Writing Challenge Day 11: Someone You Admire

Yet another difficult topic. It’s easy to name a great many people who have qualities I admire, but finding someone I admire in a more complete way was another matter. I asked myself what I admire. Kindness. Intellect. Honesty.

At first, I considered making a list of those with qualities I admire, but after much introspection, reflection, and lots of other -ion words, I decided to write about a particular friend of mine. I’ll call him Logan, because he’ll love that.

I’ve known him for years, since I was homeless. He wasn’t homeless – he was someone I knew from the church I attended at the time. Sometimes we’d go out to lunch after church just to chat, and I always felt treated like an equal. That wasn’t necessarily uncommon within the small group associated with that church, but in a broader view it was rare indeed. He is a good, kind man, and he’s always had my respect, as do many from that group.

Logan’s been through a lot. Cancer. A divorce. Horrible (false) accusations. Bankruptcy, and still other hardships. All lumped together – a lifetime of difficulty inside a vastly shorter period. And he made it. He made it through all of it. And not just physically.

I’ve been through but a fraction of what he has endured, and it nearly tore me apart. Yet he, his sense of humor, and – most importantly – his heart, is intact. Today, he is cancer free, shares custody of his beautiful son with his ex-wife, has an excellent job, and remains an indisputably good man, and one of the kindest I know.

Also, now that I think about it, I totally owe him a burger…

 

Check out our other participants here –

Niki: Sometimes I Write

Becky: Free2B2Much

Tracy: CountryRoadChronicles

Writing Challenge Day 3: Your Mother

Yes, my post today is late. My apologies. Today’s been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, for reasons I may go into in a future blog post. For now, on to the challenge (and, for the previously mentioned reason, sorry if today’s post seems disjointed or – god forbid – you find any typos ).

Now, do I write about my adoptive mother, or my biological mother? I think, to keep things positive, I’ll stick with my adoptive mother.

While I was growing up, my mom had to put up with all the typical mom stuff: piles of dirty laundry on the floor, cups and dishes left everywhere, snakes in the pond eating her fish — WAIT, what was that last one?

I grew up in Southern California, in Lakeside (east county San Diego), which, if it isn’t actually IN the Mojave Desert, is certainly close enough to share its climate. And its flora and fauna.

So in addition to the average mothering stuff, my mother had to also put up with snakes. And spiders (blowtorches are great for Black Widows…). And lizards, and groundhogs, and scorpions, and coyotes, and large birds of prey (which could easily snatch up a small dog…).

She did come up with some unique solutions to living in the near-desert though. I remember that because the heat would rot a typical jack-o-lantern quicker than you could blink, we often just left the pumpkin intact and painted the outside. A couple of years, Mom made snowmen out of white-painted tumbleweeds.

At a certain point in my childhood, my mother decided I was big enough to go and help handle the ‘critter’ problem. This, I’m afraid, only exacerbated the problem. Now, the snakes and spiders and lizards and scorpions were brought INTO the house (that’s what happens when you send an adolescent boy to play with creepy-crawlies…), instead of staying outside.

That my mother survived my and my siblings’ adolescences without a heart attack is remarkable, and is to be applauded. I remember the big kerfuffle when my anole lizard (named Todd [anoles are a type of chameleon that go from green to brown]) got loose and hid in one of the armchairs in the living room. I remember the wary look on her face as I relaxed on the couch with a fully grown tarantula hanging out on my chest (named Farrah – the scientific family name is theraphosidae: theraphosidae, Farrah Fawcett…). I remember the uproar that ensued after I “helped” my sister get very up close and personal with the snake I’d recently fished out of the pond, and my mother forcing me to release it just after.

And when I found a scorpion on my pillow and sealed it in a jar as part of an experiment, she handled it pretty well. For a week. Then I was forced to let the hapless scorpion go outside.

So, Mom… thanks for putting up with me and my ‘pets’.

 

Find our other participants here –

Niki: Sometimes I Write

Becky: Free2B2Much

Tracy: CountryRoadChronicles

Writing Challenge Day 1: The Person You Love Most

As I’ve previously mentioned (within the hour even), my friend Niki has challenged me to a writing challenge. You can read about it here on her blog.

