No. 215: Thinking Cap

"Toby" by Tom Wills, August 2013

Looking at the current crop of young people makes me grateful for growing up in the 1960s and '70s, before hand-held video gaming and other toys of the mind came into vogue. Granted it was my generation that ushered in the problem, starting simply with Pong, then Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Who at the time could have foreseen World of Warcraft, Mortal Combat, Grand Theft Auto and all of the other mind-suck out there now.

  

Somebody call the boys 'cause there's no men in here

My g-g-g-generation had to use its imagination.  We had tree forts, went fishing, rode bikes long distances, ice skated on ponds, caught frogs and turtles, read books, built (and lost control of) the occasional fire, swam, canoed, watched trains ...   Basically, we breathed air.

The Young Lion

Sure, our parents and grandparents dressed us in garb that seems goofy now.  At the time, however, it was special stuff. We were cowboys, indians, soldiers, sailors. We felt like heroes.  And we were damned cute doing it, too.

The idea of spending untold hours, and full nights, in front of a glowing screen seemed impossible then, and horrifies me now.  There are a lot of sluggish movers and thinkers out there, exercising their minds and bodies only though right clicks, toggles, left clicks, joysticks (do they still call 'em that?) and other waka-jawaka.

It scares me that wars can now be fought this way.

Listen to me my friend
What you will not defend
Somebody else will end up takin'
And when the famine comes
You think they'll just give you some
But if you believe that
You're mistaken 

I admit to being guilty, to a point. My kids watched a lot of Ren and Stimpy in their childhood years. And they do have PlayStations and Wiis and all of that. But they also had dogs, cats and bikes and I always made sure they got outdoors.  Still, I think as adults they would prefer to stay inside and stare away, which concerns me greatly. 

And that's why I like this picture so much. The kid is decked out and putting his imagination to work.  He's getting out into the air and putting some sunshine on the skin.
I have seen people who are nearly transparent from lack of pigmentation. Mole people!
I know people who punish their kids by taking away their games and making them play outside.

Both the old guy and the young kid still in me are glad to know that there are still boys who will put on a cowboy hat and a bandana. It's a relief to know that these things are timeless.
Young people and young adults, put on your own style of thinking cap and go out and do something, for God's sake. 
While you still have time.

The New Lion. Unfortunately he is examining a hand-held device.

The lyrics are from "Manup" by Todd Rundgren, MPCA Humanoid Music, 2008.

No. 214: Maybe I'm Amazed

"McCartney" by Tom Wills, August 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgg5WxX8m74

"Maybe I'm Amazed" is a perfect song.
For what is basically a four-track home recording, it's just the right balance of mellow and heavy.
Paul McCartney gets to use all of his great voices: A little "Get Back," some blues, a pinch of falsetto, and a touch of "Let It Be."
Even the length is just right.

"Maybe I'm Amazed" came out of a bad time, then came out at a bad time.
The Beatles were finished, so said John Lennon.  Paul retreated to his farm and fell into months of depression, uncertain of what to do next.

"Maybe I'm a man and maybe I'm a lonely man
Who's in the middle of something
That he doesn't really understand"

But songs started to form, with encouragement from his wife Linda.

Maybe I'm amazed at the way you're with me all the time
Maybe I'm afraid of the way I leave you
Maybe I'm amazed at the way you help me sing my song
You right me when I'm wrong
Maybe I’m amazed at the way I really need you

This is my favorite Paul period -- at the end and at the beginning.
The album "McCartney" came out in April 1970 before The Beatles' "Let It Be," despite the pleadings of George and Ringo.
So, Paul took a lot of blame for the breakup of The Beatles.
People at first derided his simple songs about sunglasses, junk in the yard, Linda, and a few instrumentals and experiments. The album gatefold was full of family photographs.
The cover was a bowl of spilled cherries, as if to say, "Life is NOT a bowl full of cherries."
No one, however, dismissed the second-to-last song, "Maybe I'm Amazed."

The song had been spiffed up to eight tracks at Abbey Road and sounded not unlike The Beatles.
Paul played the greatest guitar solos he'd ever played, nailed the drums, stroked the piano and of course was stellar on bass.
He did it all, a giant declaration of independence. Who needs 'em!

