Proof Of Life

Sydney Poitier from Deathproof was my onscreen crush for 2007. So hot you wonder where she's been all your life. I mean , I knew her dad(on screen not in real life) for so long you just can't believe you haven't seen his hot daughter(whose name sounds exactly the same). I couldn't watch the new DVD without drawing her. Her detached coolness is just irresistable.

My sister went to her friends sweet sixteen party tonight. I have no idea what to make of that. Except I want to out brat all those girls(I know the girl and she's not a brat).






This Batman shit is getting old. Get over it, dude, you're not gay, so he'll never sleep with you(and I don't think Batman is gay either, although that Robin thing is making me wonder). Stop drawing Batman!

The girls near Rockridge BART are pretty hot. Just saying, better quality than most of the Bay Area. Not North Beach quality, but good. Need to find an excuse to go back to my sweet Austin(where Deathproof was filmed, so it is true, hot girls hang out there).

Drawing some huge ass pages this week. 21X14. Sci Fi stuff with space ships and aliens and armor and warfare. Wrote the story a few years back and am finally drawing it. It's for my own comic. It needs new name. I like one word titles generaly.

Might buy Halo 3 tomorrow. Bought Stranglehold and that kicked a nice amount of ass.

I made a buhnch of commitments for Saturday and I can't remember a single one. I think maybe I was supposed to record some music or go to a signing or something. I told people shit and chances of me coming through are not so good. Oh well.




Oh and Katharine Mcfee is getting married...I hope he keeps her warm for when I get famous and steal her away from that old fucker. If you don't think she is hot I hope you starve to death on an iceberg. She is so hot I would rip the skin from the bottom of my feet and make sandals for her.


Adrian

Another Lee

I don't have time to write anything for this post right now, but at least the sketch is posted. This blog should be turned over to Adrian and someone who can post better quality work on a regular basis. Argh. Need to manage my schedule better. Maybe less sleep, more drawing.

-cm

Vacation Sketches 3/Drakes Bay

I really like the movie the Fog, the original, and no it isn't very
good except it has some great scenes done in Drakes Bay north of
San Francisco. I went there with my sister one day for no good reason
except we were near the golden gate bridge. She's cool so she just
went along with my weird ocean obsession. It is like this weird
remote bay/park/lost part of the coast with no real houses(except
those seen in the Fog), a crazy lighthouse, and the windiest part of
the west coast. It is like another state altogether. I stared at the
ocean for a really long time looking for whales or even more
ridiculous, great white sharks, which would be a one in a thousand
chance to see(the sharks, not the whales, I was in the wrong time of
year for the whales). Long miles of remote beach. You go there and
you just know that despite new theories to the contrary, Francis Drake
had to have landed there. It is really a sight to see. Later on this
summer I flew over San Francisco and saw that it was so ridiculously
close to the bay. It was like the distance to Oakland. Just the
plane turning made us go over the bay bridge, over SF, then over the
golden gate, and really near Drakes Bay(it's basically the roads and
uneven terrain that make it like two hours to get to). Recommended if
you like nature and are obsessed with history and the ocean, and the
remote parts of california.



There are a lot of historical places that people ignore if they don't
know otherwise. I remember reading accounts of the Mussle Slough
Massacre that took place at the turn of the century in the middle of
California. Shoot outs involving Ambrose Bierce(The author of the
great story "Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge"). All this shit just
happens around us and is forgotten. Whole tribes of indians existen
in the bay area and disappeared before we ever recorded them(as did
the tribes that met Francis Drake, they even sacrificed shit to him
and tortured themselves for him, he declined the compliments, and now
his shipmates are the only recorded history of them from that time).

I was looking at some maps of lakes in california and found all kinds
of weird names that had to have stories behind them(Killer's Cove
among them). That was only because I remember from childhood going to
Clearlake and hearing stories of people dieing in ponds because of the
gases in the springs(and man did I see some weird ass creeks and coves
in Clearlake).