While I’ve already successfully completed multiple drawing and photo challenges, this will be the first writing challenge I’ve ever done, so please bear with me if my posts seem inconsistent or even incoherent.

The basic principle of the challenge is that each day we’ll write at least a paragraph about the person named on the list for that day (the full list can, again, be found here on Niki’s blog).

The person listed for today: “The Person You Love Most”. I didn’t even have to think about this one – the answer is of course my son.

My son just finished his fall vacation (he’s already in school – they start early here). His mother and I agreed that I would watch him during his vacation, which was two weeks, so I took time off from work and stayed at home with him for two weeks. We went to the park several times and played on the playground. I taught him to play War and Go Fish. We watched movies and played games. We went on play dates with other kids. We read books, did puzzles, folded paper airplanes. We even carved a jack-o-lantern and had a couple video chats with his grandparents back in the U.S.

At the end of his time with me, I sat him down with his school notebook, and opened it to the homework they’d assigned, which was for the child to describe and/or draw their vacation and what they’d done.

“So, Matthew, what did we do over vacation?”

“I don’t know.”

Frustrating, to say the least. At 3 years old, he seems to have discovered apathy. “I don’t know”, “I can’t do it”, and “nothing” are his stock answers at the moment. What does he want to do? He doesn’t know. Can he put his shoes or jacket on please so we can leave? He can’t do it. What does he want to eat tonight? Nothing.

I don’t really know how to wrap this post up, so… here’s hoping the ‘apathy’ stage passes quickly.

“Reports of my death…”

“Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
— Mark Twain

It has been a long, long time since I posted on this blog. Those who used to read it will remember multiple drawing and photo challenges, often with my friend and partner-in-crime Niki, over at Sometimes I Write; she’s challenged me again, so it’s time once again to dust off the keyboard and permit myself to engage in blatant narcissism, at least to the extent required to publicize my thoughts and think that they will interest.

However, it’s been so very long since I posted, and so very much has changed in my life, that I feel I should start anew. Please allow me, therefore, to introduce myself.

My name’s Don. I’m a 31-year-old American living in France. Old readers may remember that I married a French woman, and that’s why I live here – since my last post on this blog, we divorced and now share custody of the adorable little boy I’m proud to be the father of.

After the divorce, I looked to “support” forums for help on how to manage, and in place of support found legions of bitter, hardened people who have ceased to believe in love, and resent others for their happiness. This is not how I wanted to end up, and indeed, it is not. True, my marriage didn’t work out, but I still believe strongly in love, kindness, and am (most of the time) genuinely happy, in a way I never was in my marriage.

I won’t say processing my divorce was easy, and indeed I went through some very dark places along the way, but, thanks in large part to a few very specific people, I made it through ok and with an intact heart. I’ve been on a couple failed dates, and went on multiple succesful ones with a beautiful, charming woman – sadly we just didn’t have enough in common to lay the foundation for a solid relationship.

In terms of career, I still work at France’s largest video games company, where I translate all our games, sites, TV shows, movies, comic books, etc. from French into English. Outside of work, I pass my time playing video games; creating art with my pens, pencils, and cameras (or at least trying to); and giving entirely too much thought to unimportant questions like ‘what would happen if the U.S. penny were worth two cents rather than one?’ (answer: not much of anything. Google frobenius numbers).

Now that’s out of the way, I’ll get on to the writing challenge. That will be a separate post, which I will get working on immediately after I post this one.

Allie Brosh, Welcome Back!

Artwork from Allie’s latest post

For Day 29 of the 30 Day Drawing Challenge we just wrapped up, I posted about how much I wished Allie Brosh, one of my favorite cartoonists and bloggers, would come back to the internet after being absent for almost two years. Her hysterically self-centered story-telling coupled with her crude yet detailed and skillful Paint drawings make her blog posts a pleasure to read, and re-read (and re-read, and re-read again).

And, lo and behold, a little more than a week later, she’s back! Of course, I’m not arrogant enough to assume that this has anything to do with what I posted, but it’s a fun coincidence.

