70s annual travel insurance

As artists, we all spend much of our lives developing our medium.  The proper term, from what I know, is our (fr.) "metiere".  For those here smart enough to stick to the basics- pen and paper, pencil, acrylic/oil paint - I commend you. Like when you learn an instrument you pick something small and easily transportable, yet full of potential for your vocabulary - like a ukulele.  Not a drum kit, or a grand piano, or a harp.

Well, I picked drums.

As for the visuals, I've spent many years developing and combining media to come to my method of creating my own "final art".  About sixteen years ago I came to the perfect blend of media; scratch board, liquid acrylic paint on w/c paper, and the xerox machine.  It's done well for me, and although I've been protective of my process due to some imitators, it's not rocket science to figure out how I produce my work.

This said, entropy has been chipping away at my technique from the moment I crossed it's t's and dotted it's i's. As the laws of physics state, entropy is the ruling force in the universe. 

The first signs came about eight years ago, when the liquid acrylic paint I'd grown accustomed to using - made by Rotring- all of the sudden; overnight, actually; became hard to find. A few inquiries educated me to the fact of it's discontinuation. I started snatching it up whenever I was fortunate to find it in art supply stores.  When that dried up, I began buying the one alternative brand that was available - FW - absolutely inferior.  Finally I was searching Ebay.  I lucked out and purchased a lifetime supply from a guy on the internets who had an odd yet thoroughly complete leftover lot.
 

Next came the scratch board. Becoming an ever more arcane medium, it seems that only one or two companies are making it anymore, and it's going down in quality even as it goes up in price.  Yes, I could make my own - but who the hell has the time??  This ain't the era of Michelangelo grinding his own pigments, it's the era of texting your grocery list to your wife while you're stuck on the freeway!  When I'm lucky enough to find an available batch, I buy it, but I'm no fool; the days are numbered as to it's availability.

More recently, it's the X-acto blade I've grown accustomed to use.  No.19, the best for me to scratch away on scratch board with.  Usually I have a drawer full of these on hand. Recently I found my supply was empty, so I went to the store to pick up more.  "We're all out" they told me, "and it's been discontinued". After spending the remaining afternoon driving to every store in town with no success, I found a place online and bought their remaining stock. 50 blades left now.

Earlier this year, the final nail arrived in the old coffin: my beloved Xerox 5314 copier had been showing signs of cancer. I'd been pretending it was just specks on the glass that would wipe off.  They didn't.  In fact the copies were beginning to look awful and causing me some serious stress, not to mention a lot of extra work to deal with.  There were two things in the manual that said should fix the problem: change the toner and change the copy cartridge.

I tracked down a new copy cartridge on Ebay ($150) and put it in.  No luck.  Shitty copies, jobs due. I replaced the toner.  Same shitty copies. Many calls to Xerox, searches on the internet: I'm screwed. Copiers are now 100% digital and no one works on these machines anymore.  Anywhere.

Just when I started feeling like I'm a dying breed, I found

I've been terrible about updating all of my website galleries in general, and Drawger has been no exception, but I have finally updated my

I know I just posted this image, but I just got a wonderful call that these stamps won the gold in the book category. 

Congrats to everyone Marc, John, Leo, Edel, Chris - it's going to be a Drawger medal ceremony this year!  See you all there in February.

Following Edel's lead, these are the entries that I had accepted in this year's American Illustration book.

 

These stamps are from a still secret book project that will be published next fall.

This piece was done for our great supporter, SooJin Buzzelli.  As we all know, SooJin lets us have fun and experiment on the clock.  Thanks SooJin!!

I posted these earlier in the year when they were first published.  Drawn as part of a series for the excellent Matt Petty at San Francisco Chronicle, a travel quiz.

Have fun at the party everyone!

Every year I always think I'm going to finally get it together for Halloween.  Sure enough this year it arrived and I was late on deadline and was drawing frantically even as the neighborhood was abuzz with sounds of children coming out for trick or treat. 

Thankfully Cynthia had been getting the house ready.  She egged me to do a large cut out for our front picture window, so I decided to try out redoing an older image I had done for Martha Stewart Living ba