Dali Doodle

Another surrealist, this time the godfather of them all, Salvador Dali. I've always appreciated Dali's style, his ability to extend his brand through the decades. He was doing the personality as pop-art cultural icon thing a long time before Andy W. was even thinking about art. Dali was way-out there, but had the power of weirdness and high, natural talent on his side, so laid his particular flavor of gravity down and the world flowed around him.

I did this drawing as he needed to be part of my little sketchbook of surrealist, but also because I'm working on a short holiday-themed comix piece for a pub out of Austin, Texas called "Pork Chop". Let's just say that Mr. Dali figures prominently in the storyline...

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Another view of Oscar

Here's a better shot of the sketch of Oscar Dominguez sketch. I used a better camera with a bigger lens, so a lot more detail is there.

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I'm not dead yet...

Wow, where has the year gone? So, I've been lazy about posting. Acknowledge-move on.

Here is my latest sketch of a surrealist. This time, Oscar Dominguez, whom I know nothing.

I picked him because he had a great face, reminded me of Ernie Kovacs (he deserves a post all of his own), or at least a particular character that Ernie used to do.

I had to fight through my usual resistance to do this little drawing. The critic gets rolling right away keeping a running tally of all the "errors", "this is wrong",or "that doesn't work". The best advice I've heard for dealing with that evil little voice is to ignore it as you would a crazy person, and just keep working. I find that the "errors" are where all the life is in a piece of art work, where the humanity creeps in or as Leonard Cohen said, "The cracks let the light in". Amen.

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Luis Buñuel

I've been doing a series of little drawings of surrealist copying photos from an old book I have on surrealism. Here's my take on Luis Buñuel, artist and filmmaker. The photo I worked from makes him look like a giant, massive and looming. I love the blown out old photos of these wacky guys. They always look crazy as lizards on a hot road and have odd shaped heads and look like they would always have something interesting to say. I especially like the group shots where everyone looks wild and drunk and ready to shake the world by it's throat. They were probably all insufferable pains-in-the-ass, but even so the fantasy of a troupe of artist against the world together, making art, talking art, all still noble believers in the possibility; the certainty that the world would bend to the heavy gravity of their mind's creation. Is that still possible in this post-modern world? Sometimes I still feel it's so and those are good nights indeed.

My favorite Buñuel quote:

"Thank God I'm an atheist."

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