I even found a resource for Bigfoot sightings in all these places I
had been. Really funny half done reports from decades ago of hairy
giant apes running down cliffs and making crazy sounds at
night(seriously, those accounts are like episodes of In Search Of,
another of my favorite shows ever).

I don't know what I'm talking about. It's 4:30, I should be
asleep(what I'm waking up for I don't know, lack of pussy cloud's
men's minds like Obi Wan Kenobi, there you happy, now you have an
example of the problem, I'm kidding). Keep drawing, keep living, keep
loving. Something like that.

I want to dress as a Jack O' Lantern for halloween if not for anything
else then to homage Halloween 3, a shitty movie, but it has the
greatest Jack O' Lantern seen ever. For real, find it on youtube,
it's fucking messed up.

Jack O' Lantern filled with bugs and snakes

And just because I'm in love with the theme.

Silver Shamrock commercial

I drew the sketches while waiting in Chicago for three hours on the tarmac sleep deprived and hallucenigenic(didn't even try to spell tht right). The Batman I drew on vacation in Miami after sleeping a few days from the plane ordeal.


Adrian

I've been keeping in touch with friends outside of California and outside of the United States through a certain site. Short version is this: there's a werewolf icon used on the site, and I didn't like the way it looked, so I started drawing one in Photoshop on my tablet which had just been sitting in my room, neglected. I came up with the blue one first because the icon had that hue to it; that's what my memory told me anyway. The second was was just playing with layers and different blending modes. Not too different except I kind of liked the blue-ish tint to the face area, and it ended up having the traditional brown fur that werewolves have in movies or books.

On another note, congrats to Rivero and everyone else on finishing the movie. I think I said it at the bar, but may have forgotten thanks to the beers. Can't wait to see the final edit.

I also need to do more with my previous posts--Spider-man and the Drawing Board Jam stuff.

-cm

I Finished My Movie!!!/Vacation sketches 2/I Heart Batman

I'm thrilled, frightened, and a million other colors of emotions because I finished filming my movie on Sunday. I can die tomorrow and something I created exists no matter what(I won't die tomorrow, but I just heard that famous fantasy writer I never read Robert Jordan died, and since he is the contemporary of George R.R. Martin whose Game Of Thrones I've gotten around ten people to read, I am thinking about mortality and completing things before I die.).

We filmed the final scene of the movie plus some inserts. We had something of a celebration afterwards. Actually it lasted all day. First we finished filming the endiing scene at around 2 PM. Then we headed over to a pub that Paul and Taylor wanted to hang out at. We bullshitted about our future stories and movies. We talked about my favorite book Hyperion and how it practically is the last word on Science Fiction and how it's a massive look at literature, poetry, and the common tropes of science fiction. It is Star Wars times 30 and smart and emotional. Then I showed them the collection of 1939-1940 comics by Fletcher Hanks called I Shall Destroy All Civilized Worlds. They freaked out at how completely vindictive the omnipotent character was and how ignorant the writing was. It somehow ends up being genius in its stupidity. Everything infantile about comics is realized in it's pages. Doug joined us a bit later. We sat there drinking great beer for 7 hours. 7 hours of beautiful intoxication and talking with friends. After we shot the night scenes(that's why we were waiting around until dark) we went to a tiki bar and drank for another three hours. Even Mendoza joined us. He told us disgusting pizza stories. It was a blast.

This first chapter of storytelling in my life is almost over. The hard work is done. I am happy. But at the same time I feel weird that this is a chronicle of some pretty low times in my life realized as a fictionl single aspect of who I am. During the making of this I have gained friends, lost friends, had my heart broken, changed my whole attitude towards life, moved, lost a pet to a stupid disease, become the legal parent to my sister, and worst of all, lost my mother. In a way this needed to end to turn the horrible page and clean the slate. I've never had it worse than those years. Everything was at the edge of being lost. My sister, my money, my life, my stories, my friends, everything. I only complain about things now because I have entered into better place and I still have a few things I have to fix. But those things are relatively small. I have this chronicle. It doesn't explain who I am or my motivations, but it gives a small glimpse. I've looked at my other screenplays and i see myself much more.