All she’s posted this point is an explanation of where she’s been and why she’s back, but I hope and expect to see many more wonderful posts from her.

There’s not much more to add to that, except to repeat that if you haven’t checked out her blog and her art, you really should. You will laugh. Guaranteed.

If you missed the links above, here’s one more link to her blog, Hyperbole and a Half. And now, here’s one more of my favorite images from her last post:

Artwork from Allie Brosh’s latest post

Disclaimer for the slow ones: If you somehow missed that fact, both images used in this post are the work of Allie Brosh. Also, you shouldn’t be so foolish as to misconstrue my unauthorized use of her artwork to mean that she approves of what I post or is even aware of this blog.

The End Of An Era – Or At Least A Challenge

Another drawing challenge knocked out, and now it’s time for the obligatory wrap-up.

And, “truth gun” to my head, I’m a bit disappointed with how this one went. During the last drawing challenge we did, I pushed myself to try new techniques and keep trying to ramp up the quality and detail of my work (such as“Couple”, one of my wife’s favorites). This time around, although I do feel I got some good shots in (examples: “Slender”, “Space”, and “Can’t Hear You”), more often than not I was in a rush and I feel like the drawings I posted represented, at best, a disappointingly moderate effort on my part.

Participation was another disappointing area. We started out as 10 or so bloggers, ready to draw our way to glory. Only three of us limped across the finish. Some stalled right out of the gate, not even getting to day 10, and half didn’t make it past the halfway point. Maybe next time though.

Apart from the drawing aspect of this challenge, another goal of mine was to increase my number of readers; the last month has added another 21 fine folks to the reader ranks – I suppose I have to call that a success, but not the level of success I’d have liked, and I attribute that to the moderate effort I put into this challenge.

I also wanted to increase reader participation, but that has proven mysteriously difficult to stimulate.

Now that it’s over, I’m looking forward to doing another drawing challenge, but think I owe some non-art posts along with anything else I post.

And so ends the wrap-up. Until next time.

New 30 Day Drawing Challenge & Day 1 Drawing

Well, I had so much fun doing the first 30 Day Drawing Challenge here on my blog with assorted friends on theirs, I figured I’d like to do another one (you can find the list here). I was a bit hesitant to commit myself to a daily activity during this busy time in my life, but there’s always a bit of down time. I may not have time to do a fantastic drawing every day, but I will have time to make some marks on some paper.

I approached several friends about doing the challenge with me, with the result that we now have around 9 participants; I’ll be linking to all of them at the end of this post – make sure to check them out. And Niki had the brilliant idea of matching the 30 challenges with the 30 days in April – funny how that matches up…

The rules are simple: Every day, for 30 days, draw with anything capable of marking (pen, pencil, marker, bloody finger, etc) on anything capable of being marked (paper, the wall, etc); digitize it somehow, and post it publicly online somewhere (preferably a blog).

So, Day 1:

Click through for big version

Day 1’s drawing prompt is “Muppet”. But I have a confession: I’ve never watched the Muppets. Ever.
It turns out the Oxford English Dictionary defines “Muppet” as:

A proprietary name for: any of a number of humorously grotesque glove or rod puppets and marionettes, chiefly representing animals, first popularized by the children’s television programme Sesame Street (1969-) and more recently in The Muppet Show (1976-80). Also: a toy made to resemble one of these.

So I could have drawn a Sesame Street character. But I had already drawn Beaker here. It wasn’t a fantastic drawing, so I went through and added in some cartoony shading. But, because I’m drawing with a different lead than I’m accustomed to, my shading came out very dark, and resulted in some very strong directional lighting – like there was an explosion in front and to the left of him. So I decided to go with it.

This is the result after scanning the drawing, coloring it in GIMP, and of course adding in some other details at the same time. From what I know of the Beaker character, he was always suffering at the hands of others, so this isn’t inappropriate. What do you think?

