Page 57

Silence

To sit in solemn silence on a dull dark dock
In a pestilential prison with a lifelong lock

Awaiting the sensation of a short sharp shock

From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block.

Fighters,

I was reminded of this little rhyme today. We used to use it as a vocal warm-up for the plays I did at Drury. It's a morbid little rhyme now isn't it... so I decided to attempt to draw it. Anyways my day was the opposite of this drawing. The weather was gorgeous and I got to swim, read in the sun and play some putt-putt. I guess that's pretty cool. 

Jeremy,

Your weapon tomorrow is a bit of dialogue from Atreyu, "Ho." I thought it was a funny way for him to enter Engywook's observatory. Let's see how that fairs. 

PENALTIES

Penalties: 

Poetry (i've listed the lyrics there too), Song (it's a rap song), Voice (i'm speaking), Half Asleep (because I am and it's a lyric)

"Nothing Fighter Rap"

 

Fighters,

How was your weekend? Mine was very busy! I worked 39 hours in 3 days working the night shift for American Idol. It was nearly impossible to get anything done fo r the blog there and I was extremely tired, passing out as soon as i got off work. I've been behind all week trying to get back to a regular sleep schedule. Anyways, here's a little Diddy (like P Diddy get it?) I threw together today. Rap is clearly not for me but it seemed to fit the topics I was assigned. You don't want to know how many takes this took.  It's just really hard to write and perform a rap song. Mad props to all my fellow thugs doing it on the streets. :)

More to follow... Lyrics below.

Lyrics

Fighters!

Brother!

I apologize in advance.

I feel the nothin’

So I ain’t frontin’

Time to fight and think up somethin’

I’ve got a lot to do and things aren’t looking great

I didn’t post yesterday so now I’ve got eight

So where should I start, I have no idea

there are no directions and deadline’s drawin’ nea’

But it is alright, It’s gunna be okay

show no fear I’m not gunna fade away

I gotta take a step 'magination set me free

a million ways to get there half asleep I may be

Reach the stars, fly a fantasy

Dream a dream, and what you see will be

rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds

and there upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story

Imagination

Illuminatin’

All my problems brought about by procrastination’

Everyday I fight the nothing sometimes the nothing wins

The only way to beat it is to fill it with somethin’

So I’ll fight with doodles, I’ll fight it with my rhymes

And all the weapons you got  if I only had the time

It’s gunna take some magic to get it all done

I can tell you right now penalties are no fun

don’t unfollow us if you don’t dig this crap

cause I’ll be back tomorrow and I promise not to rap. 

Dialogue, Spirit, Words

"Words as Weapons"

Just a quick concept to try to work in a few of my other penalties. Your sticks and stones may break my bones, but your words kill my spirit... so i guess just don't be a dick. :)

Book

"Necronomicon"

I made this for the 48 Hour Film, "The Fantastic Roomate",  that I worked on with Space Dolphin Pictures a little while back. Follow the link for more of my beautiful acting.

Page 56

Half-asleep

...is about what I am, so there won't be much to say here, except I'm glad I got my post in on time.  I'm looking forward to seeing how you dig yourself out bro.

your weapon for tomorrow is silence. plus whatever you have left...  I'll assign any penalties on the morrow as well.

Page 55 (plea)

Plea (please have mercy)

Fighters, 

Okay, so this whole working at night thing really screwed me this weekend. I have been swallowed by the nothing and now it's chewing me up. I will get caught up and out of the darkness i swear... but it is going to take time. When I came home I started working and fell asleep almost instantly. I just woke up at 11:30 tonight and scrambled to try to get one of them knocked off. 

Jeremy,

It's your call on the penalties... our new weapon for tomorrow is "half asleep".

Page 54

Voice

So i was driving some of the camera crew around today, and picked up a church bulletin at the basilica.  I forgot to bring anything to do while waiting for them to get their shots, so I starting shading in and blacking in the picture of the pope.  And then I thought, "why not?"

And so here you are: on topic and on time.

Your weapon for tomorrow is dialogue.  Any dialogue at all.

EDIT:  Your two extra penalties for not getting poetry or voice done are song and plea...

