The Reindeer Express Corporation

For legal porpoises, by which I do mean the sea mammal, I wasn’t able to release these phony stocks and their associated company bookmarks until after Christmas. Either that or I’m terribly behind. If all goes well, I’ll actually print all of this out and send it to the people on my list.


In the meantime, I’ll describe this new never-to-make-a-profit/non prophet (no sense of the future) company: Earlier this year we acquired the rights to Santa & Co., a poorly financed, frivolously managed and inefficiently performing sole proprietorship. We’ve spent the last year revamping and updating that system and today we’re announcing the launch of new company, Reindeer Express LLC. Reindeer Express is now the only company to ship exclusively on Christmas Eve. We use a multitude of airships, blimps, airplanes and, of course, winged reindeer (as seen in our official bookmark) all working in concert to accomplish this. Our management will take this company in a very positive re-architected direction. 2008 will mark our entry into this new technology platform and management is very optimistic that it will be a tremendous year of growth, even including increased elf size if not jolly-man girth.



The above is an authentic faux replica of a fake stock certificate. Feel free to print yourself out a copy.

And please take a look at "Don't Feed the Howndders" on Gnemo's Sketchbook.

Then and Now

I like to imagine that the above picture was painted then time and progress happened and the scene below was painted. (Go over to Gnemo's Sketchbook for a new post too.




Here's the full story of Doré Volcanoes:

Living at the edge of instant death, but with limitless steam energy to run their factories, the Valcodians live every day knowing it could easily bring molten death. They work on a rotating schedule with half their life spent at serious toil, and the other half spent in hedonistic abandon. Hundreds of years may go by before one of the ring of volcanoes in their community erupts, and obliterates an outpost. However, they are all keenly aware of the dangerous business they are in. Constant monitoring of the volcano, and a quick escape route that takes the populous behind some distant rock has on occasion saved lives, but is usually futile.

Dumbstruck!

Something very cool happened to me. This past weekend (Nov. 8-11) was The World Fantasy Convention. I attended it as an exhibitor.

The first fantastic thing to happen was that I met Moebius, that is the pseudonym for Jean Giraud the great French artist, concept designer and comic genius. We talked briefly but I didn't want to monopolize his time because everyone wanted to meet and talk to him. This was, after all, during the artists' reception at the art exhibit.

The next thing to happen was unbelievable and highly improbable. Mr. Giraud bought a painting of mine. He told me himself and I was dumbstruck. Truly speechless.


The painting above is now in Jean Giraud's house in Paris. I've posted it before but I thought I'd put up a newer larger scan of it.


I did the drawing above last Friday for fun and it came out looking a little like a female Arzach, one of Moebius' male characters, so I took it more in that direction. Clearly I was still thinking about that meeting. She's not wearing Arzach's archetypal hat. It's been replaced by hair of similar proportions, kind of Marge Simpson-esque. The last thing I added to this was Arzach's own winged transport to make the homage clear.

I wonder how much of a sycophant I'd be if I packed that picture up and sent it off to the artist that subconsciously then consciously inspired it?

Oh, and here is proof that I met him, a picture of me, Omar Rayyan, an artist friend you should see the work of, and Jean Giraud (Moebius) himself (below).


Picture by Sheila Rayyan (Also a spectacular artist. You can see her work on the Rayyan link as well).

Sorry For the Absence

This blog has had some technical difficulties. It's been up, then down, then up . . . well you get the picture -- actually you haven't been getting pictures. Here's a new one. It's a book cover. The title is "Duainfey" and the book is by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.

I'll have something interesting to say tomorrow, interesting to me at least.

REJECTED!!!

