics up on Flicker of Decepticon vehicle modes. Check them out here.

Decepticons, Assemble!

Stayed up so late last night trying to get Decepticon photos done that I passed out before I could post. In the middle of photographing everyone in vehicle mode, Derrick and I decided that when we take the robot mode photos we should splice them together with the vehicle mode photos. This means we can't post onto Flickr until we take some robot mode pictures, which requires Derrick transforming them into robot mode. In the meantime, I have gotten up early and fought to get on the Internet so that I can bring you this, the first Decepticon group portrait. Enjoy!

Transform and Roll Out!

My friend, Derrick, has enough Transformers toys to fill not one, but two china cabinets. For some time, he has wanted to make a photo record of all of them for cataloging purposes. Now he has a week off from work and we have created a stage to photograph the Transformers on. This is THE PROJECT. I will keep a running record of our progress here. You will be able to see the uploaded photos daily, starting tomorrow, on Derrick's flickr page at www.flicker.com/combatantbeast.

May The Forth Be With You

This post is late. Very late. Because when you find out there is a National Star Wars Day it takes a little while to recover. On Friday, Underground - my favorite store in Smithville - had a Dr. Sketchy's event. There were two models and lightsabers and a Darth Vader helmet, and it was awesome. Someone even made stickers of the event and gave them out. We spent several hours sketching the models and listening to a mix of songs about  Star Wars. There were the obligatory Weird Al ones, but also many I had never heard before like "Star Wars Cantina" which is sung to the tune of "Coca Cabana." Check out what Dr. Sketchy is all about at www.drsketchy.com. Afterwards, I slept a lot, got absorbed int reading a lot, and did prep work for THE PROJECT. More on that later.

And Going And Going...

Still working on that project pile. I didn't know some of these pieces were projects until I found them while cleaning out my closet. Now I'm pairing failed projects together to make new pieces. It's a fun, if impromptu, exercise. Also, the art piece that I won in a silent auction is finally hung up. An artist in Stonington, CT ran a workshop on Tunisian Collaborative Painting, and this piece is one of the products of that workshop.

It Just Keeps Going And Going And Going.....

Today I worked on the project pile that I had created while cleaning my studio/bedroom. I finished several projects, but I still have a long way to go. Hopefully there will be time left to continue working on it when I get home from garden work tomorrow.