This was written by Doug Clarke and I years ago as something to do. Something to express our sense of humor, and to show how weird we think Paul Gordan is(he's the villian and Doug is the hero, I'm the goof off friend, and no this is a skewed version of reality, no one is a villian or a hero and I can't just be a goof off and that's it). Paul's dialogue was like a fetish of mine. that is where you really see into my mind. his strange logic and the way the scenes with him are funny in a dark yet goofy sense. It's my ultimate asshole character and how I feel the world treats me all at once. I want to be him and I want to destroy him. And, yes Paul does sort of act like him. He tried to act a few times and missed the point. There is no need to act, the words come out of his mouth this way with no affectation. Of course, Paul is a nice guy, the asshole part was basically all me. The opposite of me but me.

I look at my other screenplays and I see the pure unrefined me. Goode Apples, my comedy is all the stupid things I think but can't say because they are just stupid. It is all the weird things I've seen about people and the innocent yet evil ways people can be. You love the characters but they are brutally stupid. They don't apologze for it. You have to accept that people are flawed and beautiful all at once. My Samurai action movie, Tooth And Nail is everything I feel hasn't been done properly in action and all the crazy thiings I've always wanted to see. A Thousand Words is the closest to me. It's about me. My life, my relationships(yet fictionalized since half of people and situations in this are fictional) and my personality. How I react to people. My inadiquacies(sp?). And how my weakness to women is a strength, yes, but also a sort of innocent ignorance that I need to grow from. It is real. Emotionally it is real. My friiendships, the fun times, the bad times, it is all me. I am the most proud of it and the most scared of showing it. Only Taylor and Mendoza have read parts of it. I wrote fifty pages of it in one day. I ended up changing about two pages of it. After editing it and editing it. The Dead Next Door, my first movie had seven edits. Goode Apples had three. Tooth And Nail had two. I'm talking finished edits with new scenes and fixed dialogue. I am not finished with A Thousand Words but so far I am 99% happy with it. And I'm 80 pages in with a target of 120 pages.

But for now I have this movie. The Dead Next Door. For now this is the closest you can get to me. This is the yard stick to my mental personal space. And a part of my life is forever behind me. That is great and terrible. Now to finish editing it.

The post by Mendoza, Sorry Spiderman reminds me of that Hollies song, Sorry Suzanne. I've been studying them to write songs in that vein for Goode Apples.

The first picture is some stuff I drew on vacation in Miami. It shows what I was thinking about and how I felt that day. The second I drew last night(the date is wrong by a day). I just love Batman. I love lighting him, drawing all the different plains of his face and mask. Making an asskicking scary guy of the imaginations of millions into a reality of my own mind. My own vision of him. Have to stop drawing him already.

Adrian

Sorry Spider-man

It's funny that Adrian's been posting Batman and Spider-man drawings because that's all there was for a long time at my house when my brother and I were growing up. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but I liked Spider-man and he liked Batman, and it was an unspoken battle for a few years until I wised up and read Year One, Dark Knight, Action Comics Annual 1, and those Alan Davis Detective issues. Now, we read whatever we think is good without thinking who's publishing it, so I always think it's weird when people still say that they only read one or the other. And what about all the good comics that aren't published by DC and Marvel? Those folks are missing out on a lot.

Here's my first post in a long time and there's so much I want to try with drawing Spider-man and Mary Jane. I'll try to keep at it and post a follow-up.

Vacation Sketches 1 - Batman 1 - Oil Wrestling

I drew this on vacation. I was in Miami just chilling. Drawing, reading, and hanging out with my family. It was really nice. I became obsessed with trying to draw a really scary Batman(which if you've read any old posts you know I am obsessed with trying to draw him scary enough). I think this is the closest now. I've drawn better but not this scary. I penciled it, inked it, and then tried to correct little tiny things with white paint but the white paint kept mixing with the black ink to kind of a cool effect.

