DREAM JOURNAL PARIS

8 1/2" X 5 "

Pentel brush pen and Fude brush pen in Strathmore sketchbook

I'm in line at a department store in Paris and the person ahead of me is the classic slow customer. He writes a check, makes a mistake, tears it up, starts another one. His pen runs out of ink. This is excruciating. Finally he finishes and it's my turn when the store clerk puts up a closed sign on the counter and goes outside for a cigarette!

Well, I'm not having it and I go outside and start yelling at the guy but he is ignoring me. Then he hands me a cigarette and says "Here, have a Gauloises."

I fire it up and, hey it's not bad. The clerk notices that I still have the store merchandise in my hand and says "keep them, they're on the house."

Then I woke up

DEBORAH HARRY

11 x 8 1/2"
Fude brush and acrylic in Canson sketchbook

DREAM JOURNAL POLITICS

8 1/2" x 5 1'2"

Uniball pen, Pentel brush pen and watercolor in Strathmore sketchbook

A dinner function. Julie an I are seated at a table with about ten professors with their husbands and wives. One professor is strongly expressing his political opinion. Everyone at the table is becoming uncomfortable with his level of obnoxiousness yet they all are remaining silent with their eyes cast downward. So I cut in and refute his assertions. He got pissed off because narcissist that he is, he doesn't like looking foolish in front of the others. So he gets up and stomps off...

Then we are all surrounding him laying in a hospital emergency room. I hear someone say that I gave him a heart attack, then another voice says "Yeah, you caused this." As I look down at this face I think well, he brought this on himself but no more arguing, especially political arguments.

Then I woke up from this dream

OLD BIBLE BILL

OLD BIBLE BILL
11" x 17"
Uniball pen, Faber-Castell brush pens and Pentel brush pen in Canson sketchbook
Illustration of a story in Demon Box by Ken Kesey

"This story is ...mainly about these three visitations I had...like three ghosts from A Christmas Carol.

The first came the day before the killing, Sunday evening , while were were waiting for my Mom and Grandma Whittier to come out for supper. This specter was the easiest to comprehend and deal with. In fact, he was almost classic in his immediate comprehensibility; versions of this spook have probably been around since the first campfire. He poked his bearded kisser in out of the night, all shaggily a-grin. He had a bottle of screw top Tokay in his right hand, a battered black book in his left, and glint in his gummy eyes that could have been bottled and displayed in the Bureau of Standards: the Definitive Panhandler Come-On Glint.

"Greetings the house!" he called through a curtain of phlegm. "This is Bible Bill, ol' Bible Bill, come in the name of the Main Redeemer, praise Him. Anybody home?"

I didn't have to give it a second thought. "No," I said.

"Dev? Brother Deboree? Greetings, brother, greetings!" He held forth the Good Book and the bad wine. "Compliments of Bible Bill, these--"

"No, " I repeated, pushing right on past the offerings. I put one hand on his chest and held the door open with the other, pushing. Behind him, I could make out an entourage of shivering teenagers, unhappy in the December wind. Bill wasn't pleased with the prospect of getting shoved back out in it, either.
"Dev, don't be like this, dammit all! I promised these kids--"
"No." I pushed.
"Give it up, dude," one of the teenagers said to him. "Can't you see you're bugging the man?"
"But kinfolks--"
"But my butt," another kid joined in. "let's go."
With me pushing and them pulling we moved him back to the Toyota they'd come in, him hollering, "But cousins! Brothers! Comrades! and me hollering back, "But no! No! No!"

SKUNK TRAIN

11 1/2" x 16"
Uniball pen, Fude brush, Faber Castell brushes, Dr Ph Martin Bombay black India ink and Winsor Newton Series 7 #3 brush in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook

"Smells like a skunk.  Well, not really. The nickname originated in 1925 when motorcars were introduced.  These single unit, self propelled motorcars had gasoline powered engines for power and pot bellied stoves burning crude oil to keep passengers warm.  The combination of the fumes created a very pungent odor, and the old timers living along the rail line said these trains were like skunks:  "You could smell 'em before you could see 'em".
(From ride the skunk train)

PORTRAIT OF CHRISTINA GUSEK

16" x 11"
Uniball pen, Fude brush, Faber-Castell Brush pens and Kuretake white ink in Hand:Book sketchbook

This was drawn from a scene in the movie "Pigheaded" which is the biography of the great cartoonist Skip Williamson. All proceeds of this movie go to the S. Clay Wilson Special Needs Trust.  https://vimeo.com/ondemand/pigheaded

