Wigwag Larynx (August 23, 2013)

While looking through some of my old portfolios, I came across a short series of cartoons that I originally intended to publish in some newspaper or journal. Of course, they never got published and have never been seen by anyone. I am not even sure what year I created them. They were created as a surrealist comic strip satire and titled “Wigwag Larynx”. This title was suggested by my friend, Doug Haire, a music artist,  performer and sound engineer. When I didn’t ever do anything with the comic strip, Doug put out an album titled “Wigwam Bendix”. You see his work at this link:

http://doughaire.com/

Over the next couple of weeks I will collect and scan all of these comic strips and then post them to the blog. Below is the first one.

Audubon Automatron (August 15, 2013)

One of my favorite sculptures in this city is the James Audubon automatron located in the park office at Miami Whitewater Park. I love this piece. It is a life size figure of James Audubon sitting down and next to him is a pond with live turtles that swim around. If you press the buttons located at the pedestal – he comes alive and you hear him talking and he moves pretty realistically. It is very surreal.  So, of course I decided to draw it and document it before he breaks down. It is nice to have a human subject that stays still long enough to draw them.

Bad Plant, Good Plant (August 8, 2013)

While I was hiking along some trails I noticed how this good plant and this bad plant always seem to grow in the same area. So I stopped to draw both of these plants in my sketchbook. The first bad plant is poison ivy and it is identifiable from the three leaves – the leaf in the middle is always symmetrical with three points on the leaf. The middle leaf is flanked by two leaves that both have two points on them. The two flanking leaves look like mirror images of each other. It is the urushiol oil in the leaves and stems that give you the rash.The second good plant is jewelweed and has a very knobby, crunchy, juicy stem when you smash it. The juice from this stem can be applied on your arms and legs to help neutralize the urushiol oil in poison ivy. It can also be used to relieve and itch that you get from a insect bite or stinging nettle. This plant may have beautiful orange or yellow flowers or not. I also apply the juice of the plant to my arms and legs to avoid mosquito bites – it seems to work for me. The interesting thing is that poison ivy and jewelweed often grows in the same area. Jewelweed likes a slightly more wet, swampy soil.