Here's another little sketchpad I'm trying to keep. I call it my "handbook." If it is not apparent the subject is--hands--one per page. The scale of the pad is unfavorable to the subject matter and the media, I thought with the texture of the paper, I try to build up a Seurat-like surface. I visited MOMA's recent exhibit of his work this year. I really liked his drawings. The problem is that the type of pencil I'm using is too soft the the effort gets mutilated when I work on other drawings. Blaw.

A simple sketch--from memory of a couple of trees that grow in our yard. For whatever reason, they've become entwined. I used mixed media on this one. The sanguine line is a pen brush. the white high-lights are chalk and the black shading is from a Derwent drawing pencil. The paper is like cardboard and toned like a grocery bag, giving the sketch all it's middle values. I cannot say I spent very much time on this, but you have to get your hands moving--so I did. Val & I have just started to work on the garden. Last year we took it from a patch of weeds to a place where you wouldn't mind sitting down to read a book. I have one to start too. So, when all the hash is settled with the planting, cutting and what-not. Val & I will have a nice little spot for Sunday coffee.

My Daughter had the honor of singing with her Chamber Choir for Pope Benedict Today. Here is a photo she took of the Pontiff with Vice President Cheney & his wife from her vantage point in the stands.

Took a number of shots from the roof at around sunset. What a beautiful day.

Here is a roundel from one of the windows at the Metropolitan Museum's Cloisters, up in Fort Tryron Park. This one depicts "tipping," a game played by folk passing time in the middle ages. The objective of the game is to stand on one foot and raise the other, pairing it, at waist level with your opponent's foot. The first to push the other over wins. In this instance the girl must be a beginner as she is conveniently seated on a basket to assist with her balance. The wily male figure seems to be a little more serious than the girl, and, perhaps, his motives are impure. Knowing the medieval mind, there is always a little more than meets the eye in artwork like this. The dog, in the back seems to be a direct counterpoint to the hand of male, perhaps guarding, if only in a graphical sense, the virtue of the girl. Dogs, in art from this period, were often symbols of loyalty and fidelity. Likewise, the lambs down below also turn towards the male tipper, blocking all, but the contact of his foot. They too have symbolic significance, that of innocence. Behind the scene is a tree. A stand in for the growth which held the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden? Will this fellow tip the girl to the ground, and perhaps try her virtue? I really get a kick out of medieval art. Images from the period often are--at once--a historic graphic chronicle of what people looked like & did, married to a not-so-subtle morality tale. All this in a six inch glass roundel, which, when looked at from the correct viewpoint ( I shot this image from below, so that the overcast sky would illuminate the glass), these two figures would be seen, with their transparent background, set against the landscape, as if, you spied this scene as it was happening.

I try to get a shot of the Moon every now and then. I used my Kodak P712 with manual controls set to f5.6 at 1/125th of a second using as digital equivalent of 64 ISO speed film. I also used a warming filter to heighten the contrast. I wasn't too fussy here, I didn't use a tripod and it was a bit hazy. If I were serious, a tripod would have been a must and would have shot it using jpeg raw format. i'll try one, shot properly, some clear night in the future. Perhaps there will be a difference. Still, the Moon is a beautiful night object. I think you get the best shots when the Moon is not completely full as the termination line (where the shadow goes from light to dark) often brings details into better relief. This picture-I shot tonight-shows nice detail towards the bottom. The large crater with the bright inner ridge is called Clavis. The bright crater just above and at 1 o'clock is Tyco. The large crater midway (in the grey) is called Copernicus. Just emerging, towards the top is Montes Jura, what remains of the crater ridge of Sinus Iridum, which is at the western edge of Mare Imbrium. Not bad detail, considering the equipment.

So, here I am, bloging with nothing to blog. It has been a busy week, I didn't get much drawing in. None at all. I'll try to remedy that next week. In place of something more personal, I give you a poem by Ogden Nash (1902-1971).

Celery raw,
Develops the jaw.
But celery, stewed
Is more easily chewed.

Thanks for dropping in.

