Time for another scribble-dee-doo-dah session in front of the TV on another frosty Friday morn' (with pancakes!!!).
Clockwise, from left: Brick Tamland cheats on lamp; Governor Kemp knowing what's best for his state; random space cadets and 1-spatula general; aaand, as always, one clueless Trump.
The below was purely an exercise of “well, I have nothing to do, and the cable news is bumming me out… maybe I’ll pick up a pen & legal pad and see what happens…”
Clockwise, from left: cowboy; some glamorous babe; I don’t know what this is all about; that asshole Trump; this maybe a badly drawn Roger Stone-esque character flanked by mindless cronies/supporters (as he was on the TV at the time when scribbling away).
When a Scribble-Dee-Doo-Dah event starts, just like in the example above, I have no agenda in mind when the pen begins to make random lines on the page - those lines sometimes will cross the path of other lines, and so on and on… until I eventually see crude forms, then build up from there. I had no idea I’d summon a cowboy from a rudimentary cube; how was I supposed to know a girl would appear from two curvy pen strokes (both accidental)?; as for the, err, grandma(?) and the one-eyed teddy bear on a leash… THAT JUST HAPPENED! No idea where my head was at for that one.
So this self-caricatured mess - illoed circa 2010 - has no actual reason for its existence. I just DID IT!
At the time, I was animating a short 45sec movie and, I guess, I needed a creative distraction and barfed out the below:
As posted in my Facebook:
I think this scribble-dee-doo-dah is telling me something... that I am way bored at work right now.
If anybody can tell me what was on my mind when I drew a misshapen mustachioed fez-wearing marshall sucking on an empty striped straw (#drool) and a finger that’d just poked him in the back of the head... I'll owe you a gorilla #thegoonshow
A quick sketch/painting for a friend in NJ, whose hobbies include nature photography, bird watching, et al…
It’s Monday morning.
You arrive at work.
You have in your head a game plan to tackle ongoing job briefs, allocating time and resources to get 'em done.
You're all fired up & ready to go.
Now, go ahead and open your emails.
At the top of the messages list: "Please, Bort, could you do this thing you've already done, but now has to be done again because of some insignificant thing nobody cares about needs to be fixed? Thanks."
Well, that just ruined my morning mojo.
So my response was a parody of annoyance and pain, yet I had to create a portrait of faux exuberance...
A simple Post-It Note scribble-dee-doo-dah sent to a work colleague who’d alerted me she’d been tasked in transmitting vital production art out to the factory offshore.
I could’ve replied with a traditional “Yep, sounds fine. Do that!”. But I took 4 minutes out of my “busy” schedule to quickly do this self-caricature and emailed that instead.
I’m quite certain THIS doodle ain’t worthy enough for a blog post - when I draw things and send ‘em out, my normal procedure is to trash the originals (and whatever JPEGS derived from the originals) without even blinking… however, I promised myself this year - either because of vanity or procrastination - to document EVERY doodle I do, no matter how meaningless and/or stupid they are.
Nothing of any meaning here… just me doodling on my legal pad while waiting for a huge file to finish auto-saving throughout the day yesterday.
Actual “artists” - those to whom get paid drawing for a living - would label something like the below “Warm Up Sketches”… just some crap they do at the beginning of the day before any actual creative stuff happens.
For me, when these scribble-dee-doo-dahs were barfed up, it was mid-afternoon (I was all coffeed out, exhausted, dying to get home and dive into a warm bath) and, every time Illustrator auto-saved an open file that’d take 5 minutes to complete, I’d lean over to my legal pad on my left and:
clumsily draw a bloated shape with a colored highlighter;
if it started to look like a “something”, I’d lightly draw in some structural lines with a red pen;
continue this until whatever-it-was looked MORE like a “something”;
grab a blue or black pen to define the shape and shading of the “something”;
add a background color with a highlighter so the “something” can pop off the page;
add more tones to the “something” with a highlighter.
Ahh, it’s that time of year I draw up a special German-themed birthday doodle for my favorite mom (of my fan/friend in New Jersey)(#adoptedmominnutley), continuing on with the in-joke previously mentioned here.
This time, the painfully German traditionalistic eccentricities of this one are coupled with the whole Covid-19 brouhaha we’re all in together at this time.
I ran out of those nifty slip-on PPE things you put on my feet… so I had to make do with discarded Wonder Bread bags.
Once a year, I take up a pencil and draw up something speeshülly Germanian for the mother of my fan/friend in Nutley, NJ. To understand WHY I do this, it’s briefly explained it here.
Originally doodled May 18, 2013.
Every May, going back to 2010, I cobble together a German-themed birthday illo for the mother of my fan/friend in New Jersey. Nope, they’re not German — but, they did take me to a German-themed restaurant in Hoboken for Mrs. Berry’s birthday get-together in 2009.
And that’s the (in)joke. Ahh, I guess you had to be there.
If you were wondering, “Happy Dreikäsehoch” translates to Three Cheese High.
Cheese has nothing to do with anything with relation to the person, the day, or the theme… I just needed a long, complicated, funny-sounding German-ish word (“Dreikäsehoch”) and this one fit the bill.
That’s supposed to be me (Bort) on the left. The sentient purple plush critter on the right is "Trunko”, an Ugly Dolls character I picked up at FAO Schwarz with Mrs. Berry in 2011… but I digress…
At left: this is the illustration without the “Happy Dreikäsehoch” titles. Yes, that’s THREE cheese slabs stacked in the background (re:translation).
In 2009, after jokingly badgering me I had to fly from Melbourne (Australia) to New Jersey to visit my (then) newly found vet-tech fan, Karen… and flying to NJ to do just that a few months later… and after one of several guided tours of NYC, Karen (with me in tow)(#typicalaussietourist) wound up at a German-themed bistro/restaurant thingy in Hoboken for Mrs. Judy Berry’s birthday get-together.
The scene depicted below is NOT of that night... just a fun 1st Anniversary illo of (a) that birthday dinner in Hoboken and (b) the first of "Mrs. Berry's Birthday Doodles" yearly installments.
The cast of characters (from left to right): me (in picture frame); Carolyn (Karen's sister), Charlie (Carolyn's fiancee); waiter in stereotypical traditional German lederhosen; Amber (Carolyn's daughter); Karen (fan/"get your ass over to NJ" instigator); and Mrs. Judy Berry (birthday girl).
This illo was drawn digitally in 2010 and is littered with in-jokes for the time. I'd point out and explain each one -- but I don't wanna.