PALACE SALOON FERNDALE CALIFORNIA

11 1/2" x 8 "
Uniball pen, watercolor, Dr. Ph Martin Bombay India ink and Winsor Newton Series 7 #3 brush in Stillman& Birn sketchbook

INTERNET

11 1/2" x 8 "
Uniball pen, watercolor and China marker in Moleskine sketchbook

SIETE CABALLOS

11 1/2" x 8"
Uniball pen, watercolor and China marker in Moleskine sketchbook

O'BRIEN, OREGON

11 1/2" x 8"
Uniball pen, watercolor and white China marker in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook
We stopped in O'Brien, Oregon on our way to the California border. It's an unincorporated town of 570 people. Budget cuts left them with no Police force but this old Plymouth bubble top sits on the road.

DRURY CHANEY GROVE HUMBOLT REDWOODS

11" X 8 1/2"
Uniball pen and watercolor in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook

Doing lots of preliminary sketches for future paintings. So glad these redwoods have been preserved.

SACRED REDWOODS CRESCENT CITY CALIFORNIA

11 1/2" x 8 "
Uniball pen, watercolor and China marker in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook

When you are in the grove it feels holy, spiritual and clean.  I wish I would have brought balloons to fill with the air there.

POSTER FOR LEGION OF MARY

11" x 14"
Faber-Castell Pitt Big Brush pens in ProArt sketchbook

The Band members:
M.Fierro, R.Tutt, J.Kahn, J.Garcia. M.Saunders

LOST MARBLES

LOST MARBLES

18" x 24"

Mixed media on paper

FIGURE STUDY 6

30" x 22"
Ink, watercolor and acrylic on Arches paper

REMINDER

8" x 10"

Ink and watercolor on Arches paper

Sometimes my drawing table is a blur of post it notes. When it is imperative that I remember something important like recycle day I refer to a poster I made instead.

Always be drawing!

WOO WOO MOMENT

18" x 24"

Mixed media illustration on Canson watercolor paper

" I'm in Portland, Oregon. I've made an appointment with a woman that I've been told is a gifted healer. I show up at her door and I am not prepared for the five foot five two hundred pound woman in a pixie haircut with a hot dog in one hand and a quart of Pepsi in the other.

Without speaking she says to me "Okay honey, just lay there on the table."

So I lay on the table. She's poking on me and she said "You think I'm fat, don't you honey?" And I say " No, Karen, you're big boned, you're not fat."

She said "I don't normally do this, but I'm actually going to show you what I look like. I'm also going to show you what to paint."

I sat up. I put my hands on her shoulders. I looked into her face that goes out of focus and blurs and reforms itself into June Upton, the first woman that I ever loved in the 5th grade. Her face then reformed into every single woman I've ever loved. At the end of it she winked at me and said "You know, honey, paint that!"

Story by Marshall Arisman - A Postcard From Lilydale

THE FEAST OF VENUS AFTER RUBENS

THE FEAST OF VENUS AFTER RUBENS

14" x 22"

Ink, Faber-Castell Pitt brush pens and florescent acrylic in ProArt sketchbook

COUCH PRELIMINARY STUDY

11" x 14"
Pentel brush pen and Kuretake Fude brush in ProArt sketchbook

BOOK ILLUSTRATION

11" x 14"
Ink in ProArt sketchbook

"You can't laugh at a gun. I had a gun put to my head in a bar, over the Pueblo incident.  A cop.  I got a load on and argued with these guys about shit in Vietnam.  I said, "Saigon's got a million-dollar police station and my brother's got a station a hundred years old.  Where's the money come from?  The cops and firemen are paying taxes and they're not fixin' up their stations."  This guy, Jim, who's a city cop for twenty-four years, is everything you want a cop to be.  When I was eighteen he was thirty eight, he was a supercop.  But the hate just fucked him up, and the war.

I was in the bar and Jim had his load on, too.  He's got personal problems, he's married twice,, divorced.  He said, "We should invade Korea, bomb it."  I said, "You're ready to drop a bomb on a country with civilians."  He said, "Ah, you fuckin' commie." So I turn my back. I feel this thing on my temple, he had a gun to my head.  Two guys next to me dived for the ground.  With my left hand I come toward his wrist.  The gun went to the ground and I grabbed him in a headlock.  Three other cops in civilian clothes broke it up.  You gotta watch that gun."  - Tom Gates quote in WORKING by Studs Terkel