 

Our other participants:
Niki Nowell
Bill Davis
GirlyGeeky
Free2B2Much
Notes From The Backseat
Marilyn Quinsaat [posting on Facebook]
Kimmy Haines [posting on Facebook]
Karen Haines (no url provided; will update)

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Comic

Today’s (Day 13) challenge was to draw a comic. Mine includes kittens and babies.

Technically, the list just said ‘comic’. I could think of three ways to interpret that, but since it didn’t say “favorite”, I didn’t think the idea was to draw your favorite comic strip. And I don’t think they meant to draw a picture of George Carlin or Louis C.K.

When I was a kid, I would watch Animaniacs, and they had short segments called “Good Idea/Bad Idea”. They would present a good idea, then change the wording slightly to make it a funny bad idea. Ex: “Good idea: stopping to smell the roses. Bad idea: stopping to feel the roses.”

This was the inspiration for my comic:

I can sense the angry comments coming…

God knows the idea has occurred to me once or twice when the baby is screaming and the cat is chasing me around the house trying to get me to feed her. So there you go. Enjoy. See you tomorrow.

Did you know there are other bloggers doing this challenge with me? Have a look:
–Niki Nowell
–Zoe Nowell
–freebie (now with more body parts!)
–GirlyGeeky
–Max Nowell

Studies show commenting can lower your blood pressure, cure IBS, and help you shed pesky pounds [citation needed]! Give it a try down below – I put a comment form there, just for you.

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Most Recent Accomplishment

The drawing challenge for today, Day 12, was my ‘Most Recent Accomplishment’. Now, I should warn you before we continue that to do today’s challenge, I had to photograph a body part of mine and draw it into my drawing. It just wouldn’t have been complete otherwise.

This was an interesting challenge, because I haven’t felt very accomplished as of late. In fact, it’s been a while since I could say I’ve felt like I had an all out victory.

But there have been small moments of victory. Such as:

See? I told you I drew a body part. Those are my freakish feet there. Don’t try to pretend yours look any better.

The context for this drawing is probably what you imagine it is. My wife told me that she was going to go on a weight loss plan to lose the baby weight, and so I decided to join in to support her. When I moved to France 2 years ago, I weighed about 113kg, or about 250lb (1kg ~ 2.2lbs). When I decided to join my wife in her weight loss program, I was 103kg (227lb) – a healthy weight for my height is in the 80s (I picked 88kg as my goal). So I had around 15 kilos to lose.

After about a little more than a week and a half of watching what I ate and exercising every day (long, brisk walks), I saw this number. It wasn’t a huge victory, but 5kg (11lb) is a third of the way to my goal, and it’s definitely an accomplishment, no matter the size.

Also, the wife, as of last weigh-in, is down 3kg.

Did you know there are other bloggers doing this challenge with me? Have a look:
–Niki Nowell
–Zoe Nowell
–freebie
–GirlyGeeky
–Max Nowell

Every time you read a blog post and don’t comment, God kills a krill. Think of the krill! Give it a try down below – I put a comment form there, just for you.

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Turning Point In Your Life

Day 11’s challenge is to draw a ‘turning point in your life’. There have been countless turning points in my life, both good and bad, where the direction my life was headed was sometimes only slightly deflected, and other times was flipped around and shoved in the other direction.

Among the good, there is the birth of my son, my marriage to my wife, and Dry Bones (who helped me get off the streets). Among the bad there’s becoming homeless, arrests, and my marriage to my first wife. There are, of course, many, many more than that.

The one I chose to draw however is one of the negative ones:

Why did I draw a semi-truck as a ‘turning point’ in my life?

I’ll do my best to give you the abridged version. Just after Hurricane Katrina, I went to New Orleans with a bunch of guys to do repairs and make money, although we were actually in Mississippi, avoiding Hurricane Rita.

I had just turned 21.

One night, we were driving back from a site and it was dark. There was a gas station that exited directly onto the rural 4-lane highway, and we had to cross two lanes of oncoming traffic to get to the far side and travel left (a legal maneuver). There was a kid driving our car who would later reveal he has trouble seeing at night.

There was a semi truck coming fast from the left. The kid drove when he should have stayed. There was a collision, the front of the semi and the side of the pickup. There was noise and confusion, blood and broken glass, rolling and tumbling about.