I ended up going to a party because an old friend of mine told me some friends from high school invited him. There ended up being basically every band in my area with every hot goth chick(yes, my favorite, so I was happy) in a ten mile radius at the party. But that wasn't what sold me. It was the oil wrestling. I guess the person who threw the party(the friend from high school) hired some girls to oil wrestle. Apparently there wasn't enough so they asked for volunteers which meant goth chicks covered with oil in only their underwear. Again, very happy was I. It was so good I even hit on the lesbian one. She was butch(not looking, just the way she carried herself) but she was like twenty(my magic number with women) and she had a hot girlfriend that she led around. Really, you don't see a lot of hot goths in their underwear covered in oil(unless they are your girlfriend, and yes, I have). The world needs more of that. Whats with half of the goth girls now bleaching their hair. It's hot, but it almost guarantees high maintenance. I ditched early, because leaving early is my new thing, went to Ruby Room in Oakland and was reminded about how much the Bay Area sucks.

I think I have gotten nothing done since finishing those Batman samples. I have a bunch of half finished things laying around. I need to ramp up my output.

Adrian

The Scorpion

The Scorpion is my favorite Spiderman villian. I grew up on Spiderman. I bought Amaziing, Spectacular, and Web Of, and even those reprints that came out in the eighties. Because of that I had a nice overview of the character and not just the current one but the past interpretations. I actually think half of my moral compass comes from Peter Parker(for better or worse, I think for better). I loved all his colorful villians with their own inadequacies. Green Goblin was fucking crazy and wanted to bring Peter with him. Adrian Toomes, the Vulture was old. Doctor Octopus fucking slapped Spiderman after beating him in those old Ditko comics. Mysterio was awesome with all his special effects. The Lizard had his whole tragic story. Sandman was just a plain thug. But I loved Scorpion most of all.

Scorpion was a crazy thug named Mac Gargan who was picked by J. Jonah Jameson to defeat Spiderman. He was given powers and went crazy. For some reason now he wanted to kill Spiderman and Jameson. I always loved how weird he looked for no real reason. His mask didn't cover his eyebrows. He clearly shaved all the hair off his body about twice a week. Showers didn't seem to be in the picture. And he was mad. Like madder than anyone. Hulk level mad. I remember my friend Roland showing me a row of panels where he just got madder and madder just standing still. And the Stan Lee captions just explained how mad he was getting.

I also worked all night last drawing this and revising my Batman pages. Here is a direct link to them.

www.graphicapparatus.blogspot.com/2007/07/batman-pages-inked.html#links

At least 50% of it has been changed drastically. Now it's back to drawing my own pages. Thank god. Whatever.

Adrian

Baristas

So this is an embarrassing story. My summer of failure was dotted with near moments of coolness punctuated by dismal embarrassment. As was the case here. I came into the Starbucks with Mendoza to ostensibly flirt with my favorite girl, we called her Original Sauce(of course the more I like them the longer it takes for me to get up the nerve to do so) only to end up flirting with another. Original Sauce happened to be working and I talked to her a little, but another beautiful barista ends up sweeping near me. I can't help myself and start talking to her. I notice that this barista is also gorgous and nice. Next thing I know my balls have dropped and I start full on hitting on her. I even resort to old standards like how pretty her eyes are(I was actually being honest and the moment that came out of my mouth I realized how trite and cliche it was). I try to justify it and at the same time hit on her more by telling her I should just paint her eyes onto this picture I'm working on. She laughs and I can't help but do it. I end up hitting on her more, shes really cool about it and it is now just obvious, and finally she knows she needs to tell me the jig is up because the phone number question is about thirty seconds away. She subtely tells me that the guy working complements her eyes. I figure out what that means back off and look down at my drawing of her. I think Mendoza was laughing but I wouldnt even look him in the eye.

