What You Talkin' About? Does It Disrespect God, or You?

The week before Easter, a young man and his mother were sitting in the pew in front of me at church. The young man sat, very sullenly, with his ball cap pulled down low over his eyes, and his arms folded across his chest. His mom, beside him stood and participated in the service. She was there to worship, and it seemed he wanted to make it clear that he was only there because she wanted him to be. I remember thinking that he was being disrespectful to his mother; that if nothing else he was reflecting poorly on her and the things she felt were important. It seemed like maybe I should lean forward and tell him that he needed to be mindful and at least act like he was participating. While I watched him though, I noticed that his eyes were open. If he wasn't sleeping, then he was at least hearing. His mother was quietly witnessing to him by making sure that he was there to hear the message. Maybe the important thing was that he was at least here, and he should be allowed to come to that message in his own way rather than to adhere to mine.

This week, I wore a hat to service. I made a conscious decision to do this because I'm letting my hair grow out, and it's in that in between stage where it starts looking bad because there's nothing to control it. It didn't seem like a big deal, because at least all my clothes were clean, and my appearance was between me and J.C. A man came up to me just before the beginning of service, and told me (told me) that it was disrespectful to wear a hat here, and asked that I remove it... This stirred up a few things inside of me, and I would like to talk about it a little bit.

First it made me feel unwelcome, which caused a downward domino effect. J.C. said to go out and make Christians. Not Methodists, not Catholics, not people who don't wear hats to church. Make Christians, and making anybody feel unwelcome goes a long way towards defeating that purpose. I didn't want to sigh the guest book. I didn't want to give my tithe. I didn't want to come back. I spent the entire service thinking about him, instead of being present, where I was. Spending time with God. He may as well have asked me to leave, because I wasn't there anyway.

I wanted to wear my hat to service again next week. To actively disrespect the man.

Maybe that's one of those instances where we ignore God's soft voice so that we can get our own way. Whether I wear a hat in church is between me and J.C., and not me and some guy. I actively decided to wear it. It's possible that this man telling me that it is disrespectful is Gods way of letting me know that he thinks it is too. Or...

He could be telling me through this experience that I did the right thing by not stepping in with that boy a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it was His way of saying that I should let Him speak to th this young man with out my being a distraction. It could be that the best way to witness for God is to step back, and to watch and witness.

Or maybe there's a better way... Sometimes the Big Guy can be difficult and makes us figure things out on our own. After the service, as Abby and I were getting in the car to come home, the guy came up to me in the parking lot. He told me that he was sorry if he offended me, and that it is just the way he was raised, and something that was further ingrained by military service. (For the record this is true for me as well, and 90% of the time this situation would never have presented itself.) I told him I understand, and I appreciate that he felt it was important to talk to me, but that kind of approach will always leave one person on the defensive and become a conflict. I told him my story of the boy from a couple of weeks ago, and commented that there had to be a better way to go about it.

I don't know how he could have asked me to take my hat off without me feeling like I didn't belong. I don't think that was the point that was being made though. Two weeks ago, instead of worrying that that young man was being sullen, or disrespectful, I should have made a point to say "Welcome" and "I'm glad to see you here today". This seems silly maybe, but sometimes it's the silly little things that make the biggest difference.

It's okay to get upset with the man for handling a situation that he thought was important badly. That doesn't make it the church's fault, and doesn't mean I'm not welcome. Every week we recite the Lords Prayer, and ask him to forgive us our trespasses, and he does. Part of the deal there though, is that we also need to forgive those who trespass against us.

Until next time, take care and be good.
Your friend,
Jeffrey

100 Themes: Break Away

Seriously, Barbie legs just don't bend like G.I. Joe legs did. Plus, I'm like twice as big as I was when I was playing with the G.I. Joes'.


The next theme is "Bliss". Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

100 Themes: Seeking Wisdom

If you had told me twenty-years ago that I would rarely play video games when I grew up, I'd have called you a liar. The thing is, games have changed over the years. There's still a couple a year that I pick up and enjoy playing, but rarely with the rabid fervor that I did when I was a kid. I'm just not that into driving and shooting games.