They airlifted two of us to the hospital (my first ride in a helicopter! Woot!). The other two were driven there.

Physically, I had a severed nerve in my right arm that meant I couldn’t feel part of my hand and a couple of fingers. It was later repaired with a nerve from my leg (but not before some of the muscles in my hand died off) – now I can sort of feel my hand, and I can’t feel my ankle.

Psychologically, the damage was much worse. For more than two years afterwards, I had nightmares and flashbacks. I had difficulty riding in cars and not ‘freaking out’. The sight and/or sound of a semi-truck was pretty upsetting. There were some other problems that surfaced in other aspects of my life too.

Since then, I believe I’ve recovered as much as I’m going to, both physically and psychologically, and I’ve got a wicked set of scars. Mercifully, none of the emotional and mental problems seem to remain, and it’s all just a bad memory.

That is why a semi-truck represents a ‘turning point’ in my life.

Did you know there are other bloggers doing this challenge with me? Have a look:
–Niki Nowell
–Zoe Nowell
–freebie
–GirlyGeeky
–Max Nowell

9 out of 10 commentors agree: commenting is fun and easy! Give it a try down below – I put a comment form there, just for you. 

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Favorite Candy

Day 10 is draw your favorite candy. I’m a big fan of candy. I love it, and would inhale it if I could do so and still live a healthy life.

As for my favorite candy, the candy I chose is actually tied with sour gummy worms. No particular brand, just mouth puckering gummies that fortunately happen to be shaped like creepy crawlies I cut open in middle school (don’t give me that look! It was in Biology class!).

I’m very unsatisfied with the quality of my drawing tonight, but to tell the truth I drew it in a hurry only by the light of my laptop screen. Mostly I screwed up the logo.

I decided to add some equally and deliberately messy color in GIMP, just for fun.

You see, for me, Smarties being candy is actually their tertiary purpose, and I get around to it eventually. But first, I lovingly unwrap the cellophane and sort all of the little discs into groups by color. Then I count them. I would always prefer to have an even distribution across the colors, but I never do. Occasionally, I’ll figure out what percentage blue I have, or figure out what the average stack is.

Secondarily, I like to build things with them. Usually pyramids. I love it when I can make a pyramid with each layer being one solid and separate color. It’s usually not possible.

Finally, I’ll get around to eating them, but not in any old way. First I eat any odd numbered pieces, so all stacks are even numbers. Then the largest stack disappears. Then the second largest, and so on and so forth.

How I love Smarties (and sometimes, I do just open the package and eat them, like a “normal” person).

With the gummy worms, there is no such ceremony. Package is open, worms are in mouth, I am happy. I’m not always weird.

And that’s it for today. Tomorrow’s post will be better. Yesterday’s was better – check it out.

And while you’re checking things out, did you know there are other bloggers doing this challenge with me? Have a look:
–Niki Nowell
–Zoe Nowell
–freebie
–GirlyGeeky
–Max Nowell

9 out of 10 commentors agree: commenting is fun and easy! Give it a try down below – I put a comment form there, just for you. 

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Favorite T.V. Show

Day 9 is your favorite T.V. show. While I have many favorite shows, there is one show in particular that has been a favorite of mine for as long as I can remember, including all of my childhood. That show is Star Trek. Technically, Star Trek: The Next Generation, but I’m also a big fan of The Original Series (i.e. just Star Trek), and Deep Space Nine. As a child, I had lots of the toys, and even more of the books. Besides boxes of Star Trek novels (I’m talking full-sized moving boxes here), I had: -a communicator badge, -phasers (TNG type I and II [the cool type II, not the dustbuster]), -a Klingon disruptor, -and a decent sized model of the Enterprise (NCC-1701-D), all with working lights and sounds! Star Trek: TNG was on every night at 6 p.m. Western, and dinner time was more or less at 6, so every night we would sit down to “Space… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise…” I bugged my parents persistently until they bought me the Star Trek Encyclopedia and I spent many afternoons just reading it. I made a tribble; I had to make it out of long carpet though since my mom wasn’t willing to donate any of her artificial fur garments. Can you blame her? (If you don’t know what a tribble is, I’m sorry for you) I sometimes (rarely, ok?) assembled a makeshift uniform with my boots, some black pants, and a red t-shirt (WHY DID I CHOOSEA RED-SHIRT?!). But don’t tell anyone. I also seem to recall having a Ferengi Warship model at some point, but I think it might have been a lame Happy Meal toy. So for the challenge, it was a no-brainer. I had to do Star Trek. Although TNG was my favorite, I went with a TOS type II phaser. It just looks cooler. I’m not too happy with this drawing, but it’ll have to do. I’m out of time.

