Blue Jay Way

Winter is about to stride into Upstate New York.

The last few nights when I've taken my walk around the circle I could feel it coming. It's been warm, but there is something unsettling in the skies - a certain tell-tale grayness like an old man's woolen suit coat.

The warmth is a ruse. It keeps me from seriously searching for my gloves and boots. But soon one morning I will awake to three feet of snow, shocked, dismayed and totally unprepared. The Old Man will have tricked me again.

My wife is a bird-lover, Blue Jays being one of her favorites, so I drew this bookplate for her to put into all those gardening and cookbooks.

Blue Jays seem to get along well with Old Man Winter. They flit about the snowy trees in a dazzling display of royal blue tones. Observing them is one of the many small things, that when added up, make winter tolerable for me.

Of course finding those boots would help the situation, too.

A Likeness(?) of Shakespeare

Here's a portrait of William Shakespeare that was copied from another artist's portrait of Shakespeare which was itself a copy of an earlier artist's portrait which was itself a copy of a yet even earlier artist's depiction of... well, you get the point.

Oh, you don't? Okay, I guess I'm just kind of apologizing (in a round-about way) for continuing the perpetuation of what is probably a totally fabricated and unsubstantiated 'likeness' of the great bard.

But hey, if I drew him looking like Karl Malden you'd be outraged. Really you would. You'd be saying to yourself "Since when does Karl Malden wear frilly collars and an earring?"

Spooky Image No.4

Edgar Allen Poe.

Writing, writing, endlessly writing – to overcome the pain, to overcome the sorrow.

Lenore, his tragic muse, sadly looks on as he works his poor fingers to the bone. The Raven also looks on, but not in pity. Should our hero begin to dose, the feathered fiend spurs him on with a shrill caw and a peck at his disheveled coiffure.

This sketch that was to be the basis for an ink drawing... then a scratchboard... then an oil painting. But it seems the bell has tolled for all of those projects. Will I ever finish more than this sketch?

I know what the Raven would quoth.

Spooky Image No.3

All aboard!

Here's a fun little piece I produced for a train company promoting its Halloween 'Ghost Train' excursions.

In my drawing Jack O'Lantern has replaced Casey Jones at the throttle, and if the Grateful Dead sang the truth about old Casey, the passengers are safer with this pumpkin engineer anyway.

Spooky Image No.2

I know what you're thinking–"this picture must be a retired schoolteacher because she has no pupils." No, dear reader (and that is the last time I will be posting your ridiculous thoughts) this is yet another scary character from the volumes of Shakespeare.

She's Hecate, queen of the witches from 'Macbeth' and she's looking for a date to the big Halloween dance.

You'd better be on time though, because if you've read 'Macbeth,' you'll know she doesn't like the party to start without her.

Spooky Image No.1

Hey, just a couple of weeks until Halloween so why not bring out some 'creepies' from the dusty old portfolio? No, I don't mean the spiders and centipedes hanging out there, I'm talking illustrations.

This rather shell-shocked looking gentleman is none other than the Ghost of Hamlet's Father. He's dead, he's scary, he's bent on revenge... you know the type.

I drew this as part of a Shakespeare board game that I had created and had dreams of marketing. But that project was more ill-fated than Romeo and Juliet. I dilly-dallied with the design for years until one day I walked into a game store and saw "Shakespeare: The Bard Game" sitting there on a shelf. Naturally, someone had beaten me to the punch.

I guess it serves me right for wandering around in the swamps of indecisiveness!

Reepicheep

Here's my take on Reepicheep, the most valiant of all mice according to C.S. Lewis' Chronicle of Narnia series.

The verse, taken from the book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, was sung to the mouse as a baby by a dryad.

Purists and other generally persnickety persons will note that the sail of the ship 'The Dawn Treader' is described as being purple while my version is decidedly more crimson. Seeing that this piece was done only for me, I didn't sweat the artistic license. I did try the purple first of course, but it seemed a bit much at the time.

Had this been a paying piece, I would have made sure that purple was worked in cohesively to the overall design and given it a more, shall we say - valiant effort!

I want to note that this drawing owes much to the wonderful work of Donn P. Crane, a fantastic illustrator from the 1920's. His drawings for the six volumes of the series 'The Book House' were treasured by me as a boy.