Work in Progress

From my own project. I still need to add a figure to the upper left and upper right.

Bored

No, not me. Another sample: pencil with Photoshop.

...and the finish.

I'm going to call this one a success. It flowed a bit - it was painless, almost entirely fun to do, and super quick - start to finish in about ten hours. But come to think of it - shouldn't start have been on the left, finish on the right? Aggh, back to the drawing board (thank goodness for Photoshop)

A New Direction

I recently spoke my rep Maggie Byer-Sprinzeles about ways I could expand my portfolio. She suggested trying to reach a younger market, adding anthropomorphic animals, perhaps doing something more painterly. This is my first stab at it and it has been incredibly fun. After a few little thumbnail character sketches I dove into the full sketch - maybe it took three hours - then scanned and tweaked in Photoshop. I am coloring it digitally - Photoshop as well. I have finally achieved enough ease working digitally that it has become a right brain process and not the mental torture it used to be for me.

One of my favorite poems...

Poem: "One reason I like opera," by Marge Piercy, from Colors Passing Through Us (Knopf).

One reason I like opera

In movies, you can tell the heroine
because she is blonder and thinner
than her sidekick. The villainess
is darkest. If a woman is fat,
she is a joke and will probably die.

In movies, the blondest are the best
and in bleaching lies not only purity
but victory. If two people are both
extra pretty, they will end up
in the final clinch.

Only the flawless in face and body
win. That is why I treat
movies as less interesting
than comic books. The camera
is stupid. It sucks surfaces.

Let's go to the opera instead.
The heroine is fifty and weighs
as much as a '65 Chevy with fins.
She could crack your jaw in her fist.
She can hit high C lying down.

The tenor the women scream for
wolfs down an eight course meal daily.
He resembles a bull on hind legs.
His thighs are the size of beer kegs.
His chest is a redwood with hair.

Their voices twine, golden serpents.
Their voices rise like the best
fireworks and hang and hang
then drift slowly down descending
in brilliant and still fiery sparks.

The hippopotamus baritone (the villain)
has a voice that could give you
an orgasm right in your seat.
His voice smokes with passion.
He is hot as lava. He erupts nightly.

The contralto is, however, svelte.
She is supposed to be the soprano's
mother, but is ten years younger,
beautiful and Black. Nobody cares.
She sings you into her womb where you rock.

What you see is work like digging a ditch,
hard physical labor. What you hear
is magic as tricky as knife throwing.
What you see is strength like any
great athlete's. What you hear

is still rendered precisely as the best
Swiss watchmaker. The body is
resonance. The body is the cello case.
The body just is. The voice loud
as hunger remagnetizes your bones.