Orange light and ash

This morning the light had a strange movie-like quality to it due to the recent fires. The smell of smoke is everywhere and there was ash on my car, even though I live 20 miles from the nearest fire. Seventeen thousand acres is a big area and a lot of incinerated trees. Living in L.A. is always a strange mix of extremes: near-perfect non-weather 95% of the time, punctuated by fires, earthquakes, mudslides and the once-a-century deluge. It's like Mother Nature sings you a lullaby, kisses you goodnight - then jabs you with a hat pin.

UPDATE: It looks like there's a fire in Burbank as well, only two miles from my home, and that's the culprit. Hopefully they put these things out in a hurry.

Comfy Chair

Jack On-line

He's looking up information having to do with Legend of Kay, the new PlayStation game he's crazy about. We try to limit how much he plays - usually weekends only, and after chores; but one thing I do like is that he draws a lot of the stuff in the game, characters, etc. Notice the sheets of paper behind him. His drawings of General Grievous and Briarios he taped up, like a mini-gallery of scary cyborgs.

Another lunch drawing

A zillion links for artists

My friend Dave just emailed me this link to an astounding number of art-related web sites. Highly bookmarkable:
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/middle/arted.htm

Newspaper and Coffee

This is one of our favorite lunch places.

At the cafe

Instant web site gallery - a tutorial

I have several friends who are artists and can perform miracles with a pencil or markers, but who are completely dismayed when it comes to creating a web site to show their work. This is natural. Most of us can use Photoshop and compose email but writing HTML or using web authoring software, or getting web space can be an utterly alien and daunting proposal. After messing around with Blogger.com for about a year it occurred to me that a fairly simple artist / illustrator / storyboard artist web site could be created fairly easily using blogging tools without having to go through the painful computer nerd stuff.

So, late last night in a fit of inspiration I spent two hours creating a simple web site - for free - that displays an artist's gallery, a resume', contact information - and a page showing how I did it, hopefully simple enough that anyone else can do it.

I needed material to show, so I chose to create a site for the great Rennaissance master painter Titian, as if he were still alive and looking for work. Here's the result:
www.titianArt.blogspot.com

And here's the tutorial page that shows how I, and presumably you, if you want to, can do it too. I don't know if will help anybody, but maybe it will be a small step towards getting someone's work up on the web - which might lead to a job for crying out loud.

1:00 AM sketch

Rodolfo Damaggio

Rodolfo Damaggio is a brilliant illustrator and storyboard artist. Check out his storyboard page here. It's some of the cleanest, most elegantly and succinctly drawn storyboards I have ever seen. Really inspiring stuff.

More links:
His Imdb page
His web site's main portfolio page

Nephew George

George's older brother is Paul. This sketch makes George look a bit older than he really is. It was tough drawing him because he is so active. He wouldn't keep still. Oh well, that's part of the fun of it. Hopefully I captured a little of his humorous and ever-so-slightly mischievous character.

Mentor Huebner - 12 paintings

Check out this on-line one-man show of the late Mentor Huebner. He was a fantastic motion picture production illustrator and storyboard artist. The paintings are beautiful and the commentary by his widow, Louise Huebner, is equally wonderful and inspiring.

Also, for a bit more background, check out his Imdb listing, which includes North By Northwest, Blade Runner, Forbidden Planet, Ben Hur, The Time Machine (the 1960 original) and many other classics.

A friend and fellow storyboard artist once showed me some photocopies of storyboards Mr. Huebner had done for Beethoven 2, that's right the dog movie, that were utterly fantastic and seemingly effortlessly executed.

And of course here is the Huebner's official site: www.mentorhuebnerart.com

Joan reading

She was finishing up reading Memoirs of a Geisha. It will be interesting to see how it translates into film. I still haven't read it yet.

Hurricane disaster relief

I try to keep things on topic in my little corner of the blog world here, but the stuff happening out in the Gulf is overwhelming and provocative of some kind of action. I just made an on-line donation to the Feed The Children organization for sending food out to the New Orleans hurricane victims. If you can afford it, please give to the charity of your choice. Here's a good list. We can watch the world at a distance or try to be some kind of force for good, even if in small or relatively nominal ways. It's a choice we all make.

Nephew Paul