This weekend I’ve taken on the responsibility of painting some simple but fun games to be used at our kid’s annual Harvest Festival. These are some crazy paint job ideas I sketched today. Clockwise from upper left: sponge-throwing game — in which a person puts his / her head through the hole in the board and people pay to throw wet sponges at them; shuffleboard game; ring toss game. I may have gone overboard on this, since I have only tomorrow to paint it all (I spent today priming and penciling). We’ll see how it turns out by the end of the day Sunday. Some of this might be vastly simpler. Ha.
I say “Summer ’07” because there may be a chance we go back there this November, and, of course, there will be sketching!
Clockwise from the top: The ever-present folding chair (I think we have eight or so) scattered around the campsite, Stacy the snake, brother-in-law Chris reading a Harry Potter book on a hammock overlooking the stream below the campsite.
This was an outdoor concert at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur. A great venue to see some great music. My wife was a huge fan of the LA punk band X, back in the 1980s. John Doe was the lead singer and bass player. Anyway, it was a lot of fun, very personal. I sketched this in ink and then went back to the campsite, while it was still fresh in my mind, and added the watercolor. There was great late afternoon light filtered through the tall trees above and around us. Before John Doe went on, he sat behind us as we watched the amazing Peter Case who was up before him. Then after the concert, Mr. Doe posed for a picture with my wife Joan. Our 11-year-old daughter came along. We told him that it was her first concert and he told her, “The first of many, I hope.” Very fun.
And, just like last year, car trouble! I think this is the last big trip for the venerable ’95 Escort. I did a few sketches, most of them in color, as seems to be my habit of late.
More fun with the Pelikan fountain pen.
I did this in two sittings over two days: first for the line, next for the color. Thanks to Mattias Adolfsson, I’ve rediscovered my old Pelikan fountain pen. I asked what kind of ink he used, seeing that it appears to be waterproof and yet is coming out of a fountain pen — two things that usually don’t go together. He told me he uses American Eel ink, so I ordered some. Fantastic stuff. That pen has neither written nor drawn better than it does now.
We’ve moved offices off the movie lot. This is the old view from my 3rd floor window — a palm tree growing between buildings. The foreground mess is some air conditioning ducts on top of the offices across the way, the building directly behind the tree is the scoring stage where the musicians play and are recorded for the soundtrack of the movie, the yellow building is an apartment complex across the street from the studio. The move and some impending deadlines have made sketching and posting difficult lately, but most of that has passed (for now).
Anthony Zierhut 