The last 4 game systems that I actually bought though, were for "The Legend of Zelda". The classic tale of the young man, facing impossible odds to save the princess and the world? Who couldn't love that? I don't remember what the wise woman that lived beyond the lost woods had to say to young Link anymore, but I do remember being frustrated with learning the pattern to get through them.

Next up is "Break Away". Until then, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

100 Themes: Dark

There are definitely mornings when I'm sleepier than I would like to be. Ha-ha-ha!

Next up is "Seeking Wisdom". Until then, take care and be good!

Your friend,
Jeffrey

100 Themes: Light

Trying something new with the eyes today... didn't quite hit it like I wanted, as they look a little like "crazy eyes" but maybe it's going in the direction I want. Also, moving forward with the hand lettering. It's better than yesterday, but I think I've still got a ways to go, ha-ha-ha!

Next up is "Dark". Until then, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

100 Themes: Love

Wow! Two in two days... I am on fire! I'm glad that love is one of the early themes, so that we can just get it out of the way. It's one of those that's both easy and hard... It's easy to make a drawing about love, but hard to make one that's not the same ol', same ol'. I spent a lot of the day thinking about what love is to me, and came up with a lot of ideas, but this is the one that stayed with me. The sheer joy on that girls face when I go to get her out of bed is simply heartwarming.

As a side note, I'm attempting to hand letter these, but so far my lettering is terrible. So I typed this one in photoshop.

The next theme is "light". Until then, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

100 Themes: Introduction

I've seen this meme floating around the interweb a bit lately, and it really caught my fancy. I know I've tried to do stuff like this before, with little success. 100 of anything just seems like such a commitment. I'm not setting a time line for this or a deadline, though. Maybe falling behind on the schedule in the past is what made me give up hope. We're just going to enjoy this, and see where it goes!

The first theme is "Introduction".

Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

Daily Life 025: Ice Skating

The other day, we watched the movie "Ice Princess" starring Joan Cusack and Michelle Trachtenberg. The movie is about a physics student who begins a project based on ice skating for a scholarship competition, and as she learns more about skating by applying what she learns, finds that she really loves skating.
About half-way through the movie as I'm making dinner in the kitchen, I check on the girls and Abby is spinning in the living room. She say's "Look daddy! I'm ice 'kating!" Ha-ha-ha! So I help her with some more spins, and then we pretend to do some other of the other tricks (is that the right word?) from the skating portions of the movie. Now, any time she's posing with one food behind her, she tells me to "look at her ice 'kating moves."

Awkward Super Heroes! Yay!

It's pretty super-hectic here, lately. Between work on my 'zine (which is due at the beginning of next month), work on lapel pins, work on covers for my friends at hex, and finally transitioning Abby into her 3's and Olive into her first year... like I said, hectic. Ha-ha-ha!

Still, I am getting stuff done, and there's developing a backlog of stuff to show you all. These guys are mostly just quick and dirty little drawings I did the other night, and then slapped some color on this afternoon. I kind of wanted them to look like awkward kids dressed up as super-heroes.
Abby is obsessed with Captain America, and we don't know why. She got a toy of him in a happy meal, last fall and just couldn't stop talking about him. Who knows why some things strike kids fancy.
I think pigeon-toed Wolverine is very funny.

Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

Influence Mapping

So there's this meme that's been going around the interweb in recent months, started by fox-orian on DeviantArt. I'm pretty late to the party, but it looked interesting to me, and I enjoy looking at art. Ha-ha-ha! I tried to stick to sizes as far as how big an impact these guys have had on me, but... honestly, there's only so much space, and it's hard to quantify that sort of thing.

So, here we go!
1. Arthur Adams: I have a giant-size issue of "The New Mutants", where the kids go to Asgard, and have some adventures. Wow. This guy is just awesome, I remember reading that issue over and over again, and copying the drawings out of it when I was a kid. His linework, and just sheer ability to put so much TEXTURE into his drawings has always just floored me.

