s k e t c h b o o k

We’ll miss you. Looking forward to prank phone calling you at your new job.

All the best,

Doug, Narwal & Quail

I escaped to Vermont for a week or so mid-August. We ended up visiting my friend Lisa in Woodstock who took us to Shepherd’s Hill Farm. Set up on the hills of the Ottauquechee River Valley, this working sheep farm boasts spectacular views. I ran into many of the farm’s residents, featured below.

I combined a number of photo references and used some artistic license to try for an interesting composition in a square format.

The giant white Great Pyrenees goes by Samson. He’s basically a polar bear.

thumbnails :

final sketches:

Went to see these guys last night for the first time in a while. You can listen @ www.thebloodsugars.com. Highly recommend it.

I had a fun time combining the event information with my imagery for this promotional poster. I think it sufficiently conveys ” New York” and the birth of “new work”.

It was Walt’s fourth summer at Dog’s Head Harbor, Duncan remembered, when Garp and Helen and Duncan observed Walt watching the sea. He stood ankle-deep in the foam from the surf and peered into the waves, without taking a step, for the longest time. The family went down to the water’s edge to have a word with him.

“What are you doing, Walt?” Helen asked.

“What are you looking for, dummy?” Duncan asked him.

“I’m trying to see the Under Toad,” Walt said.

“The what?” said Garp.

“The Under Toad,” Walt said. ” I’m trying to see it. How big is it?”

And Garp and Helen and Duncan held their breath; they realized that all these years Walt had been dreading a giant toad, lurking offshore, waiting to suck him under and drag him out to sea. The terrible Under Toad.

Garp tried to imagine it with him. Would it ever surface? Did it ever float? Or was it always down under, slimy and bloated and ever-watchful for ankles its coated tongue could snare? The vile Under Toad.

Between Helen and Garp, the Under Toad became their code phrase for anxiety. Long after the monster was clarified for Walt ( “Undertow, dummy, not Under Toad!” Duncan had howled), Garp and Helen evoked the beast as a way of referring to their own sense of danger. When the traffic was heavy, when the road was icy – when depression had moved in overnight – they said to each other, “The Under Toad is strong today.”

“Remember,” Duncan asked on the plane, “how Walt asked if it was green or brown?”

Both Garp and Duncan laughed. But it was neither green nor brown, Garp thought. It was me. It was Helen. It was the color of bad weather. It was the size of an automobile.

excerpt from The World According to Garp by John Irving

I’ve been having some fun dreams lately, which I’m trying to scribble down before I forget them the next day so I can do quick drawings of them. In a dream I had a week or so ago I was running around the neighborhood trying to get away from this tornado ripping through the streets. I ended up running back to my house, but instead of telling my friends who were all huddled around the tv, I promptly got into my bed and went to sleep. The next thing I knew all of these black dogs were nestled in bed with me, but just all around my head and face. How ’bout that?

The dogs probably come from my mild obsession with my friend’s sister’s dog, Judd. He is a black lab with a great personality. These sketches are from last July 4th, when he was still small. Judd’s owner kindly indulges me with photo updates, which I use as my desktop background. It is all perfectly normal.

These lion etchings are based off of the “Mondays” lion posted earlier. I first inked the plate and wiped it completely, so that just the line work retained the ink. Then I just fooled around with various overlays and methods of wiping off the top color. These were done in a class at SVA with the amazing Bruce Waldman.