Sins Committed Sins Remitted

My post on Monday was kind of a cheat. I know that. But then again, this new baby is sucking an awful lot of energy out of our family. It's funny how 7 to 10 pounds of fury and need can run a whole family! Eva is our sixth child and, as such, one can be forgiven for thinking I would remember how difficult newborns are. AHA! That's exactly where they get you! If you remembered how hard it is to have little babies, then you would never dream of having another one. "Never dream"... of course we don't dream now... since we NEVER SLEEP! Or, I should say, my wife never sleeps. I'm sleeping okay, but I have sympathy exhaustion. It's the very least I can do.

We must press on with my narcissistic need... errr... commitment to explicating my work to an inquiring public. It's time to talk DRAWING BOOKS! Specifically the drawing book done immediately after Family Resemblances. As I said, I spent about 4 years making that book and I didn't want to do that again. So I made a much thinner book in Sins Committed, Sins Remitted. 

Sins Committed, Sins Remitted. Those little designs between the words are crosses of persecution.

Albrecht Durer starts things off the right way.

As I was going through this book to get some images to show all my fans out there, I realized this book was filled with collages. I don't know if that means I really liked some of my old prints or if it means I was exceptionally lazy. Probably both.

Actually what I think happened is that I used a strange kind of laid paper that was two-sided – blue on one side and buff on the other. It wasn't really conducive to drawing as much as it made a great surface for collage. It's funny how materials can go a long way in dictating imagery.

Lies

This man is a liar and he has begun to believe his lies.

The drunken minotaur

I have written about minotaurs before, so there's no need to rehash all of that here. But it seemed like a good idea to draw a savage minotaur with a martini and a dainty cigarette. The alligator on the left was the beginnings of a design that I was commissioned to do.

Yeahhhrrrrrrrgghhhhh! :-)

 These guys sing for joy. They exult in their excellence as they are the mighty brachiosaurus and the cunning ceratosaurus!

Oroboros, Jormungandr and a very small tribute to Doug TenNapel

Pig and Alligator

Here's more stuff from that alligator commission. The client wasn't sure exactly what he wanted, so I tried my best to give him full-throttle coolness. There's a hog skull and an alligator skull and crossbones here.

Bird and Skull

The North Museum in Lancaster, PA had a great collection of stuffed birds on its bottom floor. I spent a lot of hours down there looking at those birds, but this is the only drawing I ever made of any of them. The skull is from an old woodcut that I recycled.

This is a small and colorful book. I like it very much. It took about a year to finish. I took some time off before my next, unorthodox book. The one that I will write about next time...