2. Scott Fischer: I found Scott a couple of years ago on conceptart.org. I love his realistic-cartoon style. I think about his drawings a lot when I'm drawing cars especially.

3. Mobius: There was a time when I tried sooooo hard to draw like Mobius. The perfect balance of detail and simplicity. Noise and quiet. and his linework is beautiful. He is probably the single biggest influence on my drawing style.

4. Alan Lee: When I was a kid, this painting creeped me out. I checked out the fairies book by Lee and Froud from the library, and could hardly look at it, because I didn't want to see this painting of the pooka. Alan Lee's watercolor and pencil drawings are just beautiful, and they helped awaken a love of fantasy in my young mind.

5. Todd McFarlane: Todd seems to get a lot of crap these days from comic fans. One of the things that I learned from him is that comics are both about graphic design and drawing.

6. Lynn Johnston: One of the greatest cartoons still working... maybe the best. If there's only one cartoon that I read in the paper anymore, its "For Better Or For Worse". Fantastic design, compelling stories that we can relate to, and really excellent drawing. Wow.

7. Bernie Wrightson: When I was a kid, my parents got me the book "Dream Makers" which featured (among others) Bernie Wrightson, and Michael Kaluta. Seeing their work, and reading what they had to say about being professional artists is I think one of the big things that galvanized my career path.

8. Jamie Hewlett: I have loved Jamie's artwork since his work on "Tank Girl". Expressive, and not afraid to "go there"... He cracks me up. Also, I'm a big fan of the details he puts into his drawings, and how well the CHARACTERS show through the designs.

9. Katsuhiro Otomo: Akira was the first Japanimation movie I ever saw. It was in Japanese. Without subtitles. Not being able to understand the words didn't matter though. The pictures just reached out and grabbed me. I was hooked. In hindsight, it's good that I started out at the top, because that's a pretty high standard to hold everything else up to... there's a lot of junk out there too. Ha-ha-ha!

10. Brian Froud: "The Dark Crystal" and "Labyrinth" are two of my favorite movies. Brian Froud did most (if not all) of the concept design on them. Again, spending hours drawing goblins and fairies, and watercoloring them.

11. Michael Kaluta: One of the things I remember about Michael Kaluta is that he was talking about a painting he had done, and mentioned that the color on one part of it was actually tea. The idea that you didn't have to use just PAINT to color things was new to me at the time. Of course, tea isn't exactly archival, but when you illustrate for print, the longevity of the original isn't necessarily the primary concern.

When I think about all of these fantastic artists separately, they seem very different. Looking at them all arranged on the map though, I think they hang together nicely. Thanks for spending a few minutes walking down memory lane with me. Ha-ha-ha! Until next time, take care and be good!

Your friend,
Jeffrey

A Peek at My Sketchbook

I've noticed lately, that I have a few "go to" poses and expressions, and that to do anything different is a bit of a struggle. I read a lot of art blogs, and look at a lot of pictures, but reading and looking (while inspiring and all...) only take you so far. DOING is what allows us to learn, and to grow.
This first set of sketches are 30 second to 2 minute studies from photos. All of them were done at the Gesture Drawing Tools site, which features Male and Female figures (both clothed and not) as well as animals, and also a handy timer that changes the pictures when the time is up. No cheating, ha-ha-ha! The tree at the bottom, I found on Flickr, using their "Explore Interesting" feature. There's always at least one picture worth spending a few minutes drawing per page. I think I spent about 5 minutes on this one.
The second page are two twenty minute drawings I did at a figure drawing night at the St Louis Artist's Guild. I think I actually spent more like 30 minutes on the left one, refining it during the break between poses.