You are gonna get buried in penalties by the idol auditions brother...

Page 53

Poetry (LATE)

Nothing Fighter Rap

Fighters!

Brothers!

I apologize in advance.

I feel the nothin’

So I ain’t frontin’

Time to fight and think up somethin’

I’ve got a lot to do and things aren’t looking great

I didn’t post yesterday so now I’ve got eight

So where should I start, I have no idea

there are no directions and deadline’s drawin’ nea’

But it is alright, It’s gunna be okay

show no fear I’m not gunna fade away

I gotta take a step magination set me free

a million ways to get there half asleep I may be

Reach the stars, fly a fantasy

Dream a dream, and what you see will be

rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds

and there upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story

Imagination

Illuminatin’

All my problems brought about by procrastination’

Everyday I fight the nothing sometimes the nothing wins

The only way to beat it is to fill it with somethin’

So I’ll fight with doodles, I’ll fight it with my rhymes

And all the weapons you got  if I only had the time

It’s gunna take some magic to get it all done

I can tell you right now penalties are no fun

don’t unfollow us if you don’t dig this crap

cause I’ll be back tomorrow and I promise not to rap. 

FYI your weapon is voice... which i feel like is appropriate. 

Page 52

Magic

I really wanted to do my own version of the Magician tarot card, but I am so tired from working all day and I'm just gonna have to get up earlier tomorrow, so I decided to play with photoshop for a minute and see what I could do.  this is what I could do.  And now I sleep...

Adam, your weapon is poetry.

Page 51

Key

Everything is perfect in heaven... unfortunately St. Peter spends most of his time outside the gates.

Jeremy,

After your long discussion about Harry Potter tonight and drinking to the Prisoner of Azkaban Riff Tracks you should be familiar with tomorrow's weapon... Magic! TAKE A DRINK!

Page 50

Moon

It was another spray paint night at my house.  At first I was only going to use spray as the base, and then paint on different images from different cultures, like the man in the moon, or the rabbit, or a woman with a lantern. After I cut out a stencil for the basic "regular" moon, i really liked it, and had to use a couple other colors.  I left my toes in as a reference for size, plus i thought it was kind of funny.

Adam, your weapon is "Key"

PENALTY Page 50

MOON

I thought it might be fun to tackle Pecos Bill... you just don't hear about the American tall tales anymore. I love them! Paul Bunyan has always been my favorite but Pecos Bill is mighty cool as well. Here he is lassoing the moon. 

It might be fun to retell the stories... There are so many cool directions you could take them. Future comicbook?

Page 49

FEAR

Fighters,

Okay so this is obviously late so I'll spare you the excuses and take the penalty. I'm not sure how successful it is, but this one was meant to be one of them topsy turvy drawings that you can turn over and see somethin' different. I'm not sure they have a name other than optical illusion... lame. I've never been very good at doing topsy turvys... because they are hard. but it fit the concept. The quote i believe is from Stephen King but it's all over the internet. 

"we stopped checking for monsters under your bed when we realized they were inside us"

I found it a while back and tucked it away to use one day in something like this. 

Jeremy,

I suck. Our topic today is "moon" because I know you will like it.

Page 48

Indestructible.

So, first I worked on a picture of a unicorn kicking ass and proving itself to be indestructible, but I fell out of love with the idea after i had spent a lot of time on it.  Kelly and I are watching Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone  with Rifftrax on, and we talked about how Harry seems to be indestructible.  Drawing Harry Potter didn't seem badass enough, so i decided to mix him with Wolverine.  Harry has never been so awesome, and Wolverine has never been so wussified.  Sorry, old friend, I'll do you better next time...

Adam, your topic is Fear.

Page 47

Father

Glass photographed by Peter Hobbs

Fighters,

This is a design that I did for my dad for father's day. It was inspired by my dad's love of fine wines and it originally was etched on a wine glass. It was a lot of fun and quite rewarding to stencil and etch out such a complicated design and to see it in such a practical application. A bit of family history was also revealed to me. My mom's grandpa worked as a glass etcher throughout his entire life. She showed me a piece he did and wow, grand-pop-pop had some skills! The reason it now a beer glass is that I wanted to try my hand at making it look like embossed glass and I already had this photo available. It was a moderate success but I will always suck at photoshop (which is a hilarious video series on Youtube).