If you can’t spot the numerous flaws, I’m not going to tell you

One last thing: WESLEY CRUSHER SUCKED(but not Will Wheaton)!

Be sure to check out these other blogs who are participating in the challenge:

• Niki Nowell

• Zoe Nowell

• freebie

• GirlyGeeky

• Max Nowell

Also, comments are always a good thing. There’s even a form below for that sort of thing. Try it out. It works great!

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Favorite Animated Character

Day 8 is your favorite animated character.  I’ve been looking forward to this one! Now, the exact wording of the challenge was favorite animated character. Sadly, that excludes puppets, so no Yoda, no Audrey II, and no Hoggle.

Originally, there were going to be four or five more drawings on this page, but I found that after finishing these four, I was just done – couldn’t draw anymore.

Those that were on the list but didn’t get drawn are Chel (Road to El Dorado), Jack Skellington(Nightmare Before Christmas), Pooh Bear (Winnie the Pooh), Wall-E (Wall-E), and Agnes and/or a Minion (Despicable Me).

You might not know all of these characters, so in the top left is Bonkers D. Bobcat, a cartoon in a cartoon [::Inception joke goes here::] who was clearly drawn by someone who had never seen a bobcat.

In the top right is Grin, from the Mighty Ducks cartoon (yes, there was a cartoon). He was enormous, strong, armored, and yet very Zen.

In the middle is Brain a genetically modified mouse who, together with fellow mouse Pinky, tried nightly to dominate the world.

In the bottom left is GIR, a ‘helper’ robot from the show Invader Zim. While his role is ostensibly to help, he is truly hedonistic with no impulse control, and does whatever he wants to do whenever he wants to do it, which usually involves waffles, bacon and/or tacos, running around, and screaming. He’s also not too bright.

As a bonus, here’s the intro to the Mighty Ducks cartoon, just to prove this actually was a show:

Be sure to check out these other blogs who are participating in the challenge:

• Niki Nowell

• Zoe Nowell

• freebie

• GirlyGeeky

• Max Nowell

Also, comments are always a good thing. There’s even a form below for that sort of thing. Try it out. It works great!

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Favorite Word

Day 7 was to draw your favorite word.

I’m not sure I have a favorite word. I can’t think of any words where the word itself amuses me, titillates me, captivates me, impresses me… not a one. However, I could think of a few where the idea behind the word captures my interest. So instead of my favorite word, I am drawing my favorite idea, or concept.

One thing I love, to the confusion and chagrin of my wife on occasion, is absurdity (my word = absurd). Specifically, absurdist humor. You could call it ‘non sequitur’ or ‘surrealist’ humor if you want. Things that are funny because they don’t make much sense and are therefore completely unexpected.

How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Fish.

A shining example of absurdist humor is, of course, Douglas Adams, author of the “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” series of books. So it is to those books that I went for my inspiration for today’s drawing, which is based on a short excerpt from the book, which I’ve added as a caption to the drawing.

Excerpt: “Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was ‘Oh no, not again.’ Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.”

Another quote I considered using from the books was “It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes”, and I also considered “I’m spending a year dead for tax reasons”. But the petunias won out.

Hope you enjoyed this one; I’m really looking forward to tomorrow’s drawing!

Be sure to check out these other blogs who are participating in the challenge:

• Niki Nowell

• Zoe Nowell

• freebie

• GirlyGeeky

• Max Nowell

Also, comments are always a good thing. There’s even a form below for that sort of thing. Try it out. It works great!