I was reading an article on Dresden Codak's blog "Indistinguishable From Magic" last nite about the importance of developing a visual vocabulary. Here is a link to the post, because he put it far better than I can. For those of you who only want to read one wordy blog post tonite, he talks about Draftsmanship, Clarity of expression, Style is Grounded in Realism, and Visual Flexibility = Mental Flexibility. The whole article is great, but something he said in the last section really hit home for me:

"Often, being able to draw new things presents us with ideas we’d otherwise never consider. Also, simply being comfortable with drawing more things means you’re instinctively more likely to try new things..."and then he goes on to say"... without an artist having the prerequisite drawing experience, he or she may not get the idea to set a scene in a 17th century pirate cove rather than a college dorm room. It’s not so much that a less well-rounded artist couldn’t draw these things, it’s that he or she is less likely to even consider it, as it’s outside the comfort zone."

So what does this mean to me as an illustrator and dreamer of dreams? Something I've known for a long time, but that I get lazy about. Nothing exists in a vacuum, and without new stuff coming in, new stuff can't go out.



I thought of this clip from the king of queens while I was writing, and the same principle applies. It also serves as a warning. Draw from life, or at least from photos. Trying to learn to draw from a cartoon limits us to just those forms, and without understanding why those forms work, we can't move forward and develop our own styles. Poop in, poop out. Ha-ha-ha!

Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

Daily Life: Super Hero Edition

We've had super heroes on the brain here lately...Last week, Handmade Family set up our space in the Fusion Art Co-op in the mall (you can check out the post here). Amy's making capes, and has started finishing up the hero costumes with masks and cuffs to go along with them. Abby is super-cute. She tried on the mask for the first time last night, and was running around in her jammies, pointing up and declaring, "To the rescue!!!". It's funny watching her costume combinations, too. This afternoon, she'd added a Halloween pumpkin lantern, and tonite when we were getting ready for bed, she said she need super-hero pajamas...NOT, her dog pajamas. Okay, Superman it is. Ha-ha-ha!

So, where am I going with this? My plan is to do a cross-over between here and the Handmade Family blog with illustrations and photos and downloadable goodies that will be available on my website, chronicling our daily, handmade lives. Activities, books and movies, snack-time and of course Daily Life illustrations and comics. All of this will be compiled into a small, themed book. If all goes as planned (and to be honest, I'm nervous about that part), then I will be able to release my little 'zine every two months. The theme for issue one is Super-Heroes, and I hope that you all will join me for a little fun.

That's it for now. Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

Roller Girls Versus

I noticed today that it's managed to be two weeks since I posted last...wow. To be fair though, there are a couple of posts by me over on the handmade family blog, so you could go check that out, follow it, and suggest it to all your friends, acquaintances and family if you want. Or you could just go check it out. There's some pretty cool stuff, and my wife is putting up content about her work too, so that's pretty rad... and I'm better about putting pictures of the girls on there too, ha-ha-ha!

Okay, on to the real reasons (excuses) for not posting in two weeks. First, we've been accepted as vendors in a local hand-made cooperative, Fusion. More on that in the next couple of days, as we're working like crazy to get ready for set-up (I'm supposed to be designing our signing right now, actually). The second reason, is this new cover for the fine folks at Hex Games... Roller Girls Versus! I decided to take a different approach to it, and it kind of blew up in my face and took way longer than it should have. On the plus side though, I think I learned a couple of lessons and maybe earned a couple of experience points towards leveling up. I'm not going to jabber any more tonite, because I'm pretty beat, and still have work to do before bed.

Here's the pencils.
and here's the colored version. I pretty much just painted over the pencils this time, but there's a lot more going on than usual. Like I said..."trying something new". Ha-ha-ha! I hope you all like it.
Until next time, take care and be good.
Your friend,
Jeffrey

The Problem With Magna Doodles and a "Failed" Daily Life

I don't know if any of you have ever watched the show "Pokemon" or not. The show revolves around a boy who travels the world looking for cute little monsters to trap...or collect. Whatever. He then trains the little guys and takes them to tournaments to fight other pokemonsters. Like a cock-fight with superpowers. I imagine that trying to catch pokemon is only slightly easier than trying to catch a drawing that a two-and-a-half year old has done on a Magna Doodle. I'd been trying to get a good picture (heck, any picture) of this drawing since she was drawing jack-o-lanterns in November. Each new thing from that girl simultaneously thrills, amazes and saddens me. Really, it's one of the most difficult and at the same time rewarding things about watching them grow up. And we've just gotten started!

