Ugly Cabaret

Dog Days of Summer

So...fair warning. This is where things start to get weird....

Santo Spirito

Back in October of 2017, my better half and I took a trip to Italy for a little better than a week. A handful of days in Rome followed by a week in Florence was just what the doctor ordered and turned out to be one of the most powerfully transformational moments of our lives. 

This image is a sketch I did on our final day in Florence. The AirBnB we stayed at had only one window in the entire apartment. This was our view from our lone window in the bedroom. Santo Spirito is just across the Arno via the Ponte Santa Trinita (the next bridge north of the renowned Ponte Vecchio) and is the name of this basilica, the attached convent and abbey, and the piazza it sits upon. 

The Basilica di Santo Spirito is Brunelleschi's plain-fronted church from the 1400's and houses, among other treasures, one of Michelangelo's earliest works, a wooden crucifix that, at a glance, you'd likely never attribute to the master. During his early years, he performed anatomical studies of the corpses that were released from the abbey at this church. In return, he carved an incredible wooden crucifix which occupies a gallery of its own in this quintessential renaissance church. 

These days, the basilica is visited primarily by locals for services, so when we finally decided to explore the oddly undecorated church in our square, we were blown away by the church and its collections, as well as having the place largely to ourselves. The main source of traffic for this church is in fact students. At all hours of the day and night, students and travelers gather on the ample steps of this church to socialize, drink, eat (seriously, the best pizza I've ever had anywhere is served out of a 20' x 20' corner shop a block and a half from here) and generally enjoy the square. 

If you find yourself in Florence, make it a point to visit Piazza di Santo Spirito, grab a pie from Gusta Pizza (be prepared to wait a little - there's always a line out the door!), pick up a craft beer from the first trattoria on the square (can't remember the name, but look for a stylized version of the basilica on the label - the beer is brewed right in the neighborhood!), and then grab a step in front of Santo Spirito. Trust me, it's worth it. 

Of course, part of me deeply regrets tearing this page out of my sketchbook to leave as a thank-you for our host, Allessandro. But then I pull up the message I got from him the day after we left, gushing about it, so I guess it was a page well-spent! 

Happy Little Comics

Yeah, my inner critic is seriously this vocal and this combative when I finally do sit down to get something on paper. So in the style of Chuck Jones, I decided to fight back...

Yet Another New Beginning...

So...earlier this year, I started making some comics, mainly to combat by creativity blocks and prove my inner critic wrong. I did a series of 10 - 12 at the time and then promptly forgot about them. Recently, I was flipping through the sketch book where I made these and they (well, some of them) were enough to earn a chuckle from me. Which is unheard of for me; I NEVER like the stuff I draw.

So in the process of leaning ever more towards professional illustration full-time, it seemed like a good idea to start cleaning them up and getting them out.

Over the coming weeks, I'll be giving this set of comics a quick clean up, mainly for legibility, and getting them up here, over on Tumblr, and maybe even on Facebook. This first set deals mainly with my own internal conflicts and the arguments I have with my inner critic anytime I set out to put pencil to paper.

Hope you enjoy and keep an eye out for a new website and a Patreon page in the coming weeks! 

Gnome Barbarian - work in progress

Sample of some pencils I'm working on for a gnome barbarian character.

Father

I have a number of friends who have become fathers in the past year, either for the first time or in a relapse (you know who you are). My brother is celebrating his 6th Father's Day.

I want to recognize my own father and wish for each of you that you can be this kind of model for your children. And since I forgot to buy and send a card in a timely fashion (y'know, cuz I'm an awesome son and Father's Day is a tough holiday to keep on the radar) and our call this morning was cut short due to the absolutely abysmal cell reception in York Beach, Maine (yeah, I'm calling you out York - get with the program here!), I thought a timely blog post would be in order.

For those of you who don't know him, my father is a big man. Not as big as I am, and he's certainly gotten physically smaller over the years as he deals with a number of health issues. But I remember him as being big, able and anyone who has ever known him would agree that he's big in personality and of character.

My brother and I grew up in a home filled with love and we were fortunate that both of our parents were able to spend an inordinate amount of time with us. Since they were both teachers, we were all on similar schedules and I remember them being very involved with everything we did. I took it for granted that parents were always at sports and band and plays and school things and whatever else, because my parents were.

My father coached us from an early age, serving as the coach of various sporting teams - soccer, little league, basketball, hockey. And it was hockey that we fell in love with and that consumed immeasurable time of my father's schedule. But he never complained (or never let us hear?) and (seemed to) enjoyed it.

It wasn't until years later that I fully appreciated how much of a commitment that was and how unusual. I don't know that I can fully appreciate it even now.

As an electrician, Dad worked big construction when he was younger. But a dip in the construction market came as he was starting his family. While the pay might not have been as good, teaching was consistent and it gave him summers off. I remember years when my father worked all summer doing side wiring jobs. Those were interspersed with summers where he didn't work at all and we took epic, once-in-a-lifetime trips.

My father's work ethic and desire to see more took us up and down the eastern seaboard a number of times, through some of the biggest national parks, cross-country, to Hawaii for a month, and to Bar Harbor, one of our favorite places to go and home to one of our favorite hikes - The Precipice.

As much as my brother and I give him a hard time for his collection of truly terrible jokes (what's a Henweigh?), he has a wonderful sense of humor and a playful, pranking side that either rubbed off on or exacerbated my mother's mischievousness.

My father loves to tell us how uncreative he is and that my mother, brother and myself are the creative ones. Yet over the years I have watched him as a photographer, a potter, a tailor (and a frigging good one, too - he hemmed and mended all of our clothes growing up), a cook, a mechanic, a designer, upholsterer, game designer (for a host of custom-designed learning games my mother devised for her classes), landscaper and farmer. While he may not draw or write, I truly do not know many artists that can claim to be as creative as my father.

I could fill a book with the things he taught us over the years, but perhaps the greatest thing was that he showed us what it meant to be a man - kind, compassionate, hard-working, patient (I can say patience beyond reason is one of his virtues after having dealt with our nonsense over the years), strong, principled, clever, earnest.

This is to say "thank you" to my father and "happy father's day" and to wish that those of you who are fathers can take some of those qualities on as you raise your own children.