I've said many times how bad I am at likenesses so I never was really afraid it would look like her anyway. But, somehow, this one time, it does actually look a hell of a lot like her. I look at her behind the counter just to check if I am wrong about the likeness and if she is really with the guy or I was just imagining things. Of course both things end up true and on top of it I hit on this girl in front of my real crush. I try to pretend it isn't her by changing the hair color but it doesn't change a thing. It is her. On top of all that I'm kind of friends with her boyfriend so it was really humiliating that I was such an idiot.

Anyway, they ended up both being super cool and pretending I wasn't the idiot I am. I saw them a bunch more times after that and hung out with them while they were on break once. They want to buy the painting. She even called it the painting with her eyes which totally made me blush, because again I tried to change it but it was clearly her. I even changed the hair color. Oh well.

And the other barista, Original Sauce, had a boyfriend the whole time so I never had a chance. I don't remember why we called her Original Sauce maybe because she was like the best barbecue sauce(or something stupid like that).

None of them work there anymore. I was sad to see the couple go because they were genuinely cool people. But Original Sauce just broke my heart. She was so fucking cool and hot and sweet and smart. I never painted anything of her. I was that weak. But sometimes I look at things I painted there and I can tell there is something...just something that reminds me of her. And now I probably will never see her again.

It's weird how people pop in and out of life like a few frames of film in your own personal movie. I wish I had a pause button.

Adrian

I just realized...

that I have to post something before going to work today. I'll try to get something done in the next 30 minutes; maybe it's time to look at the Drawing Jam section on The Drawing Board. Rivero's been telling to check out the site more and post more often.

update: 2:48pm sketch added... will work on it a little more and maybe do an inked version that takes more risks... photo ref from The Drawing Board--August 07 Drawing Jam.

-cm

Green Arrow

I lost. The post contest is over. I went to Oakland yesterday for the art and soul festival. Afterwards me Taylor, Sara(taylor's girl) and Sabrina went bar hopping at like 6 PM. We got tanked at Radio, the bar I once filmed at for my movie(the link on the side has a clip from that bar). I invited Mendoza. We got more tanked met up with Paul at the Ruby Room. Then a few hours later after we were too fucked up to walk to Taylor's Paul drove us to his and Doug's house where we eventually got kicked out of because we were too loud(actually Paul and I were too loud but he lives there). We then walked over to Taylor and I drove Sabrina home and met up with Mendoza at 24 hour Starbucks where we talked for another hour about my love life(not really much of a love life more like several crushes who have rapists[boyfriends]) and how pathetic as it is it is officially over. Slates clean, time to start over. Or cut off the equipment for lack of usage.. All of a sudden I realized that I forgot to post. And it was like 5 in the morning so I was way too late. Mendoza got a hearty laugh out of it and I sulked my way home and wished him good luck going over his ghost bridge to Vallejo. Mendoza won the post contest.

I think Green Arrow is cool. He is a crazy billionaire liberal. Basically Richard Branson as a crime fighter. I sat around today and felt like sketching so I drew Green Arrow. The sketch was only okay so I slapped some paint on it. It's called polishing a turd. It kind of worked here but I still didn't take it too far becuase it was just a page in my nearly 400 page sketchbook. Maybe that's laziness. Whatever. I didn't plan on commiting to a fucking full painting when I started sketching today. Wow, excuses excuses. It was done in pencil then painted over with acrylic ink, then back over with white acrylic, then inked with india ink and acrylic ink, then gessoed over in places, then inked with a micron pen. Polishiing a turd.

I also added a half done page of art I was working on because I like the way it looks half inked. The characters are supposed to be in almost complete darkness. So the panels are supposed to be about 90% black.

Adrian

Studying the best

Like studying the work of masters in a museum, I decided to look at two amazing artists--Jaime Hernandez and Paul Pope. Yes, I copied these panels, but only to learn something about spotting blacks and only drawing what is necessary. Again, I only did this to learn something and I apologize to the artists for doing such a bad job of imitating their line work and inking styles...