Category Archives: art

New Series – MOEBIUS!

Moebius – Attention to detail

For the next Family Series set, I go back to the early 1990s (again).

Around 1990-92 I was really into comic book collecting. This was the guilded age of the special edition cover, when Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, Jim Lee and Rob Liefield ruled the pages. I was especially into Spiderman…not too much DC, lthough I still picked up all of the Superman titles: Action, Adventures of Superman, etc. It was a great time to be a comic reader.

One day when I was at my local comic shop (which is still in business… but in another town) I happened to see a poster of Iron Man drawn by a one name artist: Moebius. It didn’t look like all the other posters…Iron Man looked mean… and made less of iron and more like stone or some sort of weird marble masonry. I bought that poster instead of comics that week. I remained on my wall thru my high school graduation. Then… poof.

It didn’t catch on fire or anything… I just took it down.  Eventually, it was thrown away (inhales sorrowfully).

So I remembered that poster and the work of Jean Giraud (Moebius) when thinking of my next series. Feels like the 1990s again.  Hope you dig it.

Categories: art studio

A disposition in time…

Disposition or dat position…

My current John Singer Sargent series is challenging… I may have mentioned that before.

Normally, producing the piece for the day doesn’t pose a problem… sometimes, I anticipate a problem and just get up earlier (yes, for those that know me, it IS possible).

This morning, the stress of a series of out-of-my-control problems began to make my eye twitch. Dealing with the problems cut into my iPad time.  Consequently, today’s Sargent Series piece… of me…was taking longer than I budgeted for. I thought of delaying the post or just skipping today… but I decided to finish it as much as I could and post it like that.

Kinda glad I did. The stress of the morning… and really the last few months is evident more in this unfinished piece than in anything I’ve done so far.’

When you don’t know when to stop, stop… you may already be finished.

Categories: art

Old school complication – new series

Old school…

For the next series I was looking to complicate my life a bit more… so who better to visit  for that added complication than famed portrait artist John Singer Sargent?

I first met Sargent not in art class, not in art history class, but in my 8th grade American history class. My class was doing a unit on the beginning of the 20th century and the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. There were numerous photographs of Roosevelt in the textbook, but the one image that stuck out for me and my 13 going on 14 year-old brain was the painting of Roosevelt… the “official White House portrait”. There was some super small text in the corner: JOHN SINGER SARGENT.

It’s not often that you see a barely teenager in the school library looking up John Singer Sargent…

Categories: art bob

In a certain time and place…

This certain time and place…

Taking a pause on the GI JOE style series today.

The idea of this self-portrait was staring me in the face.  Specifically, the rear view mirror in my car. I’d just left the grocery store, loaded all the bags, clumped myself down in the drivers seat and looked up.  I hadn’t moved the mask off my face yet. There I was. It was me… along what the times dictated I be.  Not a requirement… a suggestion.

My mantra in regard to what I create has always been to tell a story and invoke an emotion. Words help, but they’re not always needed. If you can show a beginning, middle and ends with a single image, you’re better than you think you are.  Years from now, someone will see this somewhere and wonder how we got through it… how some managed and some did not.

As of this writing, nearly 55,000 people in the U.S. have died because of COVID-19. A month ago, that number was just a bit over 2,000.

My family does everything it can to protect ourselves and others. I’ve washed my hands so much I think I washed some of my fingerprints completely off.

We’ll never be the same… and ultimately, that’s probably a good thing.

It’s tragic. It’s scary. And… it’s equal opportunity… if you inhale and exhale you can get it. I hope that the fear I feel every single day is evident in this image.

I don’t like that fear… but at the same time I never want to forget that fear.

Categories: art coronavirus