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Favorite Book Character

Day 6 was to draw your favorite book character, with the additional restriction that it couldn’t have been made into a movie – or at least that’s how I read the challenge.

This one was a nightmare. Today was a horrible day – the baby was screaming and fussy all day, the cat was intent on doing everything she’s not allowed to do, etc. And to top it all off, all of the books where I could honestly say I have a favorite character have already been turned into movies. Although some of the movie versions were so horrible they shouldn’t count (for example: Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt novels, and the movie adaptation, Sahara, starring Matthew McConaughey).

Finally, I found a book (actually seven) that I did enjoy, and surprisingly had never been turned into a movie (although apparently there will be one soon). And that’s the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. And my character is The Gunslinger, a.k.a. Roland Deschain of Gilead.

“The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.” That’s the first line of the first book. And that’s why I read it. That line grabbed me.

So even though I’d found a character, I was too tired to draw his face – so I settled on the next best thing: his gun. Actually, he has two of them, but I only drew one. In the books, they’re described as long barrelled blued-steel revolvers with sandalwood grips, chambered very close to .45 caliber, and serve to identify the Gunslinger, and people would recognize the guns as much as his face.
Technically, in the books Deschain is from an alternate reality (it’s Stephen King, after all), but I always felt pretty sure that his guns looked a lot like old Colt revolvers. Originally there was going to be a rose too, which was a recurring theme throughout the books, but I didn’t have the energy.

I’m looking forward to Day 8: Favorite Animated Character. That should be fun.

Be sure to check out these other blogs who are participating in the challenge:

• Niki Nowell

• Zoe Nowell

• freebie

• GirlyGeeky

• Max Nowell

Also, comments are always a good thing. There’s even a form below for that sort of thing. Try it out. It works great!

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Best Friend

Day 5 is to draw your best friend.

[warning: boring personal thoughts ahead]
This one was also difficult for me (can’t we have an easy one?). When I still lived in the USA, I had a nice large group of casual friends, and a large handful of very close friends, any one of whom I could call best friend. Then I left. And I lost contact with every single one of them.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re on Facebook and we still chat every once in a blue moon. But “We’ll keep in touch”, even between best friends, is always a lie. They’re all still close friends in my book, but the level and frequency of interaction that used to exist just isn’t there anymore.

And here in France, I quite simply have no friends, to put it quite bluntly. There are people whom I would call very friendly acquaintances that I’d love to be friends with – Nico and Jean Pierre for example. But you know the expression “Friends help you move, best friends help you move bodies”? I wouldn’t have anyone to even help me move. Except for Serge, Giselle, Patrick and Laetitia, my extended set of in-laws. But then, there’s the age gap there.

In fact, the only person (sort of) in my age group I talk to on a regular basis is fellow blogger Niki Nowell. But even as broad and close as that relationship has become, it’s still too limited to qualify as ‘besties’.

So I decided to draw someone anonymous to signify the lack of a best friend. I was discussing it with my wife (how I could represent a nonexistent person) and she reminded me of the painting “The Son Of Man” – the anonymous suit with his face hidden by a well placed granny smith. I loved the idea and decided to run with it. But none of my friends wear suits. So here you go:

To be determined… (as always: 0.5mm mech pencil, GIMPed for contrast)

Don’t forget to check out:

• Niki Nowell
• Zoe Nowell
• freebie
• ‘GirlyGeeky‘
• and Max Nowell our most recent participant (who I’m told will soon have drawings for all 4 days posted)!

Also, it’s never too late to join in! Don’t forget to let us know so we can link to you.

And, as always, feedback and comments are always appreciated.

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Favorite Place

Day 4 is draw your favorite place. This was a difficult one because I had to first decide where my favorite place was.

Do you live in Denver? Have you been to Denver? Quick! Where’s the public art installation named “The Yearling”? What does it look like?

If you live in Denver, you might not know the name of the statue, but you know the statue itself. It’s the GIANT red elementary school chair with a relatively miniature horse standing on it, right outside the public library.

