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June 13, 2006

Hiatus

I know I've just been on a hiatus (sort of) but I'm now announcing another hiatus - heading to Alaska for the fishing season, once again. I have officially quit the day job (alaska has a way of keeping me from working the steady 9-to-fiver, alas) and upon my return from Alaska in mid-July will be applying myself to the new life of freelancing a la theBarnstorming. As a last hurrah before I go (I'm leaving tomorrow at 11am to make the long trek, arriving the next day around noon) I am including another wrong-handed-staff-meeting-doodle that I did last staff meeting. I have decided that I don't really like the colored in versions I did last time on the computer. I'll have to figure some other way to do it. I suppose I could paint them, in spite of their being on the backs of job sheets, but I haven't done it yet.

So, forthwith!
Fleas:

I have pleaded with Matthew to get his ass back in gear and start posting here, but I don't know that it will work. I think he feels I've usurped the Idiots' Box and made it the Idiot's Box. There's room in here for two, Matthew. Just try not to stink up the joint.

Posted by ribbu at 09:32 PM

June 07, 2006

Foiled Again!

Alright everyone. Thanks to those of you who voted, yet again, on another miserable effort by yours truly. I scored a whopping 1.7 out of 5, which, according to my excellent math skillz (cross-multiplying, etc) is basically a 34%. For those of you who have been out of school for a while, that translates to an E. Or, in some places, an F which stands for FAIL. So, needless to say, I don't think that anyone is going to be printing this t-shirt, in spite of all of your efforts. I should probably just give up on making you register for all these things already! I comfort myself by insisting that obviously the people who voted on my shirt were mostly pimply-faced high school kids who like pictures of skulls or boobies on their t-shirts. (Actually, I totally love the boobies).

Well, the good news is, I've gotten another job (who needs t-shirts when you've got a job, right?). I'm doing some illustrations for our alumni magazine for an article about the administrative offices there being a sort of incubator for college presidents. It's eerily like the other article I illustrated about CEOs of insurance companies being nurtured from within. Anyway, the art director working on it clearly is not overly excited about the article (she insists on always referring to it with the adjectives "rather dry", "long" and "too long") but thinks I can inject a little bit of excitement into it. I hope so. I've got some sketches done so far but can't upload yet - sorry, I'm at work right now, waiting for pdfs to get processed.

The other news is that this art director told me that she described my work to a friend so: "It's like if Ralph Steadman had a sex change and a partial lobotomy!*" I can't tell if that's a compliment or not, except that I love Ralph Steadman. I'm pretty sure that Ralph Steadman would hate the comparison, and maybe say that I am copying his style (everyone else does). I've had a bit of a dilemma about that, but think, ultimately, that I don't really draw like Steadman, I just use the same tools and have a sort of dark sense of humor. And since so few people seem to use those particular tools, everyone thinks that if it's messy and scratchy and blotchy, I must just be stealing from him. So, whatever. I mean, frankly, he's just in a league of his own. Like Picasso. If I'm going to remind people of someone, it may as well be the best.

* you don't have to read this complete link, but I love the hilarious conclusion he comes to about psychiatry at the end of the page. This is what happens when they just let anybody onto the internet. Ah, free speech. You gotta love it.

Posted by ribbu at 03:54 PM | Comments (5)