Jeremy,

Your weapon is a word that I am quite fond of because I tend to be very hard on the things around me, indestructible. 

Don't read this :)

I must admit in shame that the design is not entirely mine. I did draw it from scratch in illustrator and most of it is original, but it was helped along by the form of a logo I love from Bryant Canzoneri. I hesitate in telling you that, but I'd rather say it then have someone browsing point it out. I realize that it's not cool, but it is for personal use and I learned a lot about script fonts in doing so. Also I really only used the capital P... FOR SHAME! Lock me in design jail with Comic Sans and Papyrus and throw away the pretentious key!

Page 46

Wicked

I wanted to do something simple tonight, but after filling a page full of sketches that aren't anything special, I decided to do this. I don't really have much to say tonight, so  Adam, in honor of the day your weapon id "Father".

Page 45

FIRE

Hey Fighters!
I was doodling today when this little character came out of the page at me. The joke just came to me.

Jeremy,
Your weapon is wicked.

Page 44

Last

(Last supper)

I didn't get to add color to this yet.  I was falling asleep while drawing it out.  The man in the middle will clearly be wearing bright orange prison garb, perhaps with shackles on his feet. The whole piece is an homage to Da Vinci.  I'll probably have to re-do this because of the ink blotches on it.

Adam your word is fire.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Page 43

Mythical Creatures

(Work in progress)

Fighters,
I have to admit that when I get a topic as broad as any mythical creature... i get a little stumped, but I asked my mom what I should draw and this is what she said.

"You should draw one of those rabbit things"
"A jackalope?"
"Yeah"
"What should he be doing?"
"Climbing a mountain... to get to a pasture."
"Anything else?"
"He's trying to get away from the Jackalope eating goats... that have spears instead of horns... and are green. But the Jackalope is okay because he can jump 10 feet in the air. And the Jackalope is blue. He's trying to get to the female Jackolopes in the pasture... what should they be called.. Jackies. And he's blue because he's lonely."
"Okay"

Jeremy,
Your weapon is Last, as in, "Then he realized that this was his last meal. The word "last" terrified him. He tried not to think of it." Oh Bastion, not only are you annoying but I find your meta-book comments to be completely unnecessary.

Page 42 plus some

A person watching him, 

Gnomes,

Hurt,

and Science.

HAHA!

Adam, your weapon is any mythical creature.

EDIT:  So, I know this looks like a total cop out, but I like it.  I will show you more of the world of Gnomish later with page 2, but for now you must wait.  Everything will become clear in time, and this post will become less of a cop-out.  For now, I will just be reveling in the fact that tomorrow, I have no art projects...  Except for the others that I have submitted but am still working on.  I have had paint on my knuckles for the last few days, I'm pretty sure I lost some brain cells last night in the spray paint storm, and I have two projects that I'm going to keep working on, even when not for the blog.  What is this, 5 years ago when I was making art for fun all the time?   I love it.   But I warn you, dear brother, those penalties can get out of control real damn fast.  Watch yourself out there.  The Nothing bit me, but I recovered.  Looking forward to stay in the light for a while...

Penalty Page 41

Played with some spray paint tonight.  I really need to clean out my garage so I dont have to spray in the basement any more.  Damn white paint got all drippy on me, just when the cans were starting to do what I needed them to.

Penalties

Final of "The air was blazing hot"

"Good Medicine"

I've done more work on "Drink" but not much more.  My concept is to turn the bottom of a milk crate into an interesting tabletop.  I plan on sealing in the painting with some kind of lacquer or something so that i'ts good to go for putting drinks and food on while being able to be wiped off easily.  I will also put small "feet" in the corners, so that when the milk crate is being used for function, the tabletop won't get scratched up.

I had the assistance of my lovely wife on Good Medicine.  It is her handwriting that is so cool, not mine.
Thanks, Darlin'!

I figure i'll be able to get some milk crates from work and mount these onto them.  If anyone has a custom crate-table request, my services are available for sale or trade...