This one

This was going to be my drawing today. I started drawing with an hour left until deadline, but an active baby and other stressors kept me from having the concentration I’d need to do a detailed drawing like this. So instead, I sort of phoned this one in. I picked something quick and easy. It’s lazy, I’m not terribly happy with it, but it’s an OK doodle, and it represents Denver.

Here it is:

Pencil in sketchbook, GIMPed for contrast

Those are the two area codes in Denver, the top more often for land lines, and the bottom more often for cell phones, though those lines have really started to blur. Sorry to have put up such a lazy drawing today, and I promise I’ll try harder tomorrow.

Don’t forget to check out Niki Nowell, Zoe Nowell, freebie, ‘GirlyGeeky‘, and Max Nowell our most recent participant (who I’m told will soon have drawings for all 4 days posted)!

Also, it’s never too late to join in! Don’t forget to let us know so we can link to you.

And, as always, feedback and comments are always appreciated.

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Favorite Food

Day 3 is draw your favorite food. I actually have three favorite foods – aside from the one pictured, there are pretzels and nachos too! In any case, here’s my drawing for the day.

My favorite food:

Pencil, as always, scanned and darkened in GIMP for visibility.

Don’t forget to check out Niki Nowell, Zoe Nowell, freebie, and ‘GirlyGeeky‘, our most recent participant!

Also, it’s never too late to join in! Don’t forget to let us know so we can link to you.

And, as always, feedback and comments are always appreciated.

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Favorite Animal

This challenge is going great so far. Right off the bat, we have two more participants, bringing the total up to four! There’s me (obviously), Niki Nowell , her 9-year old daughter Zoe , and ‘freebie’. Be sure to pop over to their blogs to see what they’ve come up with for the challenge (CHALLENGE LIST HERE).

Day 2 is ‘favorite animal’. This one gave me pause because I don’t really have a favorite animal. It’s not that I don’t like animals. I do. But there isn’t one that really gets me excited. But I do have an unordered list of animals that I like, and unsurprisingly, monkeys are on that list (as are hedgehogs, turtles and frogs).

Just like yesterday’s self-portrait, today’s drawing was a first; I’ve never actually drawn a monkey before. There are parts of the drawing I like, and parts I don’t. There are a few Bob Ross style “happy accidents”. I’d have liked to redo it, but I’m out of time. The day is over. Time to post.

So, here’s my monkey (that was fun to say/write):

Since I finished this one so late and I didn’t want to wake the wife, I wasn’t able to scan it and actually had to take a photo and do my best to clean it up in GIMP.

If you want to participate in this challenge with us, let us know (so we can link to you); it’s not too late to join in, and we’d love to have more people. Also, be sure to check out the other blogs. See you tomorrow.

30 Day Drawing Challenge: Yourself (100TH POST!)

(click to enlarge if it’s hard to read)

Ever since I did the post-a-day challenge back in October last year, I’ve been looking for another challenge to do. Preferably an art challenge. I didn’t find one after searching for quite a while, then this one that you see above just fell into my lap. So I’m going to do it. And, awesomely, my blogger friend Niki Nowell has agreed to do the challenge with me.

After a brief discussion, we decided on a couple simple rules:

• The challenge would begin today, on August 7th.
• The resultant drawings would be scanned or photographed and uploaded to our respective blogs.

Additionally, I’m setting myself the restriction that I should try, if it all possible, to avoid recycling old artwork and draw something new for each day.

Day 1 on the list is draw yourself. Strangely, of the many, many things I’ve ever drawn, I don’t believe I have ever drawn myself. So this was a first for me. And to tell the truth, I didn’t enjoy drawing this as much as I usually enjoy drawing. Still, I can recognize myself in the drawing, so I guess it’s a success.

So without further ado, here is my very first self portrait:

0.5mm mechanical pencil, scanned, contrast enhanced in GIMP

If you’d like to join in the challenge, even if you don’t have a blog, let me know. I’d love to have a bunch of people participating in this.

Also, don’t forget to jump over to Niki’s blog and check out her answer to the day 1 challenge.

And, as always, I’d love to read your comments down below.