BACK TO BASICS

In case you were tiring of my current fascination with photography and the recent flurry of photos instead of art, I figured I'd post a detail of a portfolio sample I did for an agent with whom I may be working soon. Hopefully having some kind of representation will allow me to focus less on finding clients and more on actually illustrating.

I enjoyed doing this piece. It has all the kinds of stuff I like. If it were up to me, I'd do this kind of retro stuff all day. Unfortunately, kids today prefer bloodier entertainment. Now, if I had made the robot holding the kitten in a tight grip and squeezing it till its eyes blew out of the sockets and its brains oozed out, then perhaps I'd be famous with the kiddies. I just can't bring myself to do that kind of nonsense. Oh, gritty and dark is okay, and I don't mind doing that, but there's a line I can't bring myself to cross. Maybe I'm getting old, but I personally long for an innocent time that probably never really existed anywhere other than in my mind.

TEMPUS FUGIT

Croton Aquamatic, self-winding, 25 jewel Swiss movement, with sweep-second hand. Limited edition, model 2000, # 329 of 1000 made.

I bought the thing many winters past -- December 1, 1990, to be exact (I peeked at the receipt, which I still have). I can't say why I bought it really. My friend worked at an Ultimate In Gold Jewelers at Montclair Plaza, and while visiting the mall I decided to drop in the store for a brief visit. As we chatted, I saw the watch and said something admirable about it. The bezel reminded me of one of those old-fashioned diving helmets with the porthole opening in the front. And the leather band was thick and sturdy, as if it were made to last the way leather goods were made to last a century ago (as if I know how leather goods were made that long ago). It was an appealing design, at least to my sense of aesthetics. Mind you, I had no intent on entering that store to make a purchase, but somehow I walked out owning that watch. I'm not sure if that's a testimony to my friend's salesmanship, or to my impetuousness, or perhaps a little of both, but it cost me a whopping $293.56 -- in 1990 (just one in a long series of foolish decisions I've made during my life). Thinking back now, I believe one of the selling points at the time was that this is a self-winding watch and I had never up till then seen such a thing in my life (though they've been around for a long time prior). I think I found it intriguing and novel, along with the crystal display back that reveals the rotor and movement. It seemed, well, steampunk-ish to me at the time (I'm unsure whether that term existed back then, but the style is what one would loosely associate with Jules Verne and, in the case with this watch, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". One might imagine Captain Nemo issuing these to the crew of the Nautilus). I've always been fond of retro kind of gadgetry and machinery. By the way, those familiar with watches wouldn't consider the mechanics novel, but to a young ignoramus like myself, it was revolutionary.  

Up until recently it's been sitting as you see it here, on a desk in my studio. Oh, it operates just fine, it's just that I rarely leave my studio and thus have no need to consult a timepiece. But I've just recently begun consistently wearing it again for the heck of it. Besides, it only began to work again in the last several years. You see, not long after purchasing the watch, a friend was showing me these two giant magnets the size of anvils. I was wearing the watch while trying to pry the magnets apart. Naturally, the small springs, cogs, gears, and doodads must have gotten either tweaked, magnetized, or both, because the thing never worked again. When I did manage to get it to function it wouldn't keep accurate time. So it went into a drawer until several years ago when I got it out and found that it had apparently become demagnetized, because now it works like a jiffy. 

And then there is the box of matches pictured with it. That's another story . . . 

SMILE

I was recently looking into one of those eyepiece extenders so as not to rub my big, oily nose up against the nifty LCD on my soul-stealing-image-capture device. Not sure if I really needed one or if it was just a part of accessorizing, a habit associated with camera-co-dependency dementia. As it happens, I'm 'left-eyed', or rather, my left eye has clearer vision than my right. And so I place my left eye over the eyepiece, which requires me to tilt my face away from the LCD, hence, I don't get grease-slicks on the screen. Ergo, I can do without the accessory. Hmmm. That camera looks a wee bare on the left side. Perhaps it needs a cup-holder attachment . . .

I DIG SEPIA

Something I shot today with my EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM. This image looks nothing like the original, as I'm still learning to manually adjust all the various exposure settings, knobs, doohickeys, and other technical thingamabobs. Then again, when I was a kid, the air pretty much looked like this, even without a sepia filter. "Yellow Smog Alert" was something that kept us in the class and off the playground many a recess. Be that as it may, thanks to Photoshop, digital editing has far more uses now than merely airbrushing the cheeseburger out of Rosie O'Donnell's hands.

MY LITTLE DUDE

A shot of my little dude. All I can say is, anyone who doesn't like kids is off their nut.

THE CUTAWAY

I was recently reading a review of the aforementioned Canon EOS 50D on a particular website, and the article featured cutaway illustrations of the camera (Though I'd like to credit the illustrator, the image isn't accompanied by any credit notice).

I recall meeting artist, Mark McCandlish, many years ago, and he did cutaway illustrations of things like rockets and jets (he had to have government clearance to work on those illustrations because they were based on actual blueprints). But I recall thinking back then that those kinds of illustrations were a nightmare, and even today I wouldn't want to tackle a project like that. The entire thing is just too technical for my taste. I've found I prefer organic things. After all, one can hardly complain that a tree isn't perfectly straight, or this or that limb should have been thicker or thinner. It's not that nature isn't highly ordered, but the design is so subtle that most people don't catch artistic errors as easily as they would when viewing a drawing of a building that tilts to one side -- unless the error is obvious, like a drawing of a one-eyed bonobo, or something of that nature.

Anyway, I have the utmost respect for artists who do this kind of technical illustration. Sure, it's probably done mostly digitally these days, but still, it requires a certain attention to detail that's challenging. Hats off to them.

THE BIG PITCH

So I finally finished putting together samples of a gift-line I created and I'm ready to pitch it to someone. I've worked freelance for a gang of giftware companies, and in-studio for another for almost eight years. I had planned to leave giftware, but when the work is there it's decent money, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to keep my feet in the water. I'm not sure how many times I'll have to offer this thing around before someone bites, but I'm hoping my first target will be interested. A friend of mine is fond of saying that if you throw enough (fill in your favorite vulgarity for fecal matter here) against the wall, eventually something will stick. So far, he's created a lot of brown walls, so I'm not sure that principle is universally true. However, persistence seems to be the deciding factor in many a success, so one cannot simply pooh-pooh his advice –– no pun intended. I've determined not to move in too many different directions at once, because doing so is often stifling. Better to make a plan and stick with it to the finish before moving on to something else. I have plenty of unfinished projects to show I've not exactly kept my own counsel to the letter, but I try my best. Be that as it may, this is one project I've finished. Now to test the waters . . .