Oh yeah, GNOMES!

Page 41

Leaves

Fighters,
When I was in Cub Scouts I remember doing lots of arts and crafts. Today I remembered that I have been holding on to one piece from then that I really enjoy (TOP). We were studying the different tree species in our area and did these transfers onto cloth. I'm not exactly sure how we did it then but after some experimenting with leaves today I found that using a hammer you can beat a leaf into the cloth. (BOTTOM) Here's a tutorial: Hammered Flowers. It turned out alright but I still like the older one better. I'm not sure how it could be used practically but it's always fun to learn new techniques.

Jeremy,

I hope all these penalties aren't burying you. You are now carrying A Person Watching Him and Leaves as well as picking up three new weapons for tomorrow: Gnomes, Hurt and Science.

Page 40

Drink, A Person Watching Him, Good Medicine...

Yowsa.  I'm definitely not going to be on-time tonight, but I felt it would be best to post in time anyway.

Adam, your weapon for tomorrow is "leaves".

Here are some in-progress photos:

For Drink, I devised something practical:

 

As for Good medicine, it is coming, but nothing worth showing at this point...

So for tomorrow add leaves to my list of works due...

PENALTY Page 40

Fighters,

Hey it's been too long since i've tackled a logo so I thought I better start brushing the rust off. I found a site that has design competitions with cash prizes and this one for a boston based liquor store. I'm still playing with the colors and letterforms. I designed the font as well except "liquor" which is an awesome woodcut font I own.

Jeremy,

I look forward to yet another weapon tomorrow.

EDIT: I did some revisions. I already heard from Gary though... he liked it, but it's not what he's looking for. Unfortunately, he didn't specify why or how to improve it. Gotta love that.

Page 39

Good Medicine!

Fighters,

I sincerely hope this posts on time but I doubt it will. Blogger wouldn't let me log in so I had to go through gmail and change my password. Damn! 12:08! Bunch of bullshit! Anyways, when thinking of good medicine I immediately turned to medicine men, specifically the Native American variety. Recently I visited the STL art museum and while running through the Pre-Colombian exhibits i got to thinking about how much I love Native American culture (although I realize that type of broad generalization of the different tribes is what started all the trouble in the first place. And by trouble I mean genocide).

Wow, I just deleted a long rant and had to stop myself from rambling on about the persecution of our indigenous peoples. Apparently part of me is Native American and still just a little pissed off. HA- I always did tend to favor Indians over Cowboys.

Jeremy,

I hope you're ambidextrous, because tomorrow you are two-weapon fighting! You will be wielding both "drink" and "a person watching him" as well as finishing up "good medicine". Good thing you are off tomorrow! Good luck.

Page 38

The air was blazing hot.

I am back at my computer in my home.

It is wonderful.  

Sorry about all the issues there, being on vacation makes me inclined to be late, and the challenge of built-up penalties is fun.  Adam has had considerably less time than normal, as getting the topics to him proved difficult.  I have an idea that I'm going to try to use for all of the pieces and penalties I owe in art:

"Good Medicine", as a penalty

Tomorrow's topic: "Drink"

and finally, the penalty for not turning in my penalty on time:  "a person was watching"

 I will also include the finished version of the piece above, because it is a teaser from the project I just mentioned.

I should be kept busy by this for a while...  

PENALTY Page 38

The air was blazing hot
&
Creatures of darkness





I'll scan these... but I'm having to do this in the car. Awaiting tomorrow's weapon.

Page 37ish

Fighters,
I have failed yet again... mostly because Jeremy's topic was abysmal and his phone was dead all day. Picking it blind he couldn't have known that this entire page is a dialogue between Atreyu and the beast Ygramul. Being so, the seventh sentence was "let me have him" which has no adjectives... I now realize that since it was a blind pick i should have just chosen something. However, I also didn't get home until 11:00 tonight because the parents and I decided to spend the night out. X-men: First Class was awesome, but didn't help with blogging. I have now decided that I will go with the seventh statement in which the first adjective is "Southern". So I'll post that soon. ugh.