Though he refused to release "Maybe I'm Amazed" as a single, radio stations began to pick it up.
This confused me, when I was 9 years old. There was a new "Beatles" song on the radio.  But it wasn't in the 45 bins at Woolworths or Strouss or Warren Music Center.
My dad and I tracked it down in what had been Hank Ross's Trumbull Camera and Hobby Shop in the Trumbull Plaza (its original site, before relocating two more times and then closing).
Hank sold albums and had them on a peg board along a wall of the store. One of them was the bowl of cherries record.  

On the back was a bearded Paul with a baby tucked inside his coat, the word "McCartney" emblazoned across the top.
A green Apple Records logo was in the bottom left corner.

At first I loved only "Maybe I'm Amazed."
As the years have passed my appreciation for this first homegrown effort has quadrupled. It's quite an achievement for just one musician, even if it's a bit sappy. There is a lot of wicked guitar playing and good vocals; it's easy to sing along and even play along with.  He is a very good drummer.

I played a lot of McCartney in the days it took to complete this drawing. He has made a lot of music. Most of it is good, some of it is icky, but a few are downright great. "Maybe I'm Amazed" is at the top, for me.
The illustration actually captures Paul at the piano during the making of "Let It Be," a record that he had wanted to keep simple. But it became a mess that had to be saved by an outside producer, after the Fab Four had moved to their separate corners.
In "McCartney," Paul realized his simple album the only way that it could have been done: On his own.

This illustration is for sale.
For inquiries, hankbonesman@embarqmail.com

No. 213: Raising The Image

I generally post these drawings when everything is all cleaned up and put away.
This time, I chose the moment of completion --
because this one was all about capturing a moment.

Cindi can call it what she likes. In my catalog, No. 213 is "Daddy's Girl."
Click on all images to enlarge.

My original brain cramp, when first considering this project, was to call this chapter, "Perfecting The Image." It's a phrase that I see every afternoon at work, as does the woman who hired me for this project. It's a little phrase that a computer burps out every time it turns on as it adjusts itself for a regular 4 p.m. meeting.

But "Raising The Image" works better here for a couple of reasons.  First, the finished product is not perfect.
"It's an approximation of what you wish to see," I have told Cindi, who wanted me to preserve a beloved childhood family memory.
She can now, at least, see more than she could before.

We had kicked around, and I had frankly badgered her about, taking a photo from her childhood and turning it into a sketch. She said the picture was kind of fuzzy.
Ha! The accuracy of a journalist! As you can see, the original is pretty rough.
She gave me two photos from the same time period, the same vacation -- a lakeside cabin in Canada in the late 1950s.

I wanted to draw her playing with daddy in the water. I could see their faces.
She wanted them on the cottage steps. Faces not visible.
It looked like the cameraman -- camera woman? Mom? moved.  Perhaps sunlight fried the image.  There is a lot wrong with this little frozen memory.
So, I took the better picture and flipped it.  And then I blew up and copied those faces, tilted them by some degrees, and pasted them onto the bad image.  I also cut and spliced pieces of door and siding.
So while the drawing is 100 percent analog, some computer trickery was involved.  I didn't get the alignment just right but I took care of those adjustments with my pencil.

Complicating matters is our figuring out, over the phone one night, that daddy is also holding onto a baby doll. Or a giraffe (We went with doll). You may have to look hard to see it. Working from dicey images is a real challenge, and this one was by far the most challenging.

The first thing I did was draw those flipped faces. I knew that the whole project would be junked if I couldn't get them. This led to another problem: It made the drawing bigger than Cindi wanted. But my human hands just couldn't get it any smaller. These are quarter-sized heads central to the larger image. I kept futzing with the faces ("I think my hair was more straight") as I shaded around them and added the background. Honestly the last pencil mark on the finished work was on daddy's face. 

Cindi wanted the whole image, including the family car, which I roughed in, above, and became one of the coolest parts of this piece. I had a little trouble seeing where her dad's pants began and ended; above is a guess -- one refined throughout the process of raising this image.