I started working on some new single illustration "Daily Life's" this week. I'd found this list of 100 themes by Robin Hall at Bubblegum Bullet. While I do have plenty of stories, it seems like it could be fun as well as a good exercise to fit them into the themes...sort of diversify my portfolio, or something. This first one is "Introduction", I'll get to the story in a minute... Ha-ha-ha! First I want to talk about the art. I know that's unusual with the Daily Life drawings, but I don't like this and want to do it over. So I'm going to talk about it.
When I started the Daily Life drawings, they were simple warm-ups that allowed me to work in a relaxed manner and experiment with new techniques. That hasn't changed, but I've been a little surprised with how well they have been received. I'm working on a new cover for Hex right now too, and wanted to try something new... a new way to draw and color the art. So I did this one first. There are a lot of things I like about it, but I don't really care for how the pencil went down on the paper. Originally, when I bought this pad of paper it was to do pencil drawings on. I liked the rough texture and thought it would be a good match. It isn't. So I am switching to a smoother paper next time (either smooth bristol board, or I might try Reeves BFK again), and will try again.
This past weekend I went up to Green Bay with some friends to watch the Super Bowl (Yes we knew the actual game was in Dallas, but you have to watch the Packers win all the marbles in GREEN BAY). For the party, AA (that's double A) made some great pizza using pretzel dough for the crust. There was a lot of work to do in the kitchen, and the game was going to start soon, so I offered to help. Chopping vegetables. I was thinking later how odd it is to greet people coming over with a hand-shake from one hand, while holding a knife in the other. Not the kind of introduction we normally want to have.

Justin told me the other day that I write a lot in my posts. Is it too much? Are you all thinking "More art, less words Jeffrey!"? Leave a comment! Let me know! Until next time, then. Take care and be good.

Your friend,
Jeffrey

More Resolutions, and Some Daily Life Drawings

I did something out of the ordinary at the library the other day...I actually talked to two people I didn't know. Not at the same time, either. This might not seem like a big deal, as I don't think I come off as a particularly shy or introverted person. And really I'm not, but getting the conversation started has always been a stumbling block for me. What do you say to people? Small talk (at least what we think of as small talk) just seems so...I don't know...small. On the other hand, you can't exactly open a conversation by talking about comparative world religions or how Sam Raimi ruined "Spiderman 3" and ways the movie could've been saved. Perhaps the problem is just that I'm over thinking it.

On that note, I made a resolution to myself the other day. I always tell people, that when it comes to school, blogging, forums, or heck, even just life, you get out of it what you put into it. This sounds like good simple advice, but it's hard to live up to sometimes. As a step in the right direction, I've resolved to comment back on comments received within a day instead of waiting until the next time I post. Also, I'm going to start commenting more often on the blogs that I follow. I know I always appreciate hearing from all of you out there in the world, so...

Okay. That's enough drama for the day! I did some new water colored character sketches of the girls and me as I continue to work on some new Daily Life ideas. I've started writing several stories that I think are pretty good, and have the thumbnails for one of the funniest things that happened over the Christmas break all done and ready to move on to a strip. You heard me. A comic strip...I hope you don't mind fart jokes. Ha-ha-ha!


There's also another reason I've done this set of watercolor portraits. We're using them as part of the promo, logo and ad portion of the new venture that Amy and I are working on. Pooling our resources, we've decided to form a new company "Handmade Family", focusing on gifts, accessories, games, and decor for growing families. We've set up a new blog for it, as well as an etsy shop to get things moving in the right direction. We have a couple of more plans to move forward, but will have to wait until they are a little firmer before talking too much about them. You can check out the blog here: Handmade Family. We'll be posting projects (both new, and in progress), events, specials, and whatever else strikes our fancy, so be sure to check in!

Whew! It's been snowing like crazy around here this week, and Amy's been home for the last three days. It's been nice having her, and we've gotten a lot done. I hope you all are all safe and warm. Until next time, take care and be good.

Your friend,
Jeffrey