EDIT: I have made contact. My new topic for yesterday is "creatures of darkness" ... yes, it is confusing.

Anyways, our weapon for tomorrow is "The air was blazing hot."

Page 36

"swarm"

This has been very frustrating to try and post here at the lake. I will edit this post and explain later. Adam your word is the first adjective of the Seventh full sentence on page (37?).
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

EDIT:  The internet connection at the lake was terrible, and the phone service too.  I was also on vacation, and was quite a bit drunk (mostly in the evenings).  I'm nearly positive it was the terrible cellular coverage that was the real culprit.   I did try to get Adam his weapon for the next day after I realized my error in blind choice which turned out to be less fun than I thought.  The message didn't make it, however.  It was "Creatures of Darkness"

Page 35

Luck Dragon

I really need to start these sooner. Your weapon is Swarm.

Page 34

Temptation

I'll admit, this was totally last minute.  First of all, I worked the last day of work before a week-long vacation today, secondly I almost forgot about the 48 hours film project screening tonight, which was really fun.  After I got home, i was helping Kelly get ready for tomorrow/drinking, and then we came inside and headed towards bedtime before I realized what I still had yet to do. (I had realized this throughout the day, and evening, but forgot again once i was home.)

This is the concept, although not very well done, that I tossed around in my head today.  I wanted to leave work a lot earlier than I did sooooo bad, but  I couldn't.  I didn't even leave at the time indicated in the drawing.  I apologize for the half-assed entry, but sometimes this will happen.

Adam, your weapon for tomorrow-I don't know if you read ahead and saw this coming- is LUCKDRAGON.  You may use any words in the description of the luckdragon on Page 35.

Page 33

He was lost.

Once there was a bear who was loved dearly by a little girl. She named him Norman and took him everywhere. One day the girl's mom took them to the park where the girl and Norman swung and slide all day. However, when it came time to go Norman was lost. "Finally," Norman thought, "some peace and quiet."

The grayscale doesn't fit very well... but I started too late.

Jeremy, your weapon is "temptation."

Page 32

Give It Up

I fell asleep more than once after I got home tonight and before I started working on this piece.  Even though I wasn't part of the filming during the 48 hour film project I did work a full day, stay up all night writing the script, then work another full day, about 43 hours before I got to sleep for a few hours.  I almost forgot that i had a piece to submit tonight, but I'm glad I didn't because having a day off is so nice during this whole process.  

This drawing turned out pretty well for being so tired, and I got to play with my favorite art pen, the pilot precise.

Adam, your weapon for tomorrow is "He was lost."

Page 31

Nothing is real

Tomorrow is our 1 month anniversary. In honor of it we will be fighting the nothing in other ways, therefore we will not be posting. Don't be too sad this blog will resume on the 5th. Jeremy your weapon that day will ironically be "Give it up."

Page 30

Turtle

I thought I'd have some fun with this one.  I think the picture pretty much speaks for itself.  

Your new weapon is "Nothing is real."

Page 29 PENALTY

Swamp of Sadness

I could only see what i wanted a little while ago, and then it was too late to use the medium i really wanted- Ink wash, so i sketched it and then did as much photoshop as i could in the time allotted, which as you can see, was as much time as possible.

Page 29

Swamp of Sadness

EDIT: Now in Grayscale!

Fighters,
I'm having problems accessing my photoshop "demo". I was going to fill some of this in with black but... I can't. I'll fix it when I get the chance. I'm downloading Gimp as this version uploads. I'm excited to see how our two versions of the swamp look next to each other.

Jeremy,
Your weapon for tomorrow obviously has to be "Turtle."

Page 28

He heaved a deep sigh.

Today is a glorious day.  I would have had my piece in on time, but i was celebrating and lost track of time while casually drawing.

Today Kelly and I got a tax return from 2008 when we bought our house.  We filed our taxes wrong and did not take advantage of the first-time home buyers credit which became available a few days before we closed on our home.

We are now able to pay off ALL of our credit card debt.

Kaloo Kalay!  (spelling?)

I love everything right now.

Unfortunately, tomorrow's topic is not as jubilant:

SWAMPS OF SADNESS