I was working on a slideshow today and I decided that part of it might make for a nice blog entry. The above is from the original cover idea for what would become “Kiddography: The Art and Life of Tom Kidd.” It appeared in my bog before but without the cover flaps or back cover. This idea was, as the title indicates, firmly rejected. Even after the approach of the book was decided on I still had a second cover idea rejected and, if you’ve never seen it, here is a link to what the book actually looks like: KIDDOGRAPHY

I had two publishers interested in the book. One said the idea looked like an art book and they didn’t do art books; the other said it looked like an illustrated novel and they didn’t do illustrated novels. The book was to be a highly science fictionalized true story -- honest mendacity, and other contradictions. If you click on the pictures they should pop up big enough be able to read the text. For my own entertainment I'll finish "The Kidd Id" one day. Expect some more pages from this ill-fated book. Below is the back cover design:


After I show the two previous slides, this is the slide that follows (below):



If you've read this far down, please link over (at right) to Gnemo's Sketchbook and to my Photo blog for new stuff. Oh, and sorry to my blog friends for not being very friendly lately. I'm just about finished being overwhelmed and I'm now entering normalcy. It's been a tough summer.

Memory Lane

I know that the ability to observe and analyze well is an important quality for a variety of professions. My belief is that it’s largely undervalued. However, for some people it can become an obsession. I am in constant danger of becoming one of those individuals.

When I work from life I tend to become deeply interested in fully understanding my subject matter and what better way to prove that you understand it than to render it perfectly. Understanding how the eye perceives and nature works is important to me but it’s more important to make a picture that communicates what I want it to. Sometimes I forget this. This goes back to my early days when I was first learning to draw.

When I was very young I wanted to draw well. Right away I felt limited with my number two pencil. As hard as I pushed it to the paper, it only got so dark. To reflect nature I needed something to create darker areas. Even with the pale drawings I did people told me that I drew well and they readily recognized the faces in my little portraits. It wasn’t till I was in high school that I learned about softer leads. As an adult I continue to be shocked by the things I don’t know, especially when it involves art and art making. I’m vastly ignorant and forgetful. Worst of all, I sometimes forget how little I know.

Recently a friend gave me a bunch of my art he’d been storing for me in his attic. I kept meaning to pick it up and in the meantime 25 years went by. That illustrates the level of procrastination I’m prone to. I’d also forgotten what he had. It was a lot of stuff and it went back to work I’d done in high school. Above is one of those drawings.

If you look closely, you can see that I made a mistake in this exercise to copy a picture from National Geographic. The hands are different proportions. At the time I drew from the top of the page to the bottom completing each section as I went. If you see the original (15 X 24”), the drawing nearly touches the top and the bottom of the page. It never occurred to me to leave some space for a mat and frame. I made some very nice observations with this drawing in terms of values though.

This drawing was in the portfolio of my work that was entered in the Florida State Fair art competition. I won that competition and a scholarship to Syracuse University. That was something of a miracle and it changed the direction of my life. Very sad days ensued so it has been quite painful to go through all that old art. Three boxes of it had been sitting in the guest room for months till I worked up the courage to go through it in a thorough way.

PS: My blog has been stuck in limbo. Sorry for that. I hope to post some vacations pictures on Shutterbuggy Kidd soon though. There’s plenty of new art to post too.

Can I Have a Three Way?

That subject title is something that I asked my wife one day. Her response will come later but what I’m referring to here is that I’m posting to all three of my blogs today.

The title of the painting above is “Out On a Limb.” It is 12X15” and it is an oil painting. I’d planned to do a step-by-step for this but I can’t find the other shots of the painting in progress. That’s the way things have been going lately. Each day some new time-consuming costly surprise arrives. Combine those with problems I’ve been putting off, say like a visit to my dentist and some car repairs, and it’s been a troublesome few weeks.

The finished painting at top was started as a demo for the Society of Creative Arts of Newtown (SCAN). Below the painting is the drawing I loosely based the painting on. I wasn’t able to complete it there so I took it back to the studio. Below the drawing is the one step in the process I could find.





And below this is a close-up. I scanned it just to test out my new scanner. It’s a little off in color but not too bad. I usually don’t like how paintings scan. Digital photos are better because you can control the light.


Here are the other two blog links:

Gnemo’s Sketchbook

Shutterbuggy Kidd

Oh, and how did my wife respond when I asked her for a three-way? She handed me a light bulb of course. What did you expect, something out of Penthouse Forum? That story’s real fly-on-the-wall/slice-of-life from “Tales of the Kidd House.” You can file that under ‘the most boring of non-fiction.’

PS: Earlier today I made some small changes to the paining. I can never leave things alone.