This drawing is another oldie from one of my sketch pads. In New York, you see all types of people. Though it isn't the case now, in the 1980s', when this image was drawn, beggars were in great abundance. They could be found on street corners, subway stations and the trains themselves. Many of the beggars where homeless, mentally ill, others--drug junkies. I happened across one who was an amputee, panhandling in Penn Station while I was waiting for a train. He was missing his legs. People, who had thrown change, missed his coffee cup. To get the coins he'd scoot over on his backside, put the coins in a pocket and scoot back. I thought to make this drawing of a much more extreme case, where the beggar cannot collect the coins at all, but can only look longingly at them. I like the effect that the sepia and white ink have on the brown paper.

Took in the Dali show in Philadelphia a few years back. It was an interesting exhibit displaying a broad selection of works dating bake to his early years. It was said that upon seeing Dali and his entourage, Andy Warhol remarked that he wanted to have the same artisitc celebrity. This was one of those shows that tickets needed to be bought for and, in return I suppose, it was meant to reward the attendee with more Dali paintings than they could shake a stick at. It even included one of the first holograms ever made featuring a cross-legged Alice Cooper. I was fascinated by a painting that Dali found interesting and the curator too a little trouble to expand upon. It was a image that Dali, in fact, repainted, a spin on Millet's, The Angelus. The curator's notes pointed out that Dali was obsessed with the painting and projected much into it. Wrote a book on it. When Joel Cohen and I went to lunch we walked down the museum's front steps. Turning back you saw crazy old Dali staring back at you. I figured that when we came back for the afternoon (we closed the place), I'd cross the street and pick a conspicuous spot to stand, while Joel snapped a shot. In hind sight, I should have leaned over and twirled Salvador's mustache on the right side. Though I've seen other photos on the web with other visual punsters doing just that on these steps. Surreal!

Found this old pad with some drawings in it. One was from a trip I made to the Cloisters, years ago. A building can be seen across the Hudson River at that location. It is on part of the 700 acres that Rockefeller donated so that the view from this museum would remain unsullied. It is a pretty sight. The pad is small and an odd format as it is a section of a larger sketch pad I cut off with a shop knife. I think I used a white grease pencil with Prisma pencils for the color. As it turns out, I like this museum a lot. Last year, while on one of my visits, I got this shot with my snappy. It was taken about a quarter of a mile north and at a slightly higher elevation to where I made the sketch 17 years earlier.

It's been closed for a while now, but I happened across the storefront of the Gotham Book Mart. I had my digital snappy on me so I got this shot off. Kind of sad really. I don't know if I wandered down the street because I used to after working at the Times or by accident. I used to never walk on by. I'd always stop in and look over the books they had. I picked up a number of my favorite Ed Gory volumes at this place. From what I read in the news GBM owed a huge amount of back rent. As it turns out, the store and it's contents where put up for auction and the landlord snapped it all up for about $400,000 dollars. We'll not see it's like again I'm afraid.

Did this one for INX about "the delicate balancing act in Iraq. It'll be on the inxart website as part of this week's offerings. Years ago, one of my professors in grad school-Robert Weaver-brought in a "Uncle Sam" jacket and hat. They were ratty old things that looked as if he fished them out of the trash. Yet, if you made a careful drawing of them, the sketch made a statement. His point I suppose.

Just got Ulrich Merkl's new oversize print tribute to Winsor McCay, Dream Of The Rarebit Fiend. The Volume is large, to accommodate the scale of the original printed pages and includes every RB strip Winsor ever made. I'm not a collector of unusual or rare books, just an admirer of McCay's prolific genius. Sunday Press has put this out, backed, I think, by Merkl himself. 2 years ago Sunday Press also put out the astounding, So Many Splendid Sundays, a compendium of Little Nemo in Slumberland. As it turns out the word, "Rarebit" is actually a Welsh recipe for Rabbit, which is sautéed and served with melted or toasted cheese on a toasted bread. Once the unsuspecting protagonists begin to digest this repast overnight, their dreams become the stuff of the Andalusian Dog or--considering the date of RF's publication,--more likely, the other way around. RF dates to the turn of the last century. I'm not sure I'm onboard with all the design choices made in the volume, but to a pen & inker like myself, there is a wealth of work to see. Below is the very first strip McCay made. His nom-de-plume at the time was, Silas.