AN IMPORTANT REMINDER and some other junk


I bet Jed is not exaggerating about spending 1.5 hours chewing me out, only to have his hard work wasted by blogger. TIP: When commenting or posting anywhere on the web (especially on blogger or facebook or anything like that) if you are going to get wordy, type it in a text program and save as you go - like I am doing right now! (see fig A).

...TEENY WEENY NEWS...

What will become of Teeny Weeny, now that Nick Mag is folding? He'll be homeless for awhile, perhaps forever, but all of the existing Teeny Weeny comics are being revamped and collected in full-color collection that I will publish via Ka-Blam or one of the other print-on-demand publishers. Soon! Sometime this summer I hope.

Meanwhile, I'd like to share this blog with you. Sculptor Rick stumbled across this one.

Follower Lee Long shared this great Japanese candy web site. As I told Lee, I have seen many things that remind me of Teeny, but this is my FAVORITE! (Stay tuned for more surprises from Lee, sometime in the future).

And the Voice Of Reason sent this:


...END OF TEENY WEENY NEWS...


Here is that portrait that has haunted and tortured me for over a year. Probably more like two years. Our neighbor the plumber asked if I'd be willing to do this in trade when he fixed our plumbing back then. I said "sure" and proceeded to do a horrible job of capturing his daughter and his dog on paper. I gave up and decided I'd wait a while, and try again. I waited a while, and committed another horrendous image to paper, and wrestled it for days before finally admitting defeat and crawling out of my studio ashamed and confused.

Weeks passed. I finally sent the plumber a check and told him I was just too busy, take the money, I'll try again later. The photos of this kid and dog have been in my studio ever since, a constant reminder that I failed miserably.

A couple of weeks ago I was on vacation, and decided to tackle this beast again. I worked on it for a couple of days, and even posted it here once, before realizing it was still an abomination. So I worked on it some more and some more...

I am finally ready to call it done. It's still not great, still has flaws, but it is good enough. It will be in the plumber's hands this week, and I am free of it forever!

This is why I said I will probably never accept another portrait job again, unless there is a lot of money or a really great reference photo involved.

FYI - Yes, this was markered, painted, and colored penciled over a xerox printout of a photoshop collage done from the photos. I cheated, but I feel like my integrity is intact since I DID paint over it, and did not just run one of those Photoshop "brush strokes" filters. And you should see the photos - they were awful! No detail, no good light and shadow. If this was a "real" job I would not have accepted it, if that's all the reference I could get.

Eh, whatever - I admit it, I needed a crutch for this one.

5 comments:

James Robert Smith said...

Whatever gets you through the portrait. It's all right.

("noscipat" a much better word verification than "condi")

eeTeeD said...

i never would have guessed that this is your work.

when are you going to start on the portrait of orestes calpini for the "forgotten masters of animation and comic book art hall of fame"?

cKasterine said...

Don't be so hard on yourself. The dog is really well done and the kid is sweet. Plus plumbers cost a fortune.

Mark Martin said...

Oh I know. I'm just bemoaning.

Jed Alexander said...

Yes, yes I know. that's what I normally do. I didn't realize it was going to be so enormous while I was writing it, then it wouldn't post, then I copied it with the intention of pasting it in an e-mail to you, but before I pasted it I copied and pasted your e-mail address, thus obliterating all my hard wasted time.

But it's not like I was going to bend you towards my cause, or convert you or something. So it was probably better that it didn't get posted. The pain.

The portrait isn't bad, the dog especially, but the blue eyes freak me out. The affect is evocative of those black and white eerily hand-painted adorable children in adult clothing prints you see. Also the fudged clothing doesn't work with the hyper rendering of the rest of it.

But I'm sure the plumber will love it! The kid is cute and I'm sure it's an excellent likeness.

I'm never able to do portraits that please people. I'm unable to beautify. It always ends up looking like a German expressionist painting.