Right about here was when I sent the night-time baby doll text message.  "What's he got under his arm, tucked up next to you?" I wondered.  It looks like two baby doll feet are hanging down; really I just can't tell and this is one piece that I'm not sure of.  As drawn, you can decipher those baby doll feet and a little arm snugged against dad; the head is hidden under his forearm, tucked into his daughter's back. He had his hands full, it seems. I'm also assuming that's a camera bag, though it could have been mom's purse. She might have been lugging the picnic basket!

With father and daughter in the foreground, I set about building their stage. I could see the bottom of the little cabin in the original photo, but not the top and not much of that door.  There's a No. 20 and a roof line, and a tree. There's what appears to be a cement stoop, with the family car parked up close. I ventured it's a Ford Fairlane. 

Two things that I do love about this drawing are the car and dad's wristwatch.  Can you see it? Man, that's small. I could see some of the siding, but guessed at most of it. Really tried to make it look like wood. I brought the shading around the stoop and dad's feet to a centered point, likely sand and dirt (maybe gravel), to give the finished piece a clean look. The white space sets off the central image.

The roof came last. I could see its shape but not its detail -- just a triangular black mass. So I guessed at how it might have looked. At the end I made a decision to omit the section of cabin off to the left, as well as the tree leaves to the right. Leaving just the roof peak gave the image a symmetry, paired with the tapered dirt and sand at the bottom.  The right-hand side of the roof line was not visible, blotted out by sun and overexposure, so I chose to fade it out.

This is the second time that I have been able to rescue an image. The first example is here:
http://tomwillsproductions.blogspot.com/2010/12/sisters.html
Another example, from a better photo, is here:
http://tomwillsproductions.blogspot.com/2011/09/marengo.html

I'm very proud of these three, because they were requested by friends, and I was able to preserve and perhaps enhance their original vision.
As for No. 213, it remains unframed -- as Cindi wanted to have that done for herself. In this way she will have the final role in raising this image, her image, and placing it where and how she wants, inside of her home and life. I sealed it with a fixative so that this memory, at least, will not smear and should not fade away.

Consider an original.
Contact me at hankbonesman@embarqmail.com or willstom01@gmail.com

No. 212: Beauty and Sadness

"Beauty and Sadness" by Tom Wills, August 2013. Watercolor.

I painted "Beauty and Sadness" four summers ago, and recently had an occasion to revisit the piece and put it into a new frame. The lone lily now is a large patch of earthbound sunshine along the side of my deck, about three feel tall and four feet long.  -- TW

I live in a neighborhood where most people are fairly meticulous about lawn maintenance. We plant, mow, pick and prune all summer long. Some mow every other day, trying to beat down Mother
Nature, fearing she will reclaim the woods that we have tried to own and control.

The black paint is still wet!

The lawnscaping at my house is largely scavenged: Trees I grew from seed or bushes found and trimmed, hostas from a neighbor, lilacs that I have divided.

Dirt is not brown. It's every color but brown.

"My" woods are a welcoming dumping ground for everyone's lawn scraps. And
every now and then, something sprouts in the cool shade. There have been
pumpkins, mums, gladiolas, horseradish and other things that I've rescued
and brought into the sunshine.

Highlighting the petals.

One of the things to sprout some summers ago was a lone tiger lily.
Now, I have loads of tiger lilies around my house. They are the orange side-of-the-highway variety, with the long and finger-y bulbs that are easy to dig up, divide and grow.
I dug up this pathetic discarded lily and moved it to the side of the deck with its lily kin, and watered it, and then forgot it.
By its lonesome, it grew and bloomed.  Just one flower, big and beautiful -- and pink/orange/red, with a yellow center.
It is not a child of the highway.

Roughing it in.

Surely it came from the yard across the street, where the young couple regularly cull their beds and bushes and leave the trimmings as land fill in low spots in my woods. I noticed that their lilies are, in fact, pink/orange/red and yellow.

So, this little lily will live away from its family across the street, but will thrive among its adoptive orange cousins. I suspect that its few finger-y bulbs will fan out over the years until there are more red flowers.
Or perhaps it will get wild with its new orange buddies, resulting in a new color palette.

This painting is not for sale and was given as a gift.

A sprout in the dark got a little help, then drew upon its natural inner strength to become something beautiful.
I know a select few people like